American Experience; 1964; Interview with Robert Caro, Author, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, part 2 of 4

He weighs out the speech, and that statement hasn't received. Oh, it's a triumph. It's for everybody but the South. You know, if you look at the audience in the state of the Union speech, you see over and over again, the whole Congress is applauding, except there are islands of silence. It's the Southern Senate. You know, they're all sitting in a row there as I recall. Bird of the birds of Virginia. Russell of the Russell is of Georgia. Strom Thurman, Herman Talmage. The segregationists, you know? And they are hearing this Southern President tell them that he is going to change the South's way of life, that he is going to end segregation in America. And then he doesn't compromise about it either. The people kept thinking that they'd be able to water it down. Right? The Johnson Senate. Absolutely. They think, certainly, I mean, we're sure they could do this with Kennedy. They'll get the public accommodations section taken out of the bill. That can't be segregation in hotels and restaurants, movies theaters, etc.

Johnson won't compromise. And he tells his aides why. He says, you know, public accommodations. Johnson had a long time housekeeper and cook, named Zephyr Wright, a college-educated woman, but black. And one time Lady Bird asks Zephyr to drive back to Texas and to the ranch after Congress. So I know what's going on with this. I like this story. Zephyr and her husband always drive back to the Johnson Ranch from Washington at the end of the congressional session. One time Lady Bird asks Zephyr, will they take the Johnson's door along? And Zephyr says, please don't ask me to do that. It's hard enough for a black person to drive across the South without a door. And she explains to Lady Bird and then to Lyndon Johnson how she, a college-educated person, can't even find a bathroom sometimes where she can go to the bathroom.

And Johnson, you know, he says, when I heard that tears came to my eyes, he says, I wasn't going to compromise on public accommodations. To me, public accommodations is the heart of the bill. Great. What are the press and the others see is, what is Johnson managed to do? His uncertain president is trying to maintain continuity when he first steps into the office. Now he's given the state of the Union address and what's the reaction? Well, the reaction, of course, from most of the press, from the liberal outside the South, is that it's a triumph. Someone, one congressman said, how can a Republican congressman say yes to criticize it? He said, how can you criticize the sermon on the Mount? But Johnson knows, and it's always the case with Johnson, he wants to get it passed. Now there's right at the beginning of January.

There's something that's really holding up the passage of the civil rights bill. I won't go into the details, but he's got to get the Republican leader on board. Charles Hallock, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives. Hallock is really against it. But I don't think, I think we're going to have to focus on the Senate if we focus on any of the battles, just because I can't think, I don't think we can do too. No, he gets Hallock to bring it out of committee. Well, I can tell that in a couple of sentences. I mean, this is the other side of Lyndon Johnson. He doesn't just have the ideals. He knows how to push the levers. He has Charles Hallock come into his office. He knows that Purdue University is the largest single employer in Hallock's own congressional district. Hallock wants grants for a new space laboratory that Purdue has built. Hallock leaves the office. Johnson picks up the phone and he calls the space administrator.

And he says, I want you to find things that we can give Hallock. And the space administrator, Guy James Webb, says, oh, I certainly hope we can do that. Johnson says, you don't understand. I'm not asking you to hope. If Hallock's not satisfied when he leaves your office, you'll be hearing from me again. And Hallock changes and lets the Republican members in the House let the bill go to the Senate. If it hadn't gotten to the Senate so early, I have to say, it wouldn't have mattered what happened in the Senate because there wouldn't have been time to break a filibuster. Johnson, just unbelievable. Let's break away for a second. I don't want to get away from Johnson too much, but I'd love if you have a second to give me your two cents on very gold water. Or is that something you don't want to go after? I'm not quite ready to talk about it. Anything that you don't feel like, I mean, I know you're in the midst of this and I appreciate you. I'm sort of moving roughly chronologically.

So I'm just curious, could you talk about Vietnam for a second? Sure. Why is Vietnam such a nightmare issue for the New Johnson? You know, in 1964, Vietnam is not yet a nightmare issue in 1964. Vietnam is an issue that Lyndon Johnson and his chief advisors, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, George Bundy, think can be solved if only more American force is applied. But Johnson is a politician. He has one thing in mind for Vietnam in 1964. Keep it from becoming an issue. Keep it tamped down. Don't make any strong move. Just say we're going to continue our policy. And he succeeds in doing that for the whole year. Of course, when the year is over, Vietnam is going to have to be confronted. It's not really confronted during 1964.

