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

that symbolizes the kind of dysfunction between LVJ and Bobby Kennedy. You don't have to. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the scene when Johnson tells him that. Set it up for me. Yeah. Sure. All right. Lyndon Johnson's determined not to have Bobby Kennedy run with him as vice president. Bobby is ambivalent. He thinks it might be a good way for him to launch his presidential career. He wants to be president. Johnson doesn't want any part of it. He's concerned that if he's elected with Bobby Kennedy on the ticket, people are going to say that the reason Johnson got elected is because Bobby was with him on the ticket. He doesn't want him there. He calls Bobby in and tells him that. He can't have him on the ticket because he's not going to have anybody from the cabinet.

No member of the cabinet will be a potential vice presidential nominee. Bobby Kennedy leaves and he says to associates. He lies. He always lies. Even when he doesn't have to lie, he lies. And this was the moment that, and Bobby was determined to get out and run for the United States Senate from New York. He didn't want any more involved with Johnson. What's so revealing is that the next day Johnson goes to the press. That's right. And lies. That's right. Right. Well, he goes to the press. Well, the day after he has this collatively cordial, right? Yeah. Well, you know, they're cordial enough. But the day after the conversation with Bobby Kennedy, in which he tells him he's not going to have him as his running mate, he has a meeting with some reporters.

And he puts Bobby Kennedy in the worst possible light. He describes him as a pained and anguished and angry and frustrated that Johnson wasn't going to take him on the ticket. And it was a total distortion of what had happened in the Oval Office meeting, you see. And indeed, the very way Johnson, normally, he sat Bobby Kennedy down like the student, meeting with the professor. Johnson sitting behind his desk and the student sitting alongside of the desk, you see. And it was, Johnson would do this. He purposely understood that the way in which the physical setting would influence the kind of interaction. Most famously, when he had George Wallace in 1965, I know you don't want to go there, but, you know, he sits, Wallace down on this couch, Wallace's five foot seven, sinks into the couch, he's now about five foot three, Johnson's six foot, two and a half,

sits on a cushion, hit a rocking chair, leans over him. He's a great, great, great student. Right. And says to him, don't you shit me, none, George. Don't you shit me, none. He's amazing. Right. What is Johnson hoping to achieve with the war on poverty and how does he choose someone to lead it? Well, Johnson, before even moves on civil rights when he becomes president, and he has stated the union speech in January 1964, announces that he is going to launch a war on poverty. Now, this was an idea which Walter Heller, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, told him had been part of Kennedy's agenda for the next second term. And Johnson said to him, instantly, that's my kind of program.

What he wanted to do with the war on poverty was to create a kind of kind of safety net for the least advantaged people in the country. Poverty ran, people living below the poverty line were roughly 22-23% of the population. Johnson, remembering the experience of the Great Depression, remembering what Franklin Roosevelt did, was determined to try and help these people get above that poverty line. And the way to do it was to educate them, see. He was a very strong proponent of the idea that education was the root to success in the society. And he said, I want these people to be not tax-eaters, but tax payers. And how does he get somebody to run the program? What he does is he brings a Sergeant Shriver,

who had been Kennedy's director of the Peace Corps. He just calls him on the phone, doesn't he? He calls him on the phone, and he says to him, I'd like you to run this war on poverty because the Congress is going to pass the sludge of slation. It's part of my big agenda, and Shriver's not eager to do it. It doesn't want to sign on it to this. And Johnson says, will you think about it? See, even though Shriver is saying, no, he doesn't want to do it. He says, well, how long do I have to, can I have a while? And Johnson says, well, take till tomorrow, see. And Johnson pressures him, calls him back. And in essence, tells him you're going to take this job. He's not giving him any choice. Why does Shriver, why Shriver, a good choice? Shriver is a good choice because Shriver is someone who says, in order to do well, that's his motto. In order to do well, you do good.

And he had been very successful in managing the Peace Corps. There were an awful lot of people who thought the Peace Corps was going to be a great bust. But in fact, thousands of people volunteered to go into this Peace Corps, spread out across Africa and across Latin America and Asia to provide services and aid and help to people in developing countries. And it was a huge success. And it was emblematic of what John Kennedy had done in order to reach out to people in the developing world. So Johnson sneezes upon the fact that not only is he successful at Peace Corps, but he's John Kennedy's brother-in-law. It creates a continuing association with John Kennedy and the Kennedy presidency. And again, it's very shrewd politics. Bobby Kennedy is leaving. Bobby is not going to stay around. He wants him out of there. He doesn't want him as vice president. But he doesn't want people to say, see Johnson is so selfish and so self-centered.

