American Experience; 1964; Interview with Robert Dallek, Historian, part 1 of 2

So Robert, on January 1st, 1964, what would observers have thought was, what do they think lay ahead for America? Well, I think there was a tremendous amount of frustration, distress, after all, we were six weeks away from John Kennedy's killing. There was a sense of uncertainty in the country. Now Lyndon Johnson had created a kind of, not upbeat mood, but a better sense of hope or greatest sense of hope, with the speech he gave five days after Kennedy was killed, in which he addressed the idea that Kennedy had an agenda, and Johnson was determined to carry that out, to carry it forward. And he spoke in a heartfelt way about the idea that he said, I would give everything

I have not to be standing here today. And of course, Johnson being Johnson, he was a man of huge ambition and eager to be present, not to get to the presidency the way he had achieved it, but now he had the power. And he was determined to use it in the most substantial, far-reaching way he possibly could. If you go back to that moment of January 1st, though, there's a kind of a consensus, or at least a sense of consensus, that's pretty much ruled America or reigned over America since the New Deal, since the war. Would there have been a sense that that was about to change, I guess Kennedy's assassination would have meant that all that's were off, in a way.

Well, there were great uncertainties. Kennedy had four big initiatives before the Congress, a big tax cut, a civil rights bill that he came to in June of 1963, the legislation for Medicare, federal aid to education. None of them had passed, none of them had one approval from the Congress, because there was a powerful conservative Southern group in the House and in the Senate that stood in the way of progressable legislation. Now Johnson, of course, being a Southerner, deep south, senator, Texas, there was hope among his Southern colleagues that nothing was going to change. But they had measured Johnson accurately. He was a man of unyielding, unending ambition.

And he was schooled in the idea that the New Deal was something that had saved America. It had preserved capitalism. Roosevelt had fought in World War II, defeated fascism, Nazism, Japanese militarism, and Lyndon Johnson felt he was much more the heir of Franklin Roosevelt than he was of John Kennedy. And then his dad was a passionate new dealer, wasn't he? Well, his father was a progressive legislator in the lower house of the Texas legislature. And Johnson was cut from that cloth, so to speak. Now, in 1957, as Senate Majority Leader, he had gotten the first major civil rights bill passed, or through the House and the Senate, since 1875, since reconstruction. It was partly a prelude to him running for president, but he was sincere about it.

Because what Johnson understood was that as long as there was segregation in the south, it not only segregated the races, but it segregated the south from the rest of the country. And then, in many ways, the south was seen as the crazy ant you kept in the attic. Because there it was with this system of apotheide, racial division, and it also was a terrible problem for the United States in the Cold War. Because the Soviets and the Chinese could beat on mercilessly on the United States in the third world in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, about American racism, you see. And in fact, Bobby Kennedy had made a speech to that effect in 1962 in which he went to Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia, or rather Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia was, and courageously gave a speech talking about how destructive it was to the United States and the Cold War to have this image of racism.

So Johnson, from the moment he became president, was intent upon doing something about these really big issues. Now, it wasn't so clear to the Southern conservatives and the House and the Senate that such was on the way. But when Johnson was told about Kennedy's possibility of pushing for a war on poverty, a campaign against poverty. In a second term, Johnson smiled and said, that's my kind of program, see. And he was determined to push forward with that. So in January 1964, he's revved up. He's ready to go on his issues. Let's talk about, just for a minute, about the assassination, because I think, as I said in a way, this year really does begin in 1963, can you zoom in a little here and just

show me, I think we need to keep working on that, it's going to be a priority, I'm quite sure what to do, you know, just still have to do that. Yeah, yeah. I think it glasses off for one more second, but you just get a little bit of a teary up. Why did JFK's death represent such a dramatic break for American society? Well, in American history, there had been three assassinations before Kennedy's killing in the 19th century, and this was seen as a terrible violation of our political system. You know, people ran and won and lost elections, but they send the victor a telegram of congratulations. They don't call on their followers to go up into the hills and launch revolution.

This is not a banana republic, and so Kennedy's killing, but what was so terrible about it was not just the fact that so young a man was killed, but that someone like Lee Harvey Oswald, people couldn't believe that someone is inconsequential as Oswald, could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. It was beyond understanding, and so what instantly sets in is the belief, excuse me, the belief that there's some kind of conspiracy, there had to be some logic cabal here, it couldn't possibly just be alone gunman, whether Soviet's behind it, whether Cubans behind it, whether Vietnamese, because in Vietnam, the president of South Vietnam, ZM had been ousted and assassinated three weeks before Kennedy was killed, and so there was terrible suspicion.

