American Experience; 1964; Interview with Robert Caro, Author, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, part 3 of 4

I didn't even think. And Johnson made men. Act, I didn't write. Yeah. Well, you know, some columnist in 1964 writes, Jack Kennedy's words were designed to make men think. Lyndon Johnson's words are designed to make men act. And you know you feel the atmosphere of changing in Washington in 1964. You feel Congress realizing they may have been able to bully Kennedy, they may have been able to stop Truman, even to stop Roosevelt, but they suddenly were confronted with something new. And they knew that Johnson could do it because he had done it to them. Yeah, we can't go there, but the month of amendment is the moment when power begins to flow back to the White House, which is such a great thing. And I love the fact that you do that. Looking back over the first six months, I just want to talk about the Civil Rights Act itself.

OK. It's getting past. OK. Looking back over the first six months, why does Johnson have reason for confidence compared to January 1st? I mean, he's had a pretty good run up until June, hasn't he? Yes. How many of this has summarized for me will have success when he's there? Well, he gets the war on poverty started. How does he do that? What's a stroke of legislative genius? What do we mean when we say Johnson is a genius? He wants to have a war on poverty, and the advises come back to him when we say we want demonstration programs. We've never tried this before in a small number of cities. Johnson says, you don't own the state in Congress. You can't pay us a bill that affects just a small number of cities. You've got to have, because too many congressmen don't have a vested interest in it. You've got to have a bill big enough and broad enough so Congress will go along as a whole.

He says, I was convinced that we couldn't have a small bill and get it through Congress. I could get a big bill through Congress. That's great. What does he have to gain from a Civil Rights Bill? And what does he have to lose? He's got a tremendous amount to lose. Well, yes, he's going to alienate the South forever. I strike that. He says to someone, when the Civil Rights Bill passes, we've just caused the Democratic Party the South for the next 40 years, which basically has turned out to be true. He knows he's alienating the South. More than that, he knows he's alienating these men in Congress. The Russell's, the bird, the committee chairman. You know, in 1964, I have this right, of the 16 standing committees in the South, southerners, or their allies, who are chairman of nine of them. All the parties in the South, you mean in the Senate? I'm sorry.

Of the nine of the 16 great standing committees of the Senate, southerners or their allies are chairman of nine of them. They have the power. If you're not with them on something, you'll find your appropriations don't get a proof or a damn you need in your district, and neither will you, a big bill. So how facing the impossible, what are the challenges to getting it passed? I mean, one thing you make a really good point is it doesn't allow the bill to get held hostage. Yes. And he has to figure out how he's going to get it done. And the clock is ticking. It's an election year. Yes. But then you have to go back to the key thing happens in 63 with, you know, where the discharge petition. And you don't want to go into that. I know. So let me try to pick it up. I love this idea of Johnson, just basically saying, people saying it's impossible. It is. He says, all right, let's get started. You know, and he says, go that way. He says, the first thing is you can't have any other major

legislation. And he's told Kennedy this. He says, if I wanted to pass a civil rights bill, I wouldn't introduce it until I had my other children, my other major bills. Locked in key, safely down in the cell, a safely passed. Because if you don't do that, the South is not going to let those bills pass until you withdraw civil rights. And that, listen, that's what had been happening for almost the century. Johnson says, when we put the civil rights bill on the floor, I'm not introducing another bill. No other piece of legislation is going to be there. They can filibuster until hell freezes over. He says, I'm not putting another bill on the floor. Then he knows, he says, we can't have any compromise. Now, compromise is on, you know, you compromise. On civil rights, compromise was always a southern tactic. Because when you have a compromise, the house passes a bill, you change it a little bit to make a compromise in the center.

That makes it a different bill. What happens when it's a different bill? Has to go back to the House of the Passage. And then, or it has to be reconciled in a conference committee. Conference committees are something no one writes about. But they're held behind closed doors. There's no reporters. You can emasculate a bill. You can change a bill. And the South always had the key people on the conference committees. So Johnson said, no compromises. You know, Everett Dirkson, the Republican leader, he goes to the White House on April 29th. And he goes in blustering. He says, you know, the president says there's not going to be any compromises. He says, well, in my humble opinion, I think, is the phrase. In my humble opinion, he's not going to get that bill without compromises. So Dirkson goes in. And the reporters are waiting outside. Dirkson comes out afterwards and has a press conference. He says, what did you and the president talk about civil rights? And Dirkson says something like it didn't come up very much. We don't know what Johnson said to Everett Dirkson. But Johnson says, no compromises. No wheels.

