Lyndon Johnson was born in August 1908, the son of the Texas Populist Sam Johnson. Sam Johnson had been a 6 term member of the Texas state legislature. He supported the 8 hour day, criticized the Ku Klux Klan, and voted to tax corporations and regulate utilities and inspect food. However Sam Houston lost the family farm (about 1920), as cotton prices fell from 44 cents a pound to only 6 cents a pound (Schulman, p. 7-8) and the family had to move to town. Johnson City was a small town of 323 people, in east Texas, with no electricity or indoor plumbing, and almost no African Americans or Mexicans. Sam Houston was disgraced, and had to work on a road crew building highways. In 1924 Lyndon Johnson graduated from high school, and in 1927 went on to Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College, in San Marcos