Now, one of the most important things that Johnson did was to respond to this concern, this paranoia, if you will, by setting up the Warren Commission, and he, if you listen to his tapes, because he taped these conversations, he bullied, he pushed, he shoved, which was his way of operating, and to getting the most conservative possible people onto the Warren Commission, he wanted it to have a kind of credibility, that he felt it wouldn't have if you put people on there who were suspected of whitewashing something, but conservatives wouldn't do that, he was convinced, and so Earl Warren, he has to get him on, and Southerners, who are seen as conservative politicians, and it's very important to him that you disarm this concern in the United States that there was a conspiracy. Now, I don't believe there ever was a conspiracy, 70 percent of people in this

country still do. I know, it's just insane, doesn't it? I mean, but I don't even go down that path, but I'm interested in how that event shook Americans' sense of confidence and security in a way that nothing else had, and the fume role was unprecedented, and nationally. Kennedy's killing shook the national confidence, because was the president so vulnerable? Is the country that vulnerable? Remember, they had been through a number of shocks. The Soviets, in 1957, fight off Sputnik, and during the 60 campaign, Kennedy had talked of the idea of a missile gap. The Soviets are getting ahead of us. Khrushchev had come to the United Nations,

banged his shoe on the table, suggested to the world that he was something of a madman, said that we are grinding out missiles like sausages, saying, we'll bury you. Capitalism is a dead letter. Communism is the wave of the future, and the country was shell-shocked by all this. Now, Eisenhower and Kennedy ultimately knew that there was a missile gap, but it favoured us. The Soviets were way behind in their missile technology. Still, this did not give the country assurance that we were going to win the Cold War. There were terrible doubts, and it just underscored the uncertainties and the sense that America was vulnerable. What happened at the White House the day after JFK was killed? Johnson goes and decides to take over the Olo office, and who does he bump into? Well, there was a lot of bad blood between John Kennedy and the president's brother,

Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General. Between Johnson. Johnson and Robert Kennedy? He said John Kennedy. Oh, no, I meant John Kennedy's brother. This is a starter. Okay, there was a lot of bad blood between Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was the president's brother, of course. But Johnson, when he goes back to Washington, he insists that they carry the president's body with them on F.O.S. One. And some of Kennedy's associates are resentful of fact that Johnson rushes in to take over as president, which is, of course, what he had to do. He had a swearing in ceremony on F.O.S. One, but it was unnecessary. And indeed, he was so indelicate as to call Robert Kennedy to ask about the swearing in. And Kennedy resented that, was frustrated, angered by it. His brother was just killed. He was traumatized. And Johnson is calling up to ask him some nitpicking question about,

and it was totally unnecessary because Johnson automatically became president on the death of the president. So, there's tension already on the plane, which is added to, by the fact, that Johnson insists that Jacqueline Kennedy come forward in the plane to stand next to him while he's being sworn in. Because, see, he has a kind of very keen sense of national politics. And he wants this sense of legitimacy, which he feels will be given to him, Jackie Kennedy standing next to him. And so, there's a brilliant choice, brilliant decision. Very, very clever politics, but the Kennedys, the associates, they resented it. Then they resented even more the fact that Johnson rushed to take over the Oval Office. And there was anger at him for seeming to push the remnants of the Kennedy administration out of the way. Now, he has Bobby

Kennedy in to talk to him two days after the assassination. And he says to Bobby Kennedy, I need you. I need you more than your brother needed you, which of course was nowhere near true. But, again, very clever politics, because he wants the sense of continuity, the sense of legitimacy. Because a lot of people didn't know who Lyndon Johnson was. The vice president is, you know, a vague shadowy figure. And Kennedy had pushed him aside. Johnson wanted all sorts of power. When, in fact, Kennedy became president, Johnson came in and handed him a memo describing all sorts of authority that he wanted Kennedy to give him. Kennedy laughed after Johnson left the room and threw it in a desk drawer, because he understood exactly what Johnson was doing. Now, he was Kennedy, the youngest man ever wrote to the White House, all sorts of questions about

