Born in 1908, LBJ was a Democrat from Texas. He was a U.S. Representative from 1937 to 1949 and Senator from 1949 to 1961. In 1961, he was JFK’s Vice-President and became President when Kennedy was assassinated.
Johnson had worked his way through school and then became a teacher in 1930. While he was a teacher, Johnson was politically active — working on a Congressional campaign and becoming a legislative secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg. There were some powerful Texan politicians who Johnson got to know — including Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn and Vice-President John Nance Garner.
During World War II, Johnson was originally in the Naval Reserve but was called to active duty after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite requesting active duty, he was sent to inspect domestic shipyard facilities. However, in 1942, Roosevelt assigned Johnson — a trusted political aide — as part of a survey team to provide information to Roosevelt in the Southwest Pacific. Roosevelt wanted more direct information than was flowing through MacArthur. Johnson lobbied for more resources directed to this theater of the war, calling the conditions deplorable. After coming under fire during observation of a bombing mission, Johnson was awarded the Silver Star.
In 1948, Johnson ran for and won a Texas seat. The Democratic nomination was controversial. He ran in a three way race. A former governor, Coke Stevenson, won the initial vote, but lacked a majority. Johnson campaigned hard and won the runoff by 87 votes out of nearly 1 million cast. There were allegations of voter fraud involving Johnson’s campaign manager, future governor John Connally. Johnson’s skill at navigating the Senate was legendary. From the outset, he was able to court older, influential Senators. He proved adept at committee work and managing the press. In 1953, he became the youngest majority leader the Senate had seen. He worked well with Representative Rayburn and President Eisenhower in getting Eisenhower’s agenda passed.
He was a phenomenal gather of information about where his colleagues stood, their hopes, their fears, their prejudices, and their philosophies. He was known for giving those he would persuade, “the Treatment,” described as follows:
The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the Johnson Ranch swimming pool, in one of Johnson’s offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself—wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.
Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint, and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.
In 1960, Johnson sought the Democratic nomination but lost to Kennedy. Accounts differ as to how he became the vice presidential nominee. However, generally speaking, even though Johnson was not well liked by the liberal wing of the party or members of labor, but he was seen as necessary or at least desirable for bringing votes from the South in what was anticipated to be a close general election against Richard Nixon.
The election was close, but Kennedy & Johnson got the victory. Johnson sought to be an active Vice President. The folks in the Kennedy administration, particularly, Robert, didn’t much care for Johnson. However, John recognized that Johnson would be a bad enemy to have, so he tried to keep him busy and relatively happy. Among other things, he was tasked with evaluating U.S. options to catch up with the Soviets in the space race. Johnson made the recommendation that the U.S. try to reach the moon by the end of the 60s.
When Kennedy was murdered, Johnson was sworn-in very quickly — just over 2 hours after the assassination. Johnson moved quickly on his legislative agenda. In the days following the assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson made an address to Congress saying that “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long.” Some found Johnson’s haste to assume power unseemly. In passing the Civil Rights legislation, Johnson’s legislative savvy was instrumental – as was his ability to convince Republican leader Everett Dirksen to help overcome a filibuster in the Senate. It probably helped that the parties were in transition. Conservative Southerners had not switched from Democrat to Republican. There were still plenty of progressive, northern Republicans. The fact that the opposition to racial equality was not unified in one party meant that divisions within parties could be exploited to move legislation. This bill probably accelerated the transition. After passing the Civil Rights legislation, legend has it that Johnson said, “We have lost the South for a generation,” anticipating that southern whites would move away from the Democratic party due to the backlash.
Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, there were a series of “long hot summers,” where urban riots took place from 1964 through 1971, including the Watts riots in 1965 and riots in over a hundred cities in 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated. With respect to the riots, Johnson is reported to have said, “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”
Johnson also moved quickly to move on Kennedy’s tax cut initiative, negotiating a budget that was less than $100 billion, and also moved on a “War on Poverty” initiative, recruiting Sargent Shriver for the effort.
His 1964 Presidential campaign touted “The Great Society” which included elements of “urban renewal, modern transportation, clean environment, anti-poverty, healthcare reform, crime control, and educational reform.”
Johnson also dramatically increased our involvement in Vietnam. In August 1964, there were ambiguous reports concerning an attack by North Vietnamese ships on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Based on this incident, Johnson sought and obtained a resolution from Congress for the use of force in Southeast Asia. The Johnson administration relied on this resolution to rapidly escalate our military involvement in Vietnam.
In 1966-1967, there was growing disillusionment with the Johnson administration. Vietnam was not going well, and the press saw a credibility gap between what they were being told and what was actually happening. The Democratic governor of Missouri cited, “Frustration over Vietnam; too much federal spending and… taxation; no great public support for your Great Society programs; and … public disenchantment with the civil rights programs.”
The 1968 Presidential election resulted in unexpected opposition to Johnson. Initially, most Democrats did not have an appetite to challenge a sitting President from their party. Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war candidate, challenged him and did surprisingly well in the first primary — taking 42% of the vote in New Hampshire. Blood was in the water, and Robert Kennedy entered the race. Johnson lost control of the Democratic Party. There were four main factions that came to oppose one-another: labor and party bosses (Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Daley); students and intellectuals opposed to the war (Eugene McCarthy); Catholics, Hispanics, and African Americans (RFK); and segregationist white Southerners (George Wallace). In addition to losing control of the primary process, Johnson was concerned about his own health. He dropped out of the race. When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson’s support for Humphrey carried the nomination. However, the Democratic Party did not unite, and Nixon was able to win the election.
I have always seen LBJ as a true proponent of democracy and the principle of the one man, one vote.
I will relate a story about LBJ. LBJ and a campaign aide were out registering voters in the cemetery. The aide came upon an old and weathered tombstone that was difficult to read. The campaign aide said “let’s pass on this gravestone. It’s difficult to read the name.”
LBJ replied “no, that wouldn’t be right. This man has as much right to vote as anybody else in the graveyard.”