He wants to get rid of the Kennedy's. On the contrary, he's got Kennedy's brother-in-law now as the head of this war on poverty. Great. Great. Maybe we split on the first stripper? Yeah. If you could just tell me just from the beginning because we, you and I are having a little back and forth. What does he do to get Shriver on board? Well, he calls him on the telephone and he doesn't... John's in calls. Lyndon Johnson calls Sergeant Shriver on the telephone, tells him he wants to be his director of the war on poverty. And Shriver is very reluctant to do it. And he says, well, I'll consult my wife. And Johnson says to him, well, I'll call you back in an hour. An hour? He wants to have time to think about it. Johnson calls him back in an hour and asks him, well, you're going to do it, right? I mean, he doesn't give him a choice. What did the one poverty say about the economic opportunity at? Say about Johnson's attitudes about his economic vision for the country?

What's his economic philosophy? It's a kind of a break with conventional ideas about what was possible. Johnson believed, sincerely believed, that you could abolish poverty. Of course, it was utopian. There's always going to be a certain amount of poverty. However, well meaning, a government and a president may be. But Johnson, being Johnson, his ambitions were always huge, larger than life. And what he wanted to do was to bring people below the poverty line above the poverty line by providing them with the tools, the wherewithal, to make a living. To, as I said, to be taxpayers rather than tax eaters. And how does this break from what the conventional wisdom was? Not about poverty, but about economics generally.

Well, economics generally was the idea that this is a free enterprise society. Let's say, fair. People make their way. If they don't have the wherewithal to do it, then you can't really help them. It goes back to the philosophy of a man named Sumner, who was a Yale philosopher in the late 19th century, who said social-dominism. People either have the goods to do it or they don't. And Johnson's attitude was, everybody can do it. If you give them the chance, opportunity, possibility, hope, open doors to them. And that Johnson wanted to give them the tools to seize upon that. And is there a sense that with the economy booming in 64 and the population growing, that it was possible to both cut taxes and grow the economy. And everyone could possibly, that this new affluence was possible for everyone.

What you have to remember is that America is an evangelical society. We believe Yankee can do. We can do anything. We can go to the moon. John Kennedy said it when he asked the country to commit itself to put a man on the moon in the coming decade. See, before the end of the decade, see. The country believes that it can do anything if it just puts its mind to it. After all, it invented the atomic bomb. This is the country that invented radio, that invented the jet plane, that it's the most enterprising and inventive society in human history. So there is this kind of faith in social engineering that you can do this. Now, the truth is that you couldn't abolish poverty, but you could certainly ameliorate it. And Johnson was right in that sense, because poverty under his Aegis was reduced from something like 22-23% to about 12-13%. Great.

On May 22nd at the University of Michigan, Johnson makes a speech. And which he lays out to the country. What happened on May 22nd? He had been a Kennedy speech writer, and he wants a label for what his administration is going to be remembered for. There was the new freedom under Woodrow Wilson, there was new nationalism under the theater Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt had the new deal, Harry Truman had the fair deal, Kennedy had the new frontier.

What is his administration be called? Goodwin suggested to him that he called the good society, and Johnson said, not enough. Lyndon Johnson being Lyndon Johnson, he wanted the great society. And so he announces that we are going to have a great society. Now, it's not enough for us just to have the material well-being, which is the affluence, which is so widespread, and we hope to have an even greater affluence and make it even more widespread with the war on poverty, you see. But we need to elevate the society to make it as great as any society in human history, and Lyndon Johnson's presidency as great as any presidency in American history. And what is the root of the revolutionary idea that he's proposing? You see prosperity and social programs, right? And he's pro-business, Johnson, too. There's something fundamental about this. Is it a Democrat who's proposing these profoundly really kind of revolutionary ideas?