whether he's going to be up to doing the job. And the last thing he was going to do was allow Lyndon Johnson to overshadow him. Right, right. What's the biggest, what's Johnson's biggest challenge as the new president? Well, he had a horrible epithet or nickname attached to it because of his Senate victory. And I'm thinking that the film is going to end pretty much with his election in November. So there's an arc to this idea. Okay. Well, Johnson, of course, was known as landslide linen, because his election to the United States Senate in 1948 had been tainted by a lawsuit by his Democratic opponent, not by the Republican, but by his primary opponent, the Koch Stevenson,

who was the governor of Texas. And in those days, if you won the primary in Texas, there was just no question you were going to Democratic primary, that is, there was no question you were going to be elected to the Senate. Johnson wins that primary election by 87 votes. And to this day, there's plenty of information to suggest that they stuffed the ballot boxes to assure that he won that election. Now, in 1941, the first time you ran in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat, he had a leader of over 5,000 votes. And they stuffed the ballot box and took that victory away from him. He was asked by some associates, well, do you want to sue? You want to go into court? He said, no, we'll get the Senate of Mitch next time around. See? So in 1948, he left no question about who was going to win that election. So it was a tainted election. He came into office as a senator with a cloud that hung over him. And as a senator, he wasn't interested in being on

the Farm Relations Committee or on commerce or on the judiciary. He was interested in leadership in being a power in the Senate. And very quickly, he rises to be minority leader. And of course, achieves his goal of becoming majority leader and really became the greatest majority leader in the history of the United States Senate. And asserts himself, works his will. But when he becomes president, there are questions already, did he have something to do with killing Kennedy? Who is this man who became a senator in a tainted election? Can we trust him? What's his credibility? And so, and he's a southerner. He's a southerner. Is he going to do anything about civil rights? Is he going to exacerbate the terrible racial tensions that had been

front and center during the Kennedy presidency? So there are lots of questions about him as he assumes the office. Great. Your level of detail at the end of that is just where I want to be. Maybe about 15,000 feet, not down on the ground, but not up to 30,000, you know what I mean? Let me try. Let me knock it down some more. Better go. Yeah. Okay, right? Help me understand this scene. It's five days after the assassination, and Johnson has to make his first major speech. What does he do? Well, he has Ted Sarnson in, who had a reputation as the greatest speechwriter of his generation, and maybe one of the most successful speechwriters in American

history. He had written Kennedy's inaugural, which was one of the four great inaugural speeches in American history, in which Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And Johnson, where he was eager to push off the Schlesinger out, who was the White House historian, White House intellectual, but Johnson wanted Sarnson, because he had a talent, which he could turn to his advantage. And so he got Sarnson to write the speech for him. Now, Sarnson... Let me do it a little bit, because I know I'm just thinking about my pages here. Let's try and go right to the heart of the matter, just because I'm everything you're saying is fascinating to me, but I don't want to, I want to try to focus right in on a little bit more directly what we're, what we're getting at. Okay. Because I just don't think we have time. Okay. On Johnson. On Johnson. Right. Right. Just the scene. He walks... Where does he

deliver the speech? He walks into the house? No, Johnson gives the speech five days after Kennedy's death to a joint session of Congress in the well of the House. Now, he purposely does that at a joint session because he's a man of the Congress. And it gives him a kind of standing, a kind of authority. He could have done it in the Oval Office of the White House, but he felt that it was really more appropriate and more to his advantage to be seen in the setting that the president is usually seen in when he's giving a state of the Union speech. It gives him a kind of authority, kind of standing as president. And what are the stakes at this moment? And what does he do? The stakes at this moment are his legitimacy. Are the, is the stability of the country is creating a kind of national confidence in his ability to lead the country. And so he says, he says to the

country that he's terribly pained. He would give anything he has, not to be standing here today, showing sympathy for the fact that the Kennedy's have suffered a terrible loss and the country has suffered a terrible loss. But that he's president now and he's going to assume the burdens of office. And so he says, Kennedy, the president Kennedy said, let us begin. And Johnson says, let us continue. And it was a brilliant line because it creates that sense of continuity, that sense of connection to Kennedy. What's very striking about Lyndon Johnson is that until he's elected in 1964, you can look at his speeches and he repeatedly invokes the name of president Kennedy. Once he's elected in his own right, forget it. Kennedy disappears from his speeches. Interesting.