And, you know, he has a great Johnson phrase. No wheels and no deals on this bill. Great. How long did it take them? And you have a great phrase, sacrifice his prayers and persuasion. Just help me understand, he and Humphrey are in the trenches. And what do they do? Well, part of it is a very nebulous thing, you know. He calls in Humphrey. You know, part of it, Johnson, you say, Johnson was a leader of men, and he was a reader of men. And Humphrey says about this conversation, about civil rights. He sized me up perfectly. He had read you, but Humphrey. He had read them all the way through. And he says to Humphrey, you know, you liberals have noble intentions. But you always fail, because you don't know the rules. Well, you don't know the importance of always being there for the quorum calls, so the South

is able to do one thing or another, because you don't have enough people there. And Humphrey says, he knew just how to get to me. He got to me. And then at the end of that, he stood up. He said, and his towering immensity and intensity, that's Humphrey's phrase. He towered over me and says, whatever you need me to do, I'll do. And he gives Humphrey strategic advice. You know, he says that you rely on the quorum calls. You've got to have your men there. So Humphrey devises these strategies. He has a rotating. They're always four senators. Presence of the South can't pull one of their deals. And he says to Humphrey, you know, the key is ever durks. Now, of course, that's not a great piece of insight. They're not enough democratic votes to pay us the bill, because there's a substantial group of Democrats from the South. He needs Republican votes. But he says, Humphrey goes on, meet the praises. Make Humphrey, make durks in the center.

Make him feel he's part of history, you know? And Humphrey does that. We make, or he goes on, meet the press. He says, I'm sure every durks, and he says, I'll not agree to this. Humphrey goes on, meet the press. And says, I'm sure the senator from Illinois, that great senator from Illinois, will agree to it, you know? Johnson calls him and says, you did right. That was just the way to do it. So he works, and Johnson, you know, at the end, it's the little things that you never read about. He needs Western votes on the Civil Rights Act. So who does he call, have called the Western senators the secretary of the interior? Because the secretary of the interior is in charge of the dams and the reclamation projects and the irrigation projects and the mining rights, which is so important to the West. So there are other key figures, Robert Kennedy, Everett Dirksen, you, but Humphrey, in the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. And Johnson knows he can appear to be directing it because the senate always resists

a presidential interference. But he's active in every stage of it. And you know, when he signs that bill on, you know, he has to rush it through. It has to be passed before the senate is all leave for the Republican Convention. That bill is signed just eight days before the Republican Convention begins and the political season begins. And you lose, it has to go over to another Congress. And that scene, when Lyndon Johnson, the southerner, is sitting there, signing that bill. And you look at the people, you look at Robert Kennedy's face, you know, he's thinking, this is my brother's, you can almost see it. I mean, he said other things so you know what he was thinking. This is my brother's bill. This isn't Lyndon Johnson's bill. And he's thinking about, I mean, the say-adness in his face, if you look at that photograph, at the moment Johnson is signing, everyone is looking at Johnson except one person, Lady Bird Johnson.

She's looking down the road, down the front road. At Robert Kennedy, we have an expression of such pity on her face. You can see written in Robert Kennedy's face. This was my brother's bill. But you also see in that audience the senators and the representatives that Johnson had brought along one by one, the people who had fought for the bill. It's one of the, that sign of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an instance in American history in which America expressed in legislative form, writing it, had wrote into the books of law, and he signed it into the books of law in that ceremony, compassion, equality, a feeling that a job of the country is to bring the poorest people in the excluded, to dispossessed of the earth into the rest of the country. That's the moment when he signs it.

I want to, I'll say one other thing was, I'm sure you can't use, but it's not on film. You need to take a sip of water just before you get there. That's great. You know, you asked, I should have said it before. What was in Lyndon Johnson's heart? What was in his heart to me was expressed in a moment that's captured on no film, on the day of Jack Kennedy's funeral. Johnson speaks, after the funeral, he comes back to the White House, and he speaks to the governors of all the states who had come to Washington for the funeral. And at one point, he says to them, about the Civil Rights Act, about why we need. He says, we as a country have to get to a point where we can say to the Negroes in the South, in the Mexicans in California, and the Orientals on the West Coast, and the Johnson's and Johnson's City, that we're all part of the same country. Think what he's saying there.

The Negroes in the South, the Orientals on the West Coast, and the Johnson's of Johnson's City. That's him, that's his family. He is saying to them, unscripted. It pours out of him, there's no text. I am one of you. I am part of the poor. I am part of the dispossessed of the earth, and it's going to be my job to bring all these people together in America. That's what Lyndon Johnson was trying to do. Excellent. That's great, great way of putting it. I love that scene. I remember you, you read about the Johnson's of Johnson's City, it's his grave. He doesn't. He turns to the audience, and after he signs the bill, and he says, my fellow Americans, we've come to a time of testing. He knows that this is not necessarily going to go smoothly. Yes. What is he, what is he forci, is that?