Well, what's so central to all this, you see, is the role of the federal government, that he's a believer in the idea that federal activism can transform the country. It's a great country, but it can be even greater. And you use federal authority, federal power, the federal support for businesses, for educational institutions, for the existing institutions in the society to grow, prosper, become even better than they are. Tell me about the civil rights debate. There's this mode. It's past the house, but it needs to move to the graveyard of all civil rights bills, right? Why did the civil rights bills always die in the Senate? And what's different this time? How does Johnson make it happen?

The civil rights bills always die in the Senate, because southern segregationist senators control the crucial committees that are going to allow these bills to come to the floor of the Senate, and even if you have democratic majorities and enough votes from the West and Midwest and Eastern-North-Eastern senators, it's not going to happen, because the bill won't get to the Senate floor. Now, Johnson calls in Ubud Humphrey. Ubud Humphrey, who is the snorches advocate, going back to 1948, the Democratic Convention, when he lines up with the idea that the Democratic Party should become the party of civil rights, should become the party that works this revolutionary change and rates relations in the United States. Johnson calls in Ubud Humphrey, and he says, you're the general on this. You're the one who has to muster the forces. But they have to be deals, bargains. How are we going to get this done, you see?

Well, yes, there are the southerners, but what we need are, we have enough votes from liberals who are abundant enough in the Senate, but we need the votes of certain Western senators. And what he's doing is encouraging deals so that Western senators are going to get dams and projects financed by the federal government in exchange for their support in committee. And on the floor of the Senate, for civil rights. And that's the essence of it, boggains. You see, Johnson would call in Everett, Dirkson, and they'd sit kneecap to kneecap drinking bourbon and branch water. And Dirkson would say to him, Lyndon, or not Lyndon, say, Mr. President, I have a fine young man in my state of Illinois who I think deserves a judgeship. Johnson would say, we're going to look into that. Well, the deal was cut. The point is, Dirkson knew his man was going to get a judgeship, and Johnson was going to get Dirkson's vote on the major bill that was before the Senate.

But it's not that simple in terms of civil rights, because Dirkson entire sense of his reputation, his legacy is at stake. How does Johnson, John Free, how did that turn Dirkson? They know Dirkson so well. What do they do? Johnson appeals to Dirkson, his sense of history. See, Dirkson's from Illinois. He's a Lincoln Republican, a man who is very sympathetic to Abraham Lincoln, to the idea that Lincoln was the greatest president in American history, and that he did landmark things in the life of the nation. And in essence, Johnson is saying, Dirkson, you want to be remembered? You want to make a mock on history? Here's your opportunity. This is your chance. Civil rights is the greatest social revolution in the country's history, and you can be at the center of this. It's time has come sign on. He persuades Dirkson.

Dirkson is already leaning in that direction, but Johnson and Humphrey are really closing the deal. And they understand the Zego. They understand the Zego. They understand that Dirkson wants to be remembered in history, wants to be the great man in the Senate, wants to be on a plain level with an Abraham Lincoln. With the greatest, with Daniel Webster, with the greatest senators in the country's history. What did the passage mean in the end? What the passage meant in the end was that it changed the life of America, not just the South, but it changed American society, considered the following. Before that civil rights bill passed, Southerners could not run for president. Yes, Woodrow Wilson had been a southerner, but he was the governor of New Jersey.

That's how he became the Democratic nominee. Yes, Lyndon Johnson was a southerner, but he got the presidency by dint of Kennedy's death. Since Lyndon Johnson got that civil rights bill passed, how many southerners have become president? In other words, the South is integrated into the nation by civil rights. It's not only desegregating the races in the South, bringing the races together, so to speak, but it's bringing the South, it's integrating it into the rest of the nation. And the consequence is that Southerners can now run for president. It's one consequence, not just the only one. The South is a more prosperous region than it's ever been before in the country's history. You know, the South during the New Deal was the poor boy of the country. It was the most impoverished section in the country. Not anymore. It's changed, and civil rights is at the center of working this revolution.

Great. What does the disappearance of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi mean for Johnson? Why is that such a crisis for him? The killing of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi. The killing of the civil rights workers in Mississippi is a terrible moment for the country. And it's a tremendous test for Lyndon Johnson because the kind of violence that had been perpetrated by segregationists against blacks or whites who came there to try and help integrate the section overcome segregation.