What does he do, one of his biggest decisions is what to do about civil rights. And what does he do? Well, when Johnson's biggest decisions is what should he do about Kennedy's four major pieces of legislation, civil rights, the big tax cut, federal aid to education, Medicare. The first thing on his agenda is to get the tax bill passed because he feels that will be the piece of legislation which he is most adept at getting through the country. Conducting go through all four of them. So, in a larger sense, it's civil rights that I think is ultimately the big one. Civil rights is the big achievement for him. But he first wants to get tax cut out of the way to show his authority, to show how he can manage the Congress. Now, what he does is he begins very quickly working on civil rights. Now, this is 1964. It's still a Congress that's dominated by the southerners. It's dominated by

chairman from all these southern states who in the past have resisted and successfully resisted, allowing any major piece of civil rights legislation to pass. This civil rights bill that Kennedy had put before the Congress in June of 1963 was a transformative measure. It was going to end segregation in all places of public accommodation, swimming pools, restaurants, bus stations, train stations. It just was going to end a way of life across the south. Johnson has a southerner in a sense has a leg up. And he's telling some of the southerners, I'm not your enemy, but the time has come. This legislation has got to be passed. And he uses his traditional legislative techniques as he, when he was majority leader, to advance this bill, gets various senators and congressmen in, talks them, tells them

this is a time of crisis. The nation has to have this done. It's essential, essential for our civic peace here, our domestic tranquility. It's essential to finding the cold war. What were the risks that he took when he did it? The risks he took were that he could have been defeated. And if that major piece of legislation had been defeated, it would have been a terrible setback for him. Because he's not yet president at his own right. He is still Kennedy's successor, but he's playing upon the sympathy, the sense of grief that the country has over Kennedy's loss. And it's very shrewd politics on his part. Right. Did it surprise people? And it was a huge political gamble, too. Well, it was a huge political gamble because in 1964, he's running for president. And is he going to lose the South? Is he going to alienate all those Southern segregationists?

And after all, he's running against a man who is very sympathetic to the Southern divide. And very antagonistic to a civil rights bill, Barry Goldwater. So, yes, he's taking a political risk, but for two reasons, three reasons, he understands that he needs to do this. The country needs it. It's essential for the national well-being. It's going to serve the South in the long run. He's a Southerner. This is his region. He wants to do right by them. Ultimately, he gets this past. It's going to help him win that election of 1964. And it's going to prove to liberals in the Democratic Party, who are the dominant force at the time, that he's one of them. That he's not some dyed-in-the-wall segregationist or racist, who is going to hold back from doing what John Kennedy and liberal Democrats wanted to do. Right. Terrific. Thank you. Remember the scene at the Hundred Acres Club on New Year's Day where he takes his attractive

black, the Infect Secretary, Jerry Wittington, and then desegregates the place. Yeah, no one. It's an amazing moment. It happens on New Year's Eve, not on the first day, but it's January 3rd, Barry Goldwater announces his candidacy. What does he represent? Let's try and keep it another 5,000 feet off the ground a little bit, broadly defined. Who is Barry Goldwater? What does he represent? Barry Goldwater announces his candidacy, January 3rd, 1964. It wasn't surprised to people. In fact, John Kennedy thought, as early as June of 1963, that Goldwater would indeed be his opponent, but he was also confident that he was going to beat him, because he said to a couple

of Zades, well, even Dave Powers would beat him. And if he runs against us, we're going to get to sleep. We're going to get to bed much earlier on election night than we did in 1960. It's confident he can beat him. Why? Because Goldwater is someone who is very much an ideologue. He is preaching a conservative philosophy, which promotes the idea of smaller government, promotes the idea of going all out in the Cold War. And he jokes and says, we ought to think about lobbying one into the men's room of the Kremlin, meaning that there's going to be no holds in this clash with the Soviet Union and communism if he becomes president. He is against the New Deal. He's against the idea of expanded federal power. He's from Arizona. He's from this new southwest area, which trumpets the idea of state's rights,

is opposed to intrusive actions on the part of the federal government, which appeals usually to southerners. And to get a little head of ourselves, of course, he wins six states. Five of them are in the south. Because his appeal is so strong to the idea of state's rights. Right. Why was Goldwater such a break with the Republican Party that had been running the show? Well, Goldwater's opponent in 1964 for the nomination is Nelson Rockefeller. And Rockefeller is seen as a traditional, moderate, Northeastern Republican, which is conservative. These people are conservative about financial matters, about economics, about budgets and deficits. But they're very sympathetic to social change, sympathetic to civil rights,

