Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973)
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream is a monumental work that captures this American president at his best and worst. From a childhood in Texas while at home, and at school Johnson was deeply influenced by his mother Rebekah. The author went at length to portray this aspect of his life by showing how he longed to please a mother who was rather demanding. But Johnson was able to eventually shift his loyalties to Sam, his father, who was a political figure in Texas.
At San Marcos College Johnson made his mark by manipulating the system where he was a student. Soon, he was working closely with the college’s president that orchestrated changes in student government. On graduation he endeavored to follow in his father’s footsteps, and went to Washington DC as an office manager to congressman Richard Kleberg. There, he mastered the intricacies of congressional life by learning the ropes.
Having been able to attract the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, he was appointed to the post of NYA programs, and returned to Texas where he worked. There he was able to cultivate a political base. Eventually, Johnson ran for congress in the 10th district. With that success he returned to Washington DC as a congressman, and was able to further master the workings of the congressional system. Having been in congress for a number of years he brought results to his constituents with the implementation of electricity and water systems.
But congress was only a stepping stone. Johnson was successful in a run for the senate in his second attempt in Texas. In Washington DC as a senator, he once again made his way through committees to become minority leader. Later, he was the majority leader of the Democratic party. Johnson was a master in this post with the amount of legislation that was passed. His success didn’t end in the senate. But eventually he became Vice-President to John F. Kennedy and was less effective. In this role he often thought he was being sidelined in the Kennedy administration.
With the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States. He did a remarkable job of calming the fears of a distraught nation during these troubling times. Quickly, he moved to pass legislation that was pending in the Kennedy administration. One of his remarkable achievements was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was soon followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that enfranchised Black Americans. Months after Johnson won a landslide election against Barry Goldwater, he ushered in legislation for his programs on the Great Society. These addressed poverty, education, social security, welfare, transportation etc.

Yet, these successes were not to last. Johnson became bogged down with the Vietnam war. He was unable to function effectively with the country’s foreign policy initiatives. Often, he was given conflicting advice from his advisors on the war. He couldn’t face the fact that America was doing badly in propping up South Vietnam against North Vietnam. Johnson ordered more bombings which were not the solution. He was lying to the public concerning how the war was going. War budgets were hidden from them. With the Tet offensive, the coming of new elections, inflation, losses to the Great Society programs, Johnson broadcast to the nation that he won’t seek election as President of the United States. He retired to his ranch in Texas where he died on January 23, 1973 of a heart attack. ( )

I would give the first few chapters five stars plus. The story of LBJ's childhood, school years, years as a teacher and his work in the National Youth Administration, his courtship and marriage to Lady Bird and his time as a congressional aide were absolutely fascinating. LBJ was a born political force and so incredibly smart and intuitive in reading people. The chapters on his time in the senate, as vice president and his early years as president were equally fascinating. His thought process on the Great Society reforms was mind-blowing at times. He was a very complicated man. But the chapters on Vietnam and the end of his presidency were just downright depressing. He lost his way with that war and his justifications became more and more divorced from reality. He went from being a heroic (yet very flawed) figure to being pitiful, paranoid and unable to accept any criticism. It was very sad. I do appreciate that Kearns Goodwin did not equivocate when it came to LBJ's flaws. You can tell that she very much admired him, but she never apologized for his shortcomings and often did a beautiful job of speculating as to his motives and motivations. Very interesting for anyone wanting to know more about LBJ. ( )

Former US President Lyndon Johnson is one of the more difficult to understand presidents. He reached the heights of politics through an assassination. He changed America permanently through the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-5. Pragmatically, he attempted to build a nation based on equal opportunity through the Great Society. He had an unparalleled genius for administrative leadership in the Senate and Oval Office. Yet he led the nation down a horrific course in Vietnam and seemed to disregard basic facts and popular sentiment – to his and the nation’s detriment.

This book put Kearns Goodwin on the map as an articulate biographer and won her a Pulitzer Prize. Readers are often struck by the psychoanalytic parts of this book. Much of that stems from her unfettered access to Johnson after his presidency. She wanted to understand the man, not just the historical leader, and the main lens she had to offer was an understanding of his childhood. Whether or not the reader appreciates this is out of her control. The veracity of this understanding of LBJ seems to have stood the test of time.

Now a national gem, Kearns Goodwin is at her best in this book when describing how Johnson handled the civil rights of African Americans. She does not portray him as a white savior but as someone reasonably reacting to the events of his time. She also explains the backstory to the escalation in Vietnam. The events of Vietnam take a step to the rear as she explains how this tragedy unfolded in this great man’s mind. She clearly respects Johnson yet struggles openly to understand his tragic flaws.