Johnson doesn't want it confronted. Are there subtle lines that are being slowly crossed, though, and marched the national security in Memo 288, where they begin, and then in August, obviously, we're going to come up with something. But I just think that these are these faithful steps. There's not a drama of troops waiting ashore at Deneng, which is going to come in next year. But in some fundamental way, the lines are being crossed. Yes. Yes, that's a very good question. It's a very good way of putting it. Just give me a second. But nonetheless, even though he's keeping it from becoming an issue, things are happening in Vietnam. Johnson has approved a national aid. Johnson has approved covert operations in the Gulf of Tonkin. And in August of 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which you'll have to get,

the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurs, steps are taken. Johnson wants a resolution from Congress to give him a free hand. It's relatively easy for him to get it, because people don't realize. Congress does not realize. The Senate does not realize what we're getting into. But when you look at what is coming in Vietnam, certain things that happen in 1964 set the stage for. Johnson gets this resolution passed with very few votes against it, and he's to use this resolution as a way of saying that he can take further steps in Vietnam. Senators are warning him, not money. Mike Mansfield warns Johnson what we're getting into there. But really, he doesn't see it.

I think Mansfield's lines were reaching a point of no return in Vietnam. Something like that. Mansfield's a Asia scholar. Why is de-escalation, you know, the idea of considering walking away? It's so hard for him and Johnson to contemplate. There's a fascinating series of phone calls with Russell about this, where all of the contradictions and torture uncertainty about what to do is writ large. Well, Johnson says, you know, after one of these first meetings, I'm not going to be the president who sees Vietnam go the way of China. I'm not going to be the president who loses Vietnam. You have to say that in 1964, Johnson isn't confronting Vietnam, but he also doesn't see really what's coming in Vietnam.

He thinks he can postpone it, and he thinks he can solve it. Nonetheless, things happen in 1964 that's going to make it harder to solve. Meg, can we do a tiny touch up? Andy, can you please get a kick on your glasses? A little one, so we're actually going a little bit more. What about those conversations? You know, you have to remember, Richard Russell was chairman of the Armed Services Committee for decades. Lyndon Johnson, from the time he was a freshman senator, served on the Armed Services Committee. He and Russell were so close. Johnson was Russell's protege. Russell raised him to power and said, in these conversations, you have two men who have two senators of the United States, who have been talking about America's place in the world and what American use of military force can do for decades. Yet, when you listen to those telephone calls, you really are hearing two men

who are saying, I don't know what to do in this situation. But Johnson is not going to be able to avoid having to do something. Yeah, it's great. I mean, the puzzlement, the puzzlement in what they are saying. Here is a problem. We don't know, it may be insoluble. Johnson was to say, later, that bitch of a war is killing the willmen I love, the great society. Speaking of the great society, what did Johnson see as the foundation of it? It was his vision for this grand idea. I mean, it was building on, of course, what he outlined in the State of the Union.

But now he comes up with a name for it. Yes, the great society. You know, the war on poverty, you know, people, that's a... I'm sorry, Meg, one here real quick. I don't think I'm doing this quite the way you want, you know, but I don't know. I think you are. I mean, what about the great society? Well, just in general. I mean, I think when you find a scene that you want, I just want you to be able to bring it alive. And I'm just a question for me of how much detail we can have. I understand that. I know I'm... Yeah. Because it's a fire hose of information, and one, that's the problem with doing a year. Yes. But if I can just say so and you write, but you know, if you, from my standpoint, if you say, what is the place of 64 in history?

One of the real major things is that Congress passes for the first time in a quarter of a century. Legislation, social welfare legislation, social justice legislation, civil rights, poverty. It is the two main battlegrounds. One of the streets of the South that you have all this footage on, you know, there's something you have no footage on, so maybe you can't, you know, do anything with it. But it has to be all this stuff in the South. It has to be translated into action, into legislation. And that's what, no, that's what's different in this year, from years before. And that's, in that standpoint. Well, I want to get the Civil Rights Act, and I'd love it if you can kind of help me bring that a lot. Because you're right, it isn't, it isn't as dramatic as, in some ways, as freedom's element for sure. So why is the great society?