What Johnson confronts now is the fact that he is a southerner, but he is going to bring the power of the federal government to bear against these lawless actions. And that it's a moment of crisis in the sense that he has to prove to the country that he is a national figure. He's not someone who is going to push this aside, put it under the rug, so to speak. And they would suspicions that he might do that. So it was a testing of his commitment to presidential executive national authority. Well, I suppose this is leading the Freedom Summer Project down there. Glad that happened, good timing.

And that's a whole new dimension of the civil rights struggle to take middle class white men and women put them in Mississippi. What's the choice that's being offered at that moment to those civil rights workers, to those people who are part of freedom? It's a very stark moment. And Moses, like Bob Moses and others are saying, in effect, we're raising the ante for the whole country too. It's another moment in 1964 where the line is being drawn in the sand. By bringing white Northerners, Midwesterners into the South to work toward integration, he was saying to those outside the South, come and see what the dangers are here, what the challenges.

But not only see it, live it, experience it, experience what blacks have been subjected to, the years and years and years. Some of you may lose your lives, some of you may experience physical abuse. But this is something that blacks across South have had to live with day in day out. They could not step across the wrong side of the street. And what it does, it nationalizes the issue. It makes it more of a national issue because if you had some black and Mississippi or Alabama who was lynched or thrown into jail without sufficient provocation, it wasn't going to be a national news story. But if some folks from the North, from the Midwest, from Detroit, from New York, New Haven, Boston, came to the South and would beat up abused or even killed as some of them were, it was national news and it nationalized that issue.

And in some way was cynically or not, was that Moses's point? Well, it was his point that the stakes have to be raised. We can't simply do this on our own. He understood that he needed white help, white support. And there was sufficient, idealistic whites in the country who appreciated the fact that they couldn't do it on their own. What's the choice that he's saying to those, to white American, and I think that these white, also to these white, don't do it. What he's saying in essence is, do you want a society that really honors its rule of law, honors its constitution, honors the proposition that all men are created equal, honors the idea that they should be equal justice under the law, honors the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Or do you want to continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that the South is a racist country, is a society of injustice in which the rule of law is not honored?

It's not American. Let's Americanize the South. In a sense that was the real issue. Okay. What's at the core of LBJ's relationship with Bobby Kennedy? What's really underneath it all? What is it about in that Johnson handle? The core of the Johnson, Bobby Kennedy antagonism is that you have two men with UG goes, consuming ambitions, combativeness, determination to get their own way, and they went way back and way back and encroaching purposes. Back into the 50s, when Bobby's brother Jack was thinking about running for president, Lyndon Johnson was standing in their way. He was a competitor and the Kennedys would determine to win. Second best was not something that the father Joe Kennedy would ever allow his sons to accept.

You got to be the best. Johnson was the same famous anecdote about LBJ. He got the first call telephone of any senator in Washington. Everterson got one for his limo and he called Johnson up and said, then I wanted to be the first one I called my new car telephone and Johnson said, can you hang on a second have my other phone is ringing. Johnson had to be top dog. Bobby Kennedy had to be top dog. It was like putting two boxers in a ring and they clashed. What happened in Harlem that summer and why was it again such a break for the country? Well, you ruined me. Just the riots. Boy killed by an off duty police officer.

It was a surge of feeling in these black communities that equal justice under the law. Now was something that was front and center and that they were not going to sit still anymore for the kind of repression abuse they felt had been visited upon them. Not only in the south, but by white police forces across the North. Yeah, Marlowe the king said he felt like the racism in Chicago was the worst he almost had ever encountered. In Detroit, in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York. These police forces were all white. You don't have significant minorities, hardly any, hardly any blacks, Puerto Ricans, Asians, very, very few. Maybe a couple of token folks, but there was a surge of feeling that now if the south was going to be integrated with a civil rights bill, what about the North?

What about housing across the... But what was it about rioting, which shocked people, I think almost as much as the Kennedy administration? The rioting was, I think, an overflowing of years of resentment and anger and frustration and poverty and a sense of being segregated. Because these ghettos in the North were in many ways every bit as segregated as the segregated cities of the south, Birmingham, Montgomery, or Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia. The northern cities were segregated and the kind of services that were provided to these ghettos were inferior.