sympathetic to the idea that you don't overturn social security. That you even maybe pass a Medicare bill because the elderly, the elderly, the seniors need this kind of health insurance in order to guard them against the bankruptcy in old age. So it's almost as if when Goldwater is running against Rockefeller, he's running against the Democratic Party. The divide and the party is very severe, very pronounced. And his supporters, Goldwater supporters are intensely ideological, intensely committed. This is a matter of their personal identity. See, what you're dealing with is a kind of status politics. These folks in the Northeast, they don't take us very seriously. We are the outliers. We are the folks on the fringe of the society. They don't think well of us. They think we're country bumpkins, backwater folks, you see. And there is kind of the politics of

resentment and sound familiar. It's something which has not gone away. It's still very much part of our national politics, but that's another matter. But what's interesting is I think you can argue that in a lot of ways, this insurgency that we feel now begins at that moment. Absolutely. Absolutely. So is something born at this moment? Well, what Goldwater represents is a new divide in the country. You see, in the 1920s, if you may go back to that, there was a bit of divide in the country between the modernists and the fundamentalists. I'm not going to go back there. I know. I know. You're not going to go back there. But there is a certain basis for it's not as if this country has ever been entirely unified or shared social and economic values, you see. But what makes the Goldwater experience different is the fact that the new deal, the fair deal, the Democrats had such a control of the country.

There was a consensus because of what Roosevelt did in rescuing the country from the depression. Now did he end the depression? No. Spending on World War II, industrial mobilization did that. But he did something more important. He humanized the American industrial system. And this is where the country was at. It was happy about the fact that it had social security. It was happy about the fact that there was unemployment insurance, that there was a whole set of social safety network laws that made people more comfortable, gave them a sense of greater security. And Barry Goldwater said, let's give it up all that? Barry Goldwater is opposed to the idea that it erodes individualism. It erodes liberty. It erodes your freedom. And he sees the great quality in the country. The country's greatest asset he feels is that is this tradition of free enterprise, of a competition, of individualism.

See. And the new deal has eroded that. The fair deal has assaulted that. Kennedy and Johnson with their legislative agenda. They want civil rights. They want a Medicare law. This is socialized medicine. This is going to be an assault upon people's individual rights. And so he's the voice of this resurgent conservatism. Conservatism had been there before, but now it's resurgent. Now and also because people were in some ways frustrated, irritated with government, there was a bureaucracy. There were things about it that people didn't like. And Goldwater was playing on that. Great, great. I want to get back to Johnson, but Goldwater doesn't run a conventional campaign at all. And he's not a conventional candidate. No. No. Really briefly. Tell me how he sort of breaks the

mold or stands apart in those two ways. Goldwater is essentially indifferent to the idea that you create consensus, that you reach out to all groups in the country, that you're mindful of the fact that the east and the north east and the west and the south and the Midwest, that they have different feelings, ideas, attitudes, that you have a population of so many different religions, so many different ethnicities, people of different backgrounds. He doesn't care about anything. He's not interested in that. What he's interested in, he's single-minded. He's devoted to the proposition of advancing free enterprise, advancing individual rights. This is what obsesses him, one might say, and communism is the ultimate opponent of this kind of thing, and you've got to destroy it. See, there's no compromising with communism, and it hawks back to some of the

Joe McCarthy ideas that... What's he doing as a candidate? It's so different, too. What he's doing as a candidate is not being very political. What he's doing as a candidate is running as an ideologue, running on the basis of certain ideas that he is devoted to, and if they bother you, they offend you, they offend the majority, he's going to lose, too bad. He's pushing for an agenda. He's pushing for a set of ideas of philosophy that he feels is essential to maintain for the future of the country. And who does he bring around him to make this all come about? Well, he doesn't get clifped and white, and some of these extra extraordinarily good operatives, doesn't he? No, he gets the sky miller as his running mate, who is obscure, unimportant, and nobody, but he has the right ideology. He's ready to stand in goldwater shadow and subscribe to this fundamental ideology that goldwater is pitching. Who on this campaign?