Why is, why is the name important to Johnson? Why is, is, and how is civil rights wrapped up in, in, in, in that new incarnation? Well, names were always important to Johnson. Or it starts with the war on poverty. Johnson hated poverty. And people were later to say, this is too grand the oaths of phrase, you know. But as soon as he, as soon, you know, as soon as he thinks of it, he likes the phrase. Because Johnson hated poverty, you know. The word hated, people say Johnson hated poverty. Once when he was vice president, they were on a motorcade through Iran. And they saw a bunch of children. And when a man in the car with him says, look at those children, they're wearing rags. And Johnson just explodes. He says, those are in rags. I know rags when I see them. Those are patched clothes. And you realize that when his family was on the Johnson Ranch going broke,

his youngest, his younger brother and his youngest sister wore patched clothes. And they weren't rags. And the man who said this and realized Johnson hates poverty. He hates the idea of poverty. You know, when he was a boy, he had to do things like picking cotton. He used to say to his cousin, Aver, they were 9 and 10 when they would spend the whole day on their knees crawling through the cotton fields picking. And he says, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way. Johnson knew what poverty was. At the beginning of 1964, Lyndon Johnson is down on his ranch. He's the president of the United States now. What does he see when he opens the front door of his ranch? Across the highway is a, of course, excuse me, across this little river. Across this little river, the pertinality's river is a stretch of highway. Lyndon Johnson worked on that highway when he was 17 and 18. You know what he did? It was not a paved highway.

It was a graded highway. They didn't have paved roads in the hill country in the 1920s. So they had a device called the Fresno, which was a sharp, edged, very heavy piece of steel pulled by two mules. And the man who was driving it stood behind the mules with a hand on each handle. So you needed both hands. So the reins from the mules were looped around the man's back. So you were really in harness with the mules all day. That was Lyndon Johnson's boyhood. That was Lyndon Johnson's drive. That was Lyndon Johnson's job. He drove the Fresno. He knew what poverty was, and he hated it. That's about all we can do with it. All right. That's so good, because I love that phrase. He gives a speech, again, at the University of Michigan, to introduce the great society. Yeah, I'm not up to that one. Okay, but you have other people who can tell you about that.

You talk about the Civil Rights Act. But it is, you know, when you talk about what do you mean by it? You know, that is his vision, a great society, in which there is social justice, in which poor children are given a head start. Head start was his program. To catch up, you know, he used to say you can't take a child who's never had proper nourishment, has never had parents talk to him about reading, and suddenly put him on the starting line with somebody who has had all these advantages and says, now we're going to have a fair race. It doesn't work like that. Johnson had a vision of a moral, compassionate, just America. A great society. When he said a great society, he meant a great society. Great, and Civil Rights continues to be this critical thread to that. It's not just about poverty, it's about equality as well. Yes, I mean, you know, he's always been fighting for the right to vote.

You know, when he was back in the Senate, he passed as a weak bill. The only thing in it is voting rights. And all the civil rights and liberal organizations are criticizing him for passing this weak bill. And you know, Johnson says two things. He says, first of all, the important thing was to pass it. We never passed the civil rights bill before. Now that we've passed it, it's easier to go back and fix it. The hard thing was to pass it. The other thing that he says, which is now going right out of my mind, just a second. The other thing he says, voting rights is not nothing. Voting rights is power. By giving blacks the power to vote, we are giving them power over their own destiny. We are giving them the power they can do the rest for themselves.

You know, great phrase, Lincoln broke the shackles of slavery, but it was Lyndon Johnson. You want me to say that? Yes. You know, it was Abraham Lincoln who broke the shackles of orphan black people, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into the voting boots. Put their hand on the lever, closed the curtain behind them, and gave them a say in their own destiny. Want me to do it again? No, no, that's good. That's great. Why did Johnson think he could pull it off? Why was the great society something he thought he could did? Just not just politically, but economically. He believed that the greatest, and he said it, that the greatest nation on earth has enough money to do both. To fight a war in Vietnam and to transform the society. He used to say that people who came to the hill country here, they came with a rifle in one hand and an axe in the other. He believed that, as it turned out, he wasn't going to be right.

And he was eventually going to wind up saying, that bitch of a war is killing the woman I love, the great society. But if you ask, is this what he believed in 1964? Is this what he's setting out to do in 1964? Yes, it is. It's a grand ambition. And why did he think he could do it? Because Johnson knew that he was a genius in getting things through Congress, that he could get things through that no one else could. And you know something, he was right. When he was Senate Majority Leader, he made the Senate work like it never worked before. He would, you know, they said about Kennedy, scoop Jackson, Senator from Washington, who knew both of them well. He's in the Senate with both. He says, you know, Jack Kennedy, he knew what was important. He'd have a senator down and he'd explain why this bill was important. But if the senator said, you know, that's going to kill me with my constituency. Kennedy would understand.

Jackson said Lyndon Johnson wouldn't understand. Lyndon Johnson wouldn't understand. He would refuse to understand. He would cajole you or threaten you or bribe you. Anything he had to do to get your vote. But he would get your vote. Johnson could do it. Yeah, you had another great one was Kennedy.