Although written 40-50 years before this review, this book maintains much relevance to American readers. As the baby-boom generation ages, its psychological deficits – moored in no small part in the experiences of Vietnam – continue to be displayed on newspapers’ front pages. These features were defined with the events of the JFK assassination, the presidency of Johnson, and the subsequent presidency of Nixon. Unfortunately, America still seems mired in the shortcomings of this era, now displayed in ideological partisanship. Perhaps a better understanding through Kearns Goodwin’s original epic might serve us well. ( )

An exhaustive review of Lyndon Johnson. More than that it was a text on political science with examples from the 1930's and emphasis to about 1970. Doris Kearns Goodwin is very intelligent, very informed and has studied a great deal in great detail. The book is a masterful example of history and the study of government being melded to explain and to teach. I would recommend anyone considering public service to read this book, especially the writer's note at the end. It was first written in 1976 but I wonder if anyone could convince current leaders to read it? They should. The concepts covered are astonishingly relevant to today's politics.

The author/scholar does not shade the facts or insights about the man. It was a very thorough academic exercise which LBJ probably would have criticized as overly intellectual. I was quite young during the events recorded in the book and am grateful for such an insightful and balanced bit of history. ( )

Summary: A biography of the 36th president exploring his ambitions, political skills, and vision, shaped by his family and upbringing, and marred by Vietnam, written from the unique perspective of a White House Fellowship and post-presidential interviews.

This month, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, will hit the bookstores. The book explores lessons learned from her biographies of four presidents, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. The book that began her study of presidential leadership was her biography of Lyndon Johnson, first published in 1976. In a Goodreads interview about her new book, she describes how her personal encounter with Lyndon Johnson led to her career as a writer and historian:

"I became a historian first, and then a writer. In graduate school, I was working on my thesis on Supreme Court history when I was selected to join the White House Fellows, one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service. At the White House celebration of the newly chosen Fellows, President Johnson asked me to dance—not that peculiar, as there were only a few women in the program. He told me he wanted me to be assigned directly to him, but it was not to be that simple.

For like many young people, I had been active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and had co-authored an article that called for the removal of LBJ, published in the New Republic several days after the White House dance. Despite this, LBJ said: “Bring her down here for a year, and if I can’t win her over, no one can.” I worked with LBJ in the White House and later assisted him in the writing of his memoirs. I will forever be grateful to him because there’s no question that my experience working for him shaped my desire to become a presidential historian."

That experience of working personally for and with Johnson, both in the White House, and later, on his ranch, gave her unique access into Johnson's self-conception of his life, his House and Senate experience, and his exercise of presidential leadership. Goodwin renders a story of a young man torn between the high hopes and expectations of his mother, and the much easier and more personable style of his father. He hated formal speaking but was the consummate student of people who knew how to make deals and get things done. From his cultivation of a relationship with a university president, a congressional aide who rapidly makes others beholden followers, several terms in the House, a failed, and then successful Senate bid and his rapid rise to Senate Majority Leader, we see someone who studied those around him, learned how to accrue power to himself by bestowing benefits to his followers, receiving their support, if not love, in return.

Presidential ambitions required a different set of skills that Kennedy had and Johnson lacked. Failing his bid in 1960 for the presidency, he accepts the role of Vice President, thinking he could use the methods that worked so well throughout his life, only to find, as have so many, that the office of Vice President has great status, and no power, or potential for such, unless the President dies. Thrust into the presidency by Kennedy's death, he uses his Senate leader skills to continue and realize Kennedy's vision, articulated by Johnson as the Great Society. In his first year, and the year after his landslide election, he enacts landmark Civil Rights legislation (as a President from the South) and social legislation including Medicare. Foreign affairs, never a strong suit, struck in the form of Vietnam, a war he could neither win nor walk away from. Goodwin explores why and describes his efforts to sustain his social programs while escalating the war, and the disastrous consequences to his social agenda, and to the economy until the epiphany of the Tet offensive and the McCarthy and Kennedy candidacies made it plain that he could not win in 1968.

Goodwin spent extensive time with Johnson in his last years, and narrates his inability to write his memoirs, his conversations about his presidency, and Vietnam, and his deep frustration from trying to bestow so much of benefit on the country, only to be reviled by the demonstrators and so many others (Goodwin among them). A combination of meticulous research and up close and personal contact helps us understand the tremendous force of personality that made Johnson great, and the flaws that cast a shadow on what, otherwise, might have been a great presidency. I tend to approach psychological portraits with some skepticism, but her accounts of Johnson in his own words, his actions and her rendering of his character has an internal consistency that offers deep insight into a man for whom I had little respect growing up. Now I find myself longing for the political mastery and vision he exhibited at his best leading the enactment of the Civil Rights legislation which was perhaps his proudest legacy.

Doris Kearns Goodwin has gone on to give us memorable portraits of Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and even the Brooklyn Dodgers of her youth. This was her debut effort and reveals the promise of all that would come from her pen over the last forty years. Perhaps the publication of Leadership in Turbulent Times might encourage some to go back and read the work that led to her distinguished career as a presidential scholar. ( )