Lyndon Baines Johnson dropped a bombshell into U.S. politics in 1968 by declaring he would not run for re-election. After all, he had been elected with a 61 percent majority in 1964 following the assassination of John F. Kennedy and had achieved a spectacular list of legislative victories in that first term. Why not savor his accomplishments and strive for more?
The conventional wisdom was that he stepped aside because the Vietnam War had become more and more unpopular. He faced almost certain defeat, it was said.
But Mark Updegrove had a different take for his audience at the Dole Institute of Politics Monday night.
Updegrove is the director of the LBJ Library and Museum and published a book on Johnson’s career and presidency this year. His presentation was the last of three examining presidencies that had been marred by outside events, such as Watergate and Vietnam.
Updegrove had access to the huge number of recorded telephone conversations between President Johnson and other decision-makers and to reams of his letters and other personal papers. He used those to present the story of LBJ as told through a chorus of voices.
“Everyone who knew the president knew a different man,” he said. “He was a man of many moods, many attitudes, many separate and sometimes conflicting goals: So the people with whom he dealt saw different Johnsons and the best way to understand him is to let a chorus of voices all speak so that those different personalities can meld into the many-faceted man that he was,” Updegrove said.
“The decision not to seek a second term was made much earlier than the announcement came. At least part of the reason was that he felt certain he would die early, just as his father and grandfather had done. He had had a near-fatal heart attack in 1955. He knew he had a flawed heart and he didn’t want to face the nation with a chief executive who couldn’t function fully — or couldn’t function at all,” Updegrove said.
The scholar spent much of his lecture reminding his listeners the legislation Johnson was able to push through Congress changed the face of America’s society and its politics.
The civil rights bill and the voting rights act gave African Americans full citizenship for the first time. He was able to get them passed because he, as a Texan, was from the segregated south himself and because the mandate he won in 1964 gave him large license. But, Updegrove said, he was warned by Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, that if he did push that nation-changing legislation through, it would drive the deep south into the hands of the Republican Party. A prediction that proved true.
Another Great Society triumph he achieved was the creation of Medicare, which brought quality health care within the reach of the third of America’s elderly who lived in poverty.
Updegrove recalled that Johnson invited the American Medical Association, which had been the most vocal opponent of Medicare in the country, to a conference and asked the AMA if it would be willing to send U.S. physicians to Vietnam to treat the sick and injured there and was told, certainly.
Johnson then proceeded to tell the American people the AMA was willing to send doctors to treat the nation’s former enemies in a far off land without pay, but objected to a program to provide care to elderly Americans.
That sneaky tactic was a game-changer.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
N.B. The Updegrove lecture was open to the public without charge. The Dole Institute is beside the Lied Center at KU and presents a steady stream of lectures and guided discussions on political subjects. It makes an important contribution to the understanding of our nation’s politics, past and present. I heartily recommend its offerings.
