Lyndon's Reign as
President
A Review of
Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President
by
Robert Dallek
Author Biography
Robert Dallek was born on May 16,1934, and
currently lives in Washington D.C.. Dallek earned a Ph.D.
and is known as an American Historian. He taught at UCLA and
is currently the professor of History at the University of
Boston. Furthermore, he has written many books such as
Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times,
1908-1960, and Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His
Times, 1961-1973.
The rags-to-riches story of Lyndon B.
Johnson was extraordinarily well-written by Robert Dallek,
who is the author of the historical work, Lyndon B.
Johnson: Portrait of a President. This book was the
compressed version of the two volumes: "Lone Star Rising"
(published in 1991), and "Flawed Giant" (published in 1998).
Also, this book was made for students because he condensed
1,200 pages of text from the 2 volumes into a 377-page book,
which would be easier for this audience to read. Moreover,
this book gave a realistic, interesting, and balanced
portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.
The beginning of this book from chapters one to three
focused on Lyndon Johnson’s childhood and the beginnings of
his political career. He was born on August 27, 1908, in
Texas. He was influenced into the ambition of governing
because his father Sam Earl Johnson Jr. was in the House of
Representatives. At times when people visited his dad for
political advice, LBJ would “…hide into the bedroom next to
the porch, listening through an open window to what was
being said”.1 Later, his dad took LBJ to the
legislature where he would stand in the gallery watching
everything. However, LBJ’s adolescent years were very
rebellious. In high school, for example, LBJ would take
everything as a joke, but would still score highly because
he was quicker then the other kids. In May 1924, LBJ
graduated from the 11th grade, which was the final grade at
Johnson High School, when he was only 15 years old. After
high school, LBJ went to Southwestern Texas State Teacher’s
College (S.W.T.S.T.C.) in San Marcos on his parents’
demands, but managed to get kicked out. LBJ retried
S.W.T.S.T.C. in 1927, at his mother’s wishes. LBJ’s focus
became earning a teacher’s certificate. In college, LBJ was
described as a paradox because he was irritating when he
bragged about his family, but successively did all his work
and wanted power so he could help the poor and the minority.
In 1928, LBJ left S.W.T.S.T.C. because of financial problems
and started working in Cotulla, Texas for $93.50 a month. He
was paid a high salary because the conditions he taught in
were terrible. The students were poor and the areas they
lived in were far worse than anything LBJ had ever
experienced. After the depression in 1931, LBJ agreed to
become an appointed secretary for congressman Richard
Keleberg. Now, LBJ’s starting salary became $3, 900 and
Keleberg often left his entire work to LBJ, who would have
no clue on how to manage things. LBJ favored Franklin D.
Roosevelt, so he convinced Keleberg not to vote against New
Deal Programs. In 1934, LBJ met Claudia Alta Taylor, who he
fell in love with and married. “Only 24-hours after they met
he asked her to marry him”.2 Another success for
LBJ was when he campaigned against eight opponents for a
seat in the House of Representatives and won because he was
the only one who supported the president, FDR. Later,
however, he wanted to run for Senate, so, in 1941, he
organized an illegal campaign over $25,000 that resulted in
a loss to O’Daniel. A happier event occurred three years
later in March of 1944 when LBJ had his first child, a
girl. In 1945, however, FDR, the one person LBJ supported
and believed in the most, died of a brain hemorrhage. A few
years after the death of FDR, LBJ won the election for
senator against Coke Stevenson in 1948. When LBJ finally
became a senator in 1949, he was 40 years old. On January 2,
1953, LBJ got nominated as Minority Leader and later became
the Majority Leader. As a senator, LBJ was very successful
in driving major bills, such as wages and housing laws. Yet,
a couple of years later in 1955, LBJ’s health problems began
with a heart attack and a coronary occlusion on July 4. In
politics though, LBJ was a supporter of the civil rights
bill of 1956 and co-sponsored NASA with Style Bridges.
However, chapters four to seven demonstrated how LBJ wanted
a higher position in politics. So in the presidential
election of 1960, LBJ ran for the nomination for the
President of the United States, but John F. Kennedy received
it instead. When JFK got nominated, he wanted LBJ to run as
his vice president. On July 14, LBJ received the nomination
for vice president. In 1960, JFK became president and LBJ
vice president. Although he had won vice, LBJ wasn’t happy
and said, “Every time I came into John Kennedy’s presence, I
felt like a goddamn raven hovering over his
shoulder."3 This showed the inability of a vice
president to make any decisions or commands that a president
would be able to make. Nevertheless, since LBJ knew every
reporter in Washington, JFK wanted to keep him happy so he
let him keep his Majority Leader’s office. Furthermore, JFK
continued to attempt to make LBJ happy, by telling him that
he would represent the U.S. abroad and sending him on a
world tour. As ambassador LBJ visited all of Asia and
Africa. Later in the Committee of Equal Employment
Opportunity (CEEO), LBJ had the hardest time charring it
because northern liberals would say he does too little and
southern conservatives would attack him for doing too much.