Ideologues. It's not people around Nelson Rockefeller, the big business people are voting for Johnson. Johnson is telling them, in essence, this guy goldwater is dangerous. He will unnerve the communists. We may end up in a war. And of course, we can talk about the famous Daisy Ed. Well, 1964, Lyndon Johnson, in conjunction with Bill Moyers, and others, concludes that what they need to do is fasten on Barry Goldwater, the fact that he is a superhawk, that he is a danger to the country, to its security, its stability. And they develop an ad called the Daisy Field ad. Beautiful, young, blonde girl, since in the Daisy Field,

and she picks off the pedals of a Daisy, counts down 10, 9, 8, 7, getting down to zero, and then in the background, there's a mushroom cloud. And in essence, all that it says underneath is voteful Lyndon Johnson secure her future. This is the message that they're sending. Now, the story, of course, is that this is the most famous ad in American political history, and it only showed one time, was never shown again. As a payback, they only paid to put it on the air once. Right. But of course, it became something that, that's an important distinction. Very important. So why was it, why was it unique? Because Johnson called Bill Moyers to the White House after the ad showed on television. And he got him in front of a group of people and said to him, Bill, what the hell have you done to me? The White House switch waters lit up

like a Christmas tree. People are agitated. They're calling him, what are we saying? We're putting out this negative air, this attack on goldwater, that's frightening people, you see. And Moyers says to him, Mr. President, we're not going to run it again. I'm not going to run again, only one time. The conversation's over. Johnson walks him out to the White House elevator. And as Moyers about to leave, he says to him, Bill, you think we shouldn't run again? Now, he knew what a devastating ad this was. So you can compare this to Mitt Romney and the 47%. There are moments in these elections when an image is fastened on a candidate and they can't rise above it. They can't surpass it. And this was the moment that really sunk Barry Goldwater. I think he would have lost anyway, but I think it was the idea of him as a reckless hawk risking the country's safety, pushing it possibly into a nuclear war that terribly frighten people.

There's a coup in Vietnam and there's a media in January 29th or something like that, where they have to really figure out how to respond pretty early in the year. What is it the Vietnam represents? Well, the Vietnam was an issue that Kennedy struggled with for all his thousand days in office. His administration was divided by hawks and those who were very skeptical of escalation of Vietnam. Kennedy was being pressured by his military chiefs and by some of his

state department and Pentagon advisors to expand American involvement in the conflict. Vietnam was seen as a great contest for control of developing countries. If the insurgency succeeded in Vietnam, then it would become a model for what might happen in Venezuela, what might happen in other Latin American countries, what might happen in other Asian countries, what might happen in Africa? See, and so the feeling on the part of those who insist that we need to support the South Vietnamese is that this is a much larger issue than simply a local civil war. The Cold War is part of this. Chinese expansion, Soviet control. This is like 1938 with Munich and appeasement. You can't stop. Now, Johnson is a Cold War hawk. He's a believer in the idea that you have to stand up to the communist threat. He goes to Vietnam as vice president,

and he comes back and he tells Kennedy that we have to stand fast in Vietnam, otherwise the Pacific would come a red sea. This is the kind of hyperbole that one he is from, those who are talking up freedom in the war. But what is it at that moment in 64 that is all this putting it off, all this Kennedy's dithering and temperizing? Again, in 64, it can't be ignored anymore. Well, it can't be ignored except to this extent. The people around Kennedy or Kennedy himself is very worried that if they quote unquote, lose Vietnam, it will recreate a macawtheist reaction. The Democratic Party, Kennedy himself will... What about what is Johnson's thing? Because that's okay. Johnson is deeply concerned not to lose Vietnam. He's part of the hawkish group, you see.

Yeah. He just want to lose Vietnam. Kennedy is much more ambiguous, ambivalent. Johnson is very much committed to the idea that he's going to save Vietnam. Indeed, two days after he becomes president and he has a meeting with the American ambassador to Saigon and Henry Cabot Lodge, a system we're not going to lose Vietnam. This is a definitive statement that he makes. However, during the election campaign, he doesn't want it to be an issue. Because there's a lot of ambivalence in the country as to do you send troops, ground forces into Vietnam. Hey, you remember what happened in Korea? We got stuck there. We got caught in this stalemated war. People are saying, don't go into Vietnam because those rice paddies and jungles will eat up the troops. One of Kennedy's advises say, you'll send 300,000 men there, you'll never hear from them again. Now, Johnson understands that this is a political hot potato in that sense. And

