Good morning,
A few weeks ago, I attended an Aspen Institute 12-hour session on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. I have read many articles and books over the years about the tumultuous LBJ years (including the Robert Caro and Robert Dalleck biographies). As much as I have read and as much as I thought I knew, nothing could replace the experience of learning, along with 20 other eager participants, from presidential historian and former director of the LBJ Library Mark Updegrove.
There are a number of ideas that became clear, many of which I already appreciated, but several of which were important fresh observations:
LBJ deftly handled the hours after the assassination and the interregnum between the return to Washington and moving into the White House. Contrary to the critical narrative that he “couldn’t wait” to be inaugurated and that he “forced” Jackie to witness his receiving the oath of office, he was quite deliberate and sensitive throughout the proceedings. He hit all the marks for precedence, compassion, humility, and messaging to friends and foes.
For all we know about LBJ’s distrust of “Harvard men” and other east coast elites, he kept in place through the balance of JFK’s term the cabinet he inherited. Following these “best and brightest,” ironically, dragged us deeper into Vietnam and an unwinnable war. He might have been better served by jettisoning the elites and going with his own gut earlier.
LBJ was a master of negotiation, manipulation, and legislation. The power he had amassed as Minority Leader and Minority Leader, and his work “on the job” as Vice President made him well prepared for the presidency. He arguably was among the most prepared. That said, some of the most prepared presidents—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, and George H.W. Bush had less than illustrious presidencies.
He had a clear idea of what he wanted—the Great Society, civil rights and voting rights. And he achieved material movement in each of these, through deft handling of political adversaries, inspired negotiations with a cobbled-together coalition of supporters (including key Republicans), and seizing openings presented by current events to advance the agenda.
He was unprepared for the great crisis of his presidency—Vietnam.
WHAT YOU WANT TO DO AND WHAT HISTORY FORCES YOU TO ADDRESS
Every president comes in with an agenda. Depending upon his/her ability, some of that agenda is achieved. Much is not, depending upon the persuasiveness of the president, the parties controlling Congress, and intervening events. On balance, LBJ achieved a remarkable agenda of legislative accomplishments.
As much as presidents come in with their stated objectives, events tend to lead them off on tangents they could never have imagined. These unforeseen events —the emergencies that require one’s attention—will distract from the president’s agenda. Every president has these. JFK had the Cuban Missile Crisis, Reagan dealt with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Carter had the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Bush had 9/11. He and Obama were faced with the Global Financial Crisis. LBJ’s great challenge, and ultimate downfall, was Vietnam. LBJ’s response to the quagmire that was Vietnam would earn him a failing grade. That said, the grade he deserves for his original agenda, which included Civil Rights and the Great Society, is quite high.
Why was Vietnam a failure? Like most politicians of the era, LBJ was believed in the “domino theory,” which held that every advance by the Communists would be like a falling domino, inevitably leading to the next country—the next domino—falling. Exacerbating this world view was LBJ’s complacence in accepting the analysis of his advisors—most of whom ironically were holdovers from JFK’s administration. Meanwhile, he was too willing to listen to his generals. His failure was that, in the face of his conclusion that the war was hopeless, he was unable or unwilling to buck the common wisdom and make the “u-turn decision.” Gidi Grinstein talks about inspired leaders who are willing to make a “u-turn decision.” This describes a circumstance when an individual goes against the consensus of their party, region, or ideology and/or their own prior point of view. The u-turn decision results in a major shift in policy (and “blowback” from those who remain adherents of the earlier point of view).
That LBJ didn’t shift his position on Vietnam is in some sense surprising, since he was willing to make audacious changes in strategy in pursuit of his loftier ambitions. He famously made a “u-turn” from the then-typical Southern Democrat of the time to become the architect of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. For some reason, in the face of the advice of the “best and the brightest” from the JFK administration, he could not make the “u-turn” on Vietnam. In the end, this torpedoed the latter years of his presidency and precipitated his decision not to seek another term.
DOES IT ALWAYS TAKE A CRISIS?
Many of LBJ’s accomplishments followed crises—the assassination of Kennedy opened the opportunity to pass the Civil Rights Act and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. provided the impetus for the Voting Rights Act. One of the participants in our class noted that we only seem able to address major issues only after a crisis or when time is running out. He said we are better at “taking pain killers” than at “taking our vitamins.” In other words, we delay our responses to obvious problems until a crisis forces us to take action. This was a prescient observation.
This unwillingness to take our vitamins can seen today in our woefully slow reaction to issues—slow to help Ukraine, slow to address the climate crisis, slow to address challenges to our democracy. I believe other crises loom as well:
The national debt is rising at an alarming rate. It needs to be brought down, through careful, thoughtful reductions in spending and increases in taxes (and elimination of tax loopholes). Otherwise, the debt service will crush us.
We need to solve the obvious dilemma with actuarial reality. State pension funds are under-funded and Medicare and Social Security will require more funding. The wave of baby-boomer retirees will strain the system to breakage.
THE ATTRIBUTES OF PRESIDENTIAL GREATNESS
We all must, in the end, be judged by our dedication, our work ethic, our intentions and our successes (and failures). Beyond human decency, honesty, leadership, and hard work, there are two things presidents are judged on:
What they set out to accomplish and their ability to achieve their goals, in light of the makeup of Congress
How they handle the inevitable emergencies that are thrust upon them. These things rarely are foreseeable but are often of great consequence. How they perform is, for me, a function of three things: 1. Their basic instincts and decision-making abilities 2. The team they have around them to advise them. 3. The accessibility of “minority views” outside of the bubble.
Presidents, especially in modern times, are surrounded by a phalanx of people protecting them, advising them, editing the information provided to them, and ascertaining the mood of the people and the magnitude of the issue. Being in the bubble removes the president from meaningful exposure to the panoply of issues and forces them into a loop of “confirmation bias” with what they hear from their most trusted advisors. It is this variable that didn’t serve Johnson (or, for that matter, many other presidents) very well.
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives:
A prime example of a presidential u-turn is how quickly president Biden removed US forces from Afghanistan. Unlike LBJ, Biden recognized that, like Viet Nam, the war in Afghanistan was unwinable and that it was folly to keep losing American lives fighting an indigenous guerrilla movement. He took the heat for what he knew was right.