The turning point of Johnson’s vice presidential career came
when JFK was assassinated in 1963 and hence, LBJ became the
new president. LBJ felt a great deal of grief because he had
lost a great rival. Also, LBJ’s objectives as president were
to keep the country united and finish JFK’s liberal agenda.
Thus, LBJ began his legislation with the tax cut and “War on
Poverty”. Furthermore, LBJ started outlining his “Great
Society” programs. However, foreign affairs took up most of
the president’s time. One foreign affair issue was Vietnam.
LBJ wanted to continue JFK’s mission in Vietnam, but he
wanted to put the issue on hold until the November
elections. On August 2, the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin
was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, so the
aircraft that supported the Maddox fired back. LBJ justified
this attack as self-defense by the U.S. and managed to
persuade congress with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolutions to
send troops to Vietnam. On the other hand, Barry Morris
Goldwater became LBJ’s opponent in the 1964 elections. Also,
Hubert Humphrey became the nominee for vice president on
LBJ’s side. LBJ’s tactics for winning the election were to
bash Goldwater for being an extremist. This strategy worked
magnificently because LBJ won the election. After he won,
LBJ gave federal aid to education, started Medicare for U.S.
citizens over 65 years old, and, on May 26, got the voting
rights bill passed in the civil rights category, but it
wasn’t successful because a riot in Watts, Los Angles
occurred over that issue and killed 34 people.
Furthermore, Lyndon Johnson’s problems continued to escalade
from chapters eight to eleven. In the Vietnam issue, LBJ
made an aggressive policy. When an American base at Peleiku
was attacked and eight U.S. advisors were killed, LBJ agreed
to an air strike. His bombing campaign was called “Rolling
Thunder."4 In the end of February, LBJ sent
marines to guard the American Air Bases in Danang, but
didn’t put them in combat. However, Ho Chi Minh had his
belief that the war would end if U.S. troops would withdraw
from South Vietnam and stop attacking North Vietnam. LBJ
tried to secretly change the positions of the troops in
Vietnam from defensive to offensive, but word got out.
Therefore, LBJ had no choice but to expand the Vietnam War
so that he could preserve South Vietnam from a communist
take over. Along with LBJ’s struggle with Vietnam was his
struggle with the “Great Society”. For this program LBJ got
bills passed that reduced hazards. However, his “War on
Poverty” programs got diminished and a civil rights bill for
equal housing and jury selection failed. Aside from the
unsuccessful programs, LBJ acknowledged that the Vietnam War
was a civil war against North and South Vietnam, therefore,
he wanted to make a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam
rather than earn a military victory. Although the U.S. was
miserably failing, LBJ never gave up. This war with Vietnam
destroyed any possibility for reform. In addition, the
highlight of LBJ’s political reform was the appointment of
Thurgood Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice. He appointed
the colored Justice, Marshall, because he was trying to
continue the fight for civil rights.
Towards the end from chapters twelve to fifteen, the
deadlock in LBJ’s political career gets displayed. Moreover,
LBJ simply lost hope for saving Vietnam and became desperate
for a proposal. The fact that everyone such as senators,
academics, business and religious leaders who opposed LBJ
started to antagonize him. To make matters worse, on January
31, which was the first day of the Vietnamese New Year,
“Tet”, the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation
Front launched the “Tet Offensive”, where the South
Vietnamese and the U.S. embassy were attacked. However,
after a month of fighting, U.S. troops killed 37,000
enemies, causing a major defeat on the communists. On the
other hand, for the civil rights issue, when Martin Luther
King Jr. got assassinated, the Open Housing Bill finally got
passed. After that, LBJ decided to retire instead of running
for the next election. Although he retired, he wrote
memoirs, set up a presidential library in Austin,
established LBJ School of Public Affairs at University of
Texas, and finally put his ranch and business affairs in
order. He remained out of politics, and, in 1969, Nixon got
elected as president. Although LBJ had lived an
extraordinary life filled with its upsides and downsides, he
continued to have heart problems. In the end, LBJ died of a
second heart attack.
Robert Dallek’s thesis in this book was to present the
audience with a truly balanced biography of Johnson’s life.
Also, he has placed Johnson in the best light possible. For
example, in the 1948 senate campaign, Johnson steals the
victory from Governor Coke Stephenson. Dallek displays this
event in his book by presenting the fact that in Texas
elections, everyone steals votes. This, therefore, balances
the view of the reader because the reader can now assume
that LBJ was dishonest, but so were his competitors. Also
the author makes the assumptions that since the last four
out of five presidents “…Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and two
Bushes- have been from Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas speaks
to the renewed political power of the south."5
Although this is true, all of these presidents had their
success and their failures. Therefore, according to Dallek’s
statement above, it can be seen that the south is gaining
its political strengths back.