he doesn't want it to be an issue during the campaign. However, Barry Goldwater is the ultimate hawk. And Johnson is determined not to let Goldwater get to the right of him on any big Cold War issue. So in August of 1964, when there is a North Vietnamese torpedo attack, torpedo boat threat to an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, the information is brought to Johnson. And he says, because he doesn't want this to be an issue in the campaign. He says, this is done. There was a mistake by some patrol boat captain, say, they don't intend to do it. However, two days later, he gets information that there's another incident. Now, he says to McNamara who was secretary of defense, I want confirmation. Did something really

happen? The destroyer captain comes back and tells McNamara, yes, we were threatened. There was a potential attack, and Johnson says we can't let that stand. And so, he goes to the Congress with what becomes known as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, demanding authority from the Congress to do what needs to be done to preserve the autonomy, the safety of South Vietnam from communist assault. To this day, huge controversy was they really a second attack. Johnson's self didn't really know. He later said, hey, those sailors out there were shooting and flying fish, see. But this is part of the political campaign. And he's not going to let Barry Goldwater get to the right of him on this issue. I think that sets it up for me really well. Johnson, surprise civil rights leaders early in his presidency. Well, they were uncertain. Civil rights leaders were uncertain about Lyndon Johnson. They knew

that he was an ambitious politician. They knew that he had been the architect of that 1957 civil rights law. And so, they had hopes that he might indeed be very sympathetic to their cause. But they weren't sure. After all, he through his career as a Southern Texas senator had voted against most bills that would have worked against segregation, see. And so, they're uncertain. But when he steps forward to fight for civil rights, they begin to understand that he's committed to this. And when Lyndon Johnson puts his muscle behind a piece of legislation, no holdbars. He is going to push as hard as he can. What's the moment that surprises him the most, the moment when he's making a speech that echoes when he invokes in his speech?

What day is it? No, it doesn't have to be this specific day, but roughly. Well, it was, I think, in July because the bill passes in July in June. Okay, in June. The bill passes in July of 64. In June, he gives because of the difficulties that are still carried on in the South because of the tension, because of the agitation. And he feels compelled to go before the country and give a speech in which he says that this is a struggle that goes to the heart of the American Constitution. That it's at the center of what we stand for in this country. And he's appealing to history, to the rule of law, to constitutional precepts, to the sense of fairness, of justice, of equality. He understood, as his Republican rival, Everett Dirkson said,

this is an idea whose time has come. And how does he sum it up? He literally says the words. He literally says we shall overcome. And this, of course, was the motto of the civil rights movement. And what more could the civil rights leaders ask of him than to say we shall overcome? He stood with them. He identified with them. And, of course, it harked back to Martin Luther King's famous speech before the march on Washington in the summer of 1963, in which he spoke to the idea that the arc of justice will be served. We will achieve our goal. There will be integration. The arc of justice is long, but the arc of justice, the arc of freedom is long, but it bends

towards justice. It depends towards justice. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And Johnson was standing with Martin Luther King. And they were thrilled. The civil rights leaders were now thrilled because they understood that Johnson was entirely behind this commitment to civil rights. But all is not well in the civil rights movement in 1964. There are, like in a lot of other ways, there is cracks are beginning to show in the facade, as Ella Baker and MLK. And they are seeing things very differently. How many understand, really, let's try and do this, like, let's see, we'll do this in like a minute. What's the divide boiled down to between the two factions in the civil rights movement in 1964? The divide in the civil rights movement in 1964 is

between those who wanted greater militancy and those like Martin Luther King, who believed impassive resistance. King had taken his impulse from Gandhi that in the United States, we are minority. We will never be able to achieve our goal through force, through excessive militancy. They'll repress us. They'll seize upon it as a chance to repress us. But he sees some civil rights advocates who are what he would call hotheads, who are bomb-throwers, Lyndon Johnson would call them. See, there are people who want to push as hard as they can. They don't trust the idea that the southerners will be in any way accommodating. They've been waiting for decades and years and years. Nothing has happened. It's time to get past this idea that you are going to be passive. So King is seen as maybe something of a sort of Uncle Tom. He's

co-zing up to the white establishment, you see. But King, of course, ultimately has the best of it, because he's absolutely right when he understands that excessive militancy would have been a reaction, would have caused the reaction against this movement, which would have hurt it. The best ally that King had was the repressive Southern state troopers, because their excesses created tremendous sympathy in the country for his movement. Exactly. The best ally King could have had, Johnson said. Actually, let's take this break for one second. Where are you in the mag situation?