Lyndon Johnson on Principles & Values

Most important thing is what a man is trying not to say

1962: Worried whether he would be retained on 1964 ticket

During the 3 years since Kennedy had turned aside Johnson's attempt to maneuver him into sending a portion of presidential power, Johnson had become among Kennedy's White House aides the object of dislike and distrust, and of derision.

Father served 6 terms in Texas Senate but died penniless

All that changed when, in years of drought, in September 1922, when Lyndon was 14, Sam had to sell the ranch for whatever he could get--which wasn't nearly enough to cover his debts. The Johnsons moved back to their house in Johnson City, but they were able to keep it only because Sam's brothers periodically made payments.

He didn't run for reelection, and he probably wouldn't have won anyway. A potential opponent coined a saying: "Sam Johnson is a mighty smart man. But he's got no sense." He was to die--in 1937--as a penniless bus inspector. The Johnsons were, for the rest of Lyndon's boyhood, the laughingstocks of Johnson City.

OpEd: Won 1948 election by despotic control of voting

Parr could produce a lot of votes for him; he had, in fact, done so in 1948, when, late on election night, with Johnson still far behind, the counties the Duke controlled personally--and other counties controlled by the Duke's satraps--suddenly produced 20,000 new votes for Johnson; the vote in Duval was 4,195 for Johnson, 38 for [his opponent]: a margin of more than 100 to 1. And, 6 days later, with all the late returns supposedly counted and Johnson still behind by a few votes, a Parr-controlled precinct suddenly announced that its returns had somehow not been counted, and the 200 new votes for Johnson from this precinct--votes cast by people who had written their names in the same ink, in the same handwriting, and who had voted in alphabetical order--gave Johnson the lead by 87 votes.

JFK said "Let us begin"; I say "let us continue"

He defined the dreams that Kennedy had "vitalized by his drive and by his dedication"--"The dream of conquering space--the dream of a Peace Corps--the dream of education for all of our children." He would carry on the fight for those dreams, he said: "now those ideas and the ideals must and will be translated into effective action."

"In 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished 'in the 1st 1000 days. But,' he said, 'let us begin.' Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue. This is our challenge," Johnson said, "not to hesitate, not to pause, not to turn about and linger over this evil moment, but to continue on our course so that we may fulfill the destiny that history has set for us."

1960 JFK slogan: "Let us begin"; 1964 LBJ: "Let us continue"

If it seemed like voting against LBJ would be a vote against John F. Kennedy, Johnson apparently was fine with that. The Republicans, in effect, were battling two presidents at once: one martyred and one sitting. That meant the GOP needed to run a pitch-perfect campaign. What we got was quite the opposite.

1987: Lady Bird admitted, "My husband loved women"

At one point, Lady Bird caught him having sex on a sofa in the Oval Office with one of his secretaries. Johnson became furious at the Secret Service for not warning him. After the incident, which occurred just months after he took office, Johnson ordered the Secret Service to install a buzzer system so that agents stationed in the residence part of the White House could warn him when his wife was approaching. A former Secret Service agent says, "if we saw Lady Bird heading for the elevator or stairs, we were to ring the buzzer."

Asked in a 1987 TV interview about her husband's rumored infidelities, Lady Bird Johnson said, "You have to understand, my husband loved people. All people. And half the people in the world were women."

OpEd: Civil rights alliance made transformational presidency

All of the great presidents used their leadership first to transform the public understanding of national challenges and then to break through impasses made up of congressional blockage, interest-group power, voter cynicism or passivity, and conventional wisdom. In different ways, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, & Johnson found allies, respectively, in the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement. Each president grew immensely if office. Each changed the national mood, then the direction of national policy.

1960: Planned on nomination at a brokered convention

Johnson could get together with the delegates and woo them in the same tried-and-true manner he used on senators before a key vote. He'd work the states one at a time, using his allies from the Hill as local kingmakers. When the time came to pick a presidential nominee, the convention would choose a candidate who could actually win in November--not a Catholic, not a young backbencher who had never done much of anything where it counted: on Capitol Hill.

In West Virginia, Kennedy rewrote the game plan for Johnson and all future presidential campaigns. Henceforth, the battle of strength and tactic would be in the primaries, not in Capitol offices.

Persuasion over lunch with press, bankers, or black leaders

About 4 PM each day, the president would go to his bedroom, put on his pajamas, and climb into bed where he stayed for an hour. I cannot certify that he slept or even dozed. All I can verify is that he was in his bedroom.