The schools were inferior. The opportunities, the possibilities. You see, once you raise people's expectations, it energized them and it created a feeling that we're going to be heard and when something would happen that would trigger the feeling that this is just the same old repressive action African Americans went into the streets. We're not going to take it anymore and it exploded in riots and bloodshed. What's Johnson's greatest fear leaving up to his convention? Goldwater has been announced, has dominated, his convention comes away from anything with an extremist image that's even greater than before. But Johnson has a huge problem and it comes down to his sharecropping and family with him. What's happening? Why is he so afraid of this development?

Johnson is very apprehensive that two dangers loom for the Democratic Convention in the summer of, I think it was August, wasn't it? Of 1964. One is the fact that Bobby Kennedy will give a speech before the convention and it will sweep him into the vice presidency. And Johnson so positions it that Bobby Kennedy is going to give the speech remembering his brother on the last day of the convention. See, after all these issues of nominations for President and Vice President have been settled, the other is that the flamethrowers as Johnson calls them, the bomb throwers who are now part of this civil rights movement because as you asked me before, there was this divide in the civil rights movement. And there was something who said the only way you're going to get anywhere is to get in their face is to really push hard. Look, this Democratic party which Johnson heads, it's racist, it's segregationist.

What kind of delegation do you have for Mississippi? What kind of delegation do you have from these southern states? They're literally white, they're not going to give us a chance to really speak out and have a voice at the convention. So Johnson was afraid that the convention would deteriorate into a kind of melee, a riot, an eruption of, and it could cost them the presidency. He can control his own party, can control his own convention. He's overwhelmed by these radicals. Hey, Goldwater is right. What we're seeing is the radicalization of America. So that's what really worried him. Who was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and why was Fanny Wu-Hamers performance at that convention? So... Well, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was the heart of this concern that Johnson had, that they were militants, that they were not going to settle for the idea that the whites from Mississippi were going to represent all of Mississippi. After all, there was a big black population in Mississippi. They should have this say. They should be part of the delegation.

And she of Fanny Wu-Hamers was the most outspoken and she was symbolic of what this whole movement was about and what this attempt was about to gain recognition for expression for blacks. Remember, we don't remember this now. I teach students from some from the south, they don't have a clue as to what the life of that section was at the time. The notion that there could be black and white water fountains is something that just boggles their minds. It's unheard of. What gives testimony about being abused in jail live on television? It says, I question America at the end. Right. Well, in essence, what she's saying is, what kind of society is this that would treat a black woman this way? Aren't I human being? Aren't I deserving of the same rule of law that applies to whites? Why am I inferior?

And how does Johnson respond to her riveting testimony? Well, he responds with an understanding that she has a very compelling case and that he can't simply brush this aside. But he wants to, as he calls a press conference, remember, he tries to get the cameras to sort of, and it does work. Right. Right. He tries to divert attention. But what he understands is that this is all part of, see, I mean, it's all part of what happens later with all these riots and the ghettos. And Johnson's attitude is, what are they doing to me? Don't they understand I'm the best advocate? Why are they punishing me? See, he takes it very personally. What happens after Johnson successfully fends off the MFBP, the convention is by almost a success? Yep. Right after the convention, he's 70%, he's winning by 70% in the polls. And what happens to him emotionally?

Well, it's a tremendous letdown. See, he's had this high, he's at the top of his game, and to the point that he's made you but Humphrey, his running mate, what could be more emblematic of the fact that he's committed civil rights? Humphrey is the standard bearer of the civil rights movement and the senators been that way for years. So he's at the top of his game, but Johnson being Johnson, he's never satisfied. He's never convinced that the country really loves him, that the country really will give him a 70% vote, that he really, and why he's running against Goldwater, yes, he'll win. But what would have happened if he ran against Rockefeller, against the more viable middle of the road candidate? Could he have won the people really love him? I mean, he's a man of terrible insecurity. Exactly, and he actually talks to George Reddy and the Ladybird about Resolute. Yeah, well, I mean, any serious? I know. Well, emotionally, he thinks about the fact that people don't really love him.

It's really, he'll never really win their hearts and minds. And so why do this again? Why? And he talks about resigning, which of course is absurd. I mean, he wasn't going to do it, but it was almost the Catholicists for him, the kind of get Ladybird and George Reddy, people close to him to say, Mr. President, they love you, people love you, we value you. You're going to be president. The country needs you. It values you. He always needed this reassurance. He always needed this kind of ego-boost thing. He never could have gotten as far as he did without Ladybird Johnson. She was a mainstay of his political life. She gave him, she was an anchor. She gave him the wherewithal to go forward.