Well, I think he foresees that enforcing this, getting the country, not enforcing, so getting the country to go along with it is going to be very, very hard. But I think he also is expressing a determination that hard as it's going to be, he's going to do it. But you know, I have to say, even if you're not going to use it, that I am telling you one side of Lyndon Johnson, and that's what you're asking me about. But you know, hovering over this entire year is this shadow. It's Vietnam. Johnson may be pushing this shadow back with all his skill. He's keeping it tamped down, no dramatic moves, no sending of troops to Vietnam, right?

No increased bombing of Vietnam. He may be holding this shadow back, but it's there over everything that he's doing. And as soon as this year comes to an end, it's going to be in January of 65. That shadow is going to come to dominate everything that we're saying that he's doing here on the domestic front. Vietnam is going to come as a deeper and deeper shadow over it, gobbling up the resources of the government that otherwise would have been spent on these programs, dividing the country. All this is also being tamped down in 64, but not for long. Right, yeah, he's being stopped amongst haunted by this thing. You talk about him with such a kind of level of psychological insight that I don't know whether this is all going to feel a little redundant,

but let's just talk about Johnson's mind for a second. How do you explain the extraordinary contradictions that are everywhere present in it? I mean, I know that's the most simplistic question you can ask about Johnson, but it's essential to them. Well, Johnson is a man of great contradictions, violent contradictions. When you're writing about him, you always think one minute he does something so noble that you really feel the compassion and the nobility. The next thing he does something so ruthless and cruel that you can't hardly believe that he did it, you know? So he's a man of these violent and contrasts within himself. There was a crew of his entire life. He had these mood swings from high to low, you know? And you see him trying for noble means, noble acts.

You see him trying for noble ends, a war on poverty, a head start program, civil rights. You also see him using the most ruthless means to get them. I mean, you know, the story of Lyndon Johnson's life is like a study in the relationship between ends and means. If you spent your career, I think brilliant face prescribing him this other career. Where does 1964 dip in the story of Lyndon Johnson? One point you say. 1964 is the high point. He, all his life, he is wanted to be president. He is president and he's returned to office in 1964 by the greatest popular majority in the history.

They used to lay off about him stealing an election by 87 votes called them landslide, Lyndon mockingly. Now he is landslide, you know? The country, he has this great triumph. You cannot imagine a greater triumph than a president winning by the greatest popular majority in history. He has a vision for the country. And as 1964 comes to a close, you really feel this vision, the war on poverty, the great society, it's starting to move. That's the high point. It's very, very soon after the end of this year of triumph. You're going to have the tragedy of Vietnam start to come more and more, the shadow over everything else and over him and finally casting his programs and him into the shadow of this war in Asia that don't forget in the 1964 campaign.

Maybe we should have said this. During the 1964 campaign, he promises that he will not send American boys to Asia. You will have on tape his exact words. Well, I don't have the exact answer. This is not, we will never send American boys nine or 10,000 miles away to fight a war in the jungles of Asia. That is in fact what he's going to do the next year, you know? But in 1964, these shadows have successfully, from his standpoint, been pushed aside to lay after the election until he wins this great try. If you look at Lyndon Johnson's life, if you look at the year in 1964, you say here is a presidential campaign where the American people give this overwhelmed vote of confidence to a president. And that's a big part of the year.

And yet what's interesting is that he's so far ahead of the polls that there's never been more of a slam dunk outcome. And yet he keeps piling on him because he wants that thing. But he's playing a really tough game. The Daisy commercial. I'm not going to say yes. I mean, I think all the other people talk about the campaign. Yeah, that's fine. You say that in many ways, 64 was Johnson at not only triumphant, but at his best. Let me understand what you mean. Okay, can I go to the take a break and go to the next. So we're talking about Johnson in 1964. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson be strides the American political scene

like a colossus. He wins the greatest landslide in American political history, presidential history. He passes the Civil Rights Act. He gets started the war on poverty and the great society. In that year is a year of simply one triumph after another for him. It's hard to see as that year ends. He's a figure just so immensely triumphant that it's hard to believe how no sooner is the year going to end almost. The things are going to change so dramatically. He has wanted, I just, I just want you to have me. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson is where he has wanted to be all his life. He has always wanted to be president since he was a little boy.

Now he is president. He is president by the greatest popular vote in history. He's always sought for affection, always sought for signs of approval. He's been given that approval. When you talk about the beginning of the year, the critical moment for the nation, and I think we can flash back a little in 1963 if we need to. Okay. And you describe Johnson as being absolutely at his best and at a moment when the country needed something to be as good as he was. I don't really understand that.