Usually by 5 PM, the second half of the president's day began. The president would be receiving in his office. There would be off-the-record appointments of congressional leaders or individual congressman and senators, cabinet officials, and sprinkled among these would be on-the-record meetings with whomever the president chose to put on display.

To persuade Congress, persuade their constituencies

Therefore, the classic Johnson approach was to create a mood & feeling within the legislator that the best interests of the nation and his district (or state) would be served if a particular law was passed.

This was to be the augury of the Johnson style of Congress-treating and Congress-handling. His was the personal approach. Man to man. Phone to ear. Come let us reason together. This is Lyndon Johnson talking. Now, we don't have to be at each other's throat, do we? Your country needs your help and so do I. So it went.

Programs, partnerships, priorities, prosperity, and peace

1. Programs: We must see to it that these new programs that we have passed work effectively and are administered in the best possible way.
2. Partnership--to create an effective partnership at all levels of government, beginning between the executive and the Congress.
3. Priorities: to move ahead on the priorities that we have established within the resources that are available. Let us resolve, now, to do all that we can, with what we have--knowing that it is far, far more than we have ever done before, and far, far less than our problems will ultimately require.
4. Prosperity: to keep our economy moving ahead, moving ahead steadily and safely.
5. Peace: I come now finally to Southeast Asia-and to Vietnam in particular. We are in Vietnam because we are committed by the SEATO Treaty to "act to meet the common danger" of aggression.

We can fight in Vietnam while also building a Great Society

We will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This Nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home.

I recommend that [Congress] provides the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that Congress enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America.

1960 ideological balance: Voted opposite JFK 264 times

The degree of ideological balance in the 1960 Democratic ticket was suggested by the fact that, as Vice President Nixon later pointed out, the two men had "flatly disagreed 264 times on roll call votes in the Congress. They have disagreed on farm policy, disagreed on taxes, disagreed on civil rights, disagreed on foreign aid, disagreed on foreign policy, disagreed on defense. They have disagreed on labor issues, disagreed on public works, disagreed on housing, disagreed on Tidelands oil. Name it, and they have disagreed on it. "

Despite their differences--or perhaps because of them--the Kennedy-Johnson ticket struck some observers as a masterful coup.

1941: Lost in Senate run; 1960: lost in presidential run

He made the Senate peculiarly his own institution and became the youngest, and at the same time the most effective, floor leader any political party ever had in that body. At the peak of his influence in the Senate, he was struck down by a heart attack that for a time threatened to take him out of politics forever. But he fought back to complete recovery.

In 1960 he hopefully went after the Democratic nomination for President, but Kennedy won the nomination on the 1st ballot. Where that left Johnson no one could tell--for a few hours. Then it was announced that he had accepted the nominee's plea to join him on the ticket as candidate for Vice President.

Long line of elected officials on both sides of family

People reject extremism, either on the right or the left

As a Democrat in a position of leadership, he was convinced the greatest service he could render his party was to guide it into and along the path of moderation. He believed the party had made great strides in regaining much of the respect it had lost because of accusations that it was irresponsible. He wanted to hold these gains and add to them.

"Eventually," he said, "the people will reject any political organization that is ruled by the extremists, either the right or the left. If I can leave any imprint on the Democratic Party, I want it to have the effect of making ours a moderate party, not a party of extremes." He succeeded in making the issue of the 1954 campaign the "politics of responsibility" record of the Democrats in Congress.

1954: Led Senate with "unity-moderation-cooperation"

"Johnson has distinguished himself as a conscientious composer of differences not only between a Democratic Congress and a Republican Executive but also among factions of Democrats. His leadership has been notable for the smoothness of its functioning, the absence of caviling and obstructionist tactics and the harmony which has been induced within his own traditionally wide-split party."

One of the Washington newspaper writers headed a column, "Everybody Loves Lyndon." That seemed to sum up the situation fairly enough.

Continue JFK's plans, not in sorrow, but because it's right

I am a free man, an American, a Senator, and then a Democrat

I am also a liberal, a conservative, a Texan, a taxpayer, a rancher, a businessman, a consumer, a parent, a voter--and I am all these things in no fixed order.

I bridle at the very casualness with which we have come to ask each other, "What is your political philosophy?" I resent the question most often not because I suspect it of guile and cunning, but for its innocence, the innocence that confuses dogma with philosophy and presumes that the answer can be given in a word or two. Our political philosophies, I have found, are the sum of our life's experience. God made no man so simple or his life so sterile that such experience can be summarized in an adjective.

It is part of my philosophy to regard individuality of political philosophy as a cornerstone of American freedom and, more specifically, as a right expressly implied in our nation's basic law and indispensable to the proper functioning of our system.