And she does something quite brave in 64. She goes and does a tour of the South. Ladybirds have southerned to work into the heart of Dixie. Yes. Yeah. Very funny thing to do. Because after all, Johnson is now thoroughly identified with integration, with civil rights, with using the federal government to advance all sorts of social programs. And the South is a conservative bastion, as is testified to by the fact that five of its states vote for goldwater. The solid South has been a solid democratic South for years and years, and suddenly it breaks by giving five states to this fiercely conservative ideologue from the Republican Party. It was the moment when the South was moving in that direction. And of course you know the famous Johnson comment that after he passes civil rights, he says to Bill Moyers,

I think we've given away the South to the Republican Party for as far as into the future as any of us can see. And a strong therm. Changes does something in 96 to the floor. Yeah, strong therm comes at Republican. See. He breaks with the idea that the Democratic Party has changed. This is his attitude. That's not changed. I'm the way I've always been. Democratic Party has changed. It's been captured by these radicals, by these integrationists, by these socialists, by these people who wanted repressed states rights all over again, sort of reconstructing reconstruction after the Civil War. And so I'm going to be a Republican. It's amazing, because of course the Republican Party had been the betmaw of Southern is ever since the Civil War in Lincoln and reconstruction.

Johnson was not above, we talked about the Daisy commercial. He ran a brutal campaign. Absolutely, absolutely. Johnson was someone who understood that politics was a mean-spirited, harsh, tough game. Indeed, the first time he runs for the House of Representatives and mud is being slung, and Mrs. Johnson says to his campaign manager, I don't like this mud-slinging, and he said to her, Mrs. Johnson, do you want a husband who's a congressman or a gentleman? See. Johnson understands, in politics, it is a tough, rough game. And so he plays the game that way against goldwater. Goldwater is, and he can rationalize it. Goldwater is a danger to the country. He may get the country into a nuclear war. He's going to dismantle security. He's going to take away what the new deal works so hard to put in place. So he rationalizes it. It's fine. I got to beat this guy. It's for the well-being of the country. Not just for LBJ. It's for the good of the country.

But it's a tough campaign. November, 64. How does it turn out for Landslide Lyndon? Landslide Lyndon is Landslide Lyndon. He wins a huge victory. He wins 44 of the 50 states, 61% of the popular vote, the largest numerical popular vote in the country's history. It is something that fulfills his every hope wish dream. He has won the greatest presidential margin in the country's history. Only Franklin Roosevelt won more states than he did than in 1936 when Roosevelt won 46 of the 48 states. Johnson, in some ways, is on top of the world. But Johnson, being Johnson, he says, well, we probably have about a year in which to work our will.

What he understands also, though, is that he's not only one, but he now has a house and a senate with two-thirds liberal democratic majorities. And that now he can get to work. By driving that great society, bill after bill after bill, Medicare, federal aid to education, environmental protections, consumer rights. You name it. Johnson now is going to do it. And he's going to be remembered as the greatest presidential legislator in American history. Eclipsing his papa, FDR. And what do the pundits say about goldwater and American conservatism? The whole idea after Johnson wins this massive election is that this is the ultimate repudiation of Hoover conservatism. The conservatives are kaput. This is a dead letter now, but they don't measure is the fact that the background is a guy named Ronald Reagan.

It gives a famous speech. Well, not famous at that moment during the campaign in behalf of goldwater. Reagan is a charming, amiable Hollywood type who had positioned himself to work in Republican politics. It's used to be a Democrat, a liberal, one-worlded Democrat in fact, but it become Republican. But what will happen, of course, is that people will very quickly come to feel that Johnson is engaged in overreach, overreach on the war in poverty, overreach on the great society, and most of all overreach on Vietnam. And he destroys his credibility. And what Johnson has in his second term, the most destructive thing was the credibility gap.

People start telling the joke, how do you know when Lyndon Johnson's telling the truth when he rubs his chin, pulls his ear low, he's telling the truth, when he begins to move his lips, you know he's lying. Light at the end of the tunnel, get behind the war, get on the team and slowly but surely his popularity, his credibility, his standing erodes. And what's coming, what no one really stops to recognize is that one of the worst candidates in the history of presidential election, very goldwater, 138% of them. It sets up Richard Nixon, the Betmoire of Liberal Democrats, to run in 1968. Who would have believed in 1964 that Richard Nixon could possibly make a comeback and win the election in 1968? This was the last thing from people's minds. It speaks volumes about the uncertainties of American politics.