Nevertheless, the first volume that was written about LBJ
was published 20 years after LBJ had left office, so there
were disagreements over LBJ’s presidency at that time. Also,
since this book was published by 2004, the consequences of
the September 11, 2001 terror attack may have changed the
author’s mind into believing that it’s always some foreign
issue that ruins the presidency. For example, the Vietnam
War ruined Johnson, and the Iraq War of 2003 ruined
President George W. Bush.
In the Boston Globe newspaper, Ken Bode wrote an article
describing how Dallek’s book, Lyndon B. Johnson: The
Portrait of a President shows how Johnson’s failure with
Vietnam has parallels with President Bush’s war in Iraq.
Also, Bode believes that the portrait of LBJ presented by
Dallek was “larger then normal in every aspect of life,
ambition, shrewdness, great accomplishments, crudity,
duplicity and ultimately failure."6 However, Josh
Getlin from the Los Angles Times offered to speculate the
differences between Robert Caro and Robert Dallek. Caro
seemed to bash Lyndon in his books and wrote about the time
period before LBJ became president. However, Dallek
presented not only the negatives, but also the positives of
LBJ, producing the balanced “portrait of a president”. Also,
Getlin claims that “…Dallek- unlike Caro-points out that LBJ
also worked feverishly to mobilize the war effort at
home."7 Also, Getlin assumed that “Perspective is
everything to the UCLA professor."8 This comment
was used to describe how Dallek presented the 1948 Senate
election where LBJ stole the senate seat from Governor Coke
Stephens because the Senate seat had been stolen from LBJ in
1941.
After the reader has completely read this book, the reader
has a clear view of how politics work. A strength of this
book would be that it shows a clear indication of how LBJ
became the president and was easy to read and comprehend.
Another strength of this book would be how it showed LBJ’s
momentum building up for politics from his childhood to his
retirement. On the other hand, a weakness of this book is
when, towards the end, it seems as though while the main
focus was the Vietnam War, some other foreign issues were
just thrown in there and it was hard to distinguish their
significance. Also, another weakness of this book was that
it seemed a bit conservative and didn’t really go into the
personal life of the president. This book could have become
more interesting if it had gone into the confidential or
personal life of the president. It was well written, but
really missing some powerful adjectives such as antagonizing
instead of painful.
According to Dallek, this period marked a watershed in
American political and economical history. Even the reader
could figure out that the political watershed was the
Vietnam War, since the Vietnamese wouldn’t cooperate by
forming a proposal that they would stick to. LBJ struggled
with the decision to send troops into Vietnam, but after
South Vietnam got attacked, the U.S. had to intervene to
save that part of Vietnam from getting taken over by
communists. This became a watershed because the U.S. ended
up losing many troops in Vietnam and the U.S. lost South
Vietnam to Communism. Also, this was the reason for the
watershed in economy because a lot of money was put into the
“Rolling Thunder” campaign and financing the war in Vietnam,
causing the LBJ administration to almost go broke. The
Vietnam War caused the values practiced to change a little,
because the citizens demanded that their president be more
honest, and the press had developed new ways to exploit
politics. The ideas from Johnson’s presidency have not
changed and most citizens still believe that war destroys
reforms.
The impact that this era has had on America today is that
the president’s every move now is published in newspapers,
or shown on television, because when Lyndon B. Johnson was
president, he had kept the Vietnam War a secret from the
American public and congress, so that congress wouldn’t be
able to stop the war effort. Moreover, people are further
aware now of AIDS and birth control than they were in the
1960s and early 1970s. Also, the impact of a new wave of
music that occurred in the early 1960s called “Rock and
Roll” caused an inflammation of the rates of people using
drugs, but also the style of clothing and melody from that
period has influenced many of the current bands today to
play and dress just like the “Rock and Rollers” of the 1960s.
Therefore, this book has been a very comprehendible
elaboration of Lyndon Johnson ‘s life and has created the
equal balance for the portrait of his Presidency. Also,
Robert Dallek has proven himself as an extraordinary
historian by presenting factual and chronological, rather
than entertaining and random, information about Johnson’s
life. Lyndon Johnson was a boy with immense dreams, who, as
he grew up, discovered that dreams do come true, but with a
price. LBJ’s price to pay was the continuation of JFK’s
Vietnam affair. Since he personally decided to continue the
Vietnam foreign affair, he ruined the presidential term and
administration, which also lead to the destruction of the
Great Society Programs and the loss of South Vietnam to
Communism.
review by Sahar Masood
- Dallek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a
President. 198 Madison Avenue: Oxford University Press,
Inc., 2004, 6.
- Dallek, Robert 24.
- Dallek, Robert 122.
- Dallek, Robert 209.
- Dallek, Robert X (preface).
- Bode, Ken “‘Flawed Giant’ Lyndon Johnson Did Everything-
succeed, scheme, cajole, and fail-On the Grand Scale.”
Boston Globe 25 Jan 2004: 2.
- Getlin, Josh “ 2 Biographies, 2 Vastly different pictures
of L.B.J. authors and historical writers against 1 another.”
Los Angles Times 15 Jul 1991: 5.
- Getlin, Josh 5.
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