The end of the year. What happened to the consensus that he used to be in place at the beginning of 1964? Well, by the end of the year, there's the feeling that Johnson is in the cat bird seat. After all, he's gotten the tax bill passed, he's gotten civil rights through, he's won the biggest election victory in presidential history. He's got an agenda, he's got a program called the Great Society of War on Poverty, he's got huge majorities in both houses of Congress.

It's utopia. There's a bright future that Johnson is going to be able to exploit to use to the country's advantage. Big majorities. But underneath, is there another story? Underneath is the fact that there's always an undistory in American politics, see? Even when abortion fades from view, it's still an undistory in American politics, and that's true of American conservatism. Even when the liberals are at the height of their game, or even when the conservatives are at the height of the game, the other side is the undistory. It doesn't go away, see? And so, yes, goldwater lost, but waiting in the wings is Ronald Reagan.

Waiting in the wings is Richard Nixon, and their day is going to come. What is significant about the choices on all of these various things that we've talked about from civil rights to politics, to popular culture even, to the counter-culture? What's significant about choices that were made in American society? What's significant about 1964 is that it brought into play the oldest divide in American history. Between those who believe federal authority, centralized power, is an evil, is something that should always be shunned, avoided. Held it on its length, reduced to the smallest common denominator, see? And those who believe, as a consequence of the progressive movement of the early 20th century, of the Roosevelt New Deal, of Harry Truman's Fair Deal, of now Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, that the federal government plays an absolutely vital central role in the life of the nation, that you can't dismiss it. You can't go back to some kind of romantic idea of a small government with no real authority, impassive presence like a Calvin Coolidge, see?

So the divide in the country was there, and in a sense it's muted for the moment by the fact that one side wins such a big victory, but it's not gone, and it comes back roaring back over the failure in Vietnam, roaring back over Johnson's overreach, and promising more than he could deliver on the war in poverty, on the Great Society, on welfare, on black rights, the fact that you have the explosion of ghetto riots, that you are short, this issue of the racial divide in the country was over, with civil rights, and then voting rights in 65. It's there.

Won't go away. Why is it important today to look back at 64, in a world of red and blue states? It's important because historians like me got to have work. But in terms of the world we live in today, the polyglot, gender, feminine and steep, is a bestseller in 64, but also politically in the world of a blue and red state, how do we look back at 64 and what lessons can we learn from? The lesson that needs to be learned from 1964 is that the country is always going to be divided over the full extent, the importance of the role of federal authority in the life of the nation. And that, despite the fact that you go so far in one direction as a consequence of Johnson's victory in 64, it by no means suggests that there is an ultimate solution, an ultimate answer.

The country lives with, will continue to live with, in 64 it lived with, a fundamental divide between, one can describe them as conservatives and liberals, but that at bottom, even though the country at one point may swing far to the left or far to the right, it always seems to come back more or less to the center. Because it's essentially, I think, a centrist, slightly writer, a centric country. See, there was once a story by the name of David Potto who wrote a famous book called People of Plenty. It's an affluent society. People don't want to risk the material well-being that so many people enjoy in this country. They don't like radical solutions. So you have red states and blue states, but it also speaks to the division of power, the balance of power in the country. See, and the fact that the founding fathers believed in the idea that you needed a balance, that one side had to balance against the other, that you didn't want to go too far in one direction or the other.

It could lead to bloodshed and that when you have this kind of balance and that the Congress vies with the judiciary and the executive and the executive vies with the other two branches, and then we have a fourth branch called the media now, the press, the journalists, who play an additional role in this balancing act in our society. So there are times when things do get out of balance, but it doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, because the country does have a tendency to move back toward the center. Or may shift way over to the right and then it'll come back toward the center and back toward the left. I mean, see these movements, author Schlesinger used to write about the rhythms of American history, see, and that you would go through periods of liberalism, conservatism, and then the other side come back and have its day in court. I think we're done.

We're never done. Let's do room tone. 30 seconds of room tone for Robert Dalek starting now. Robert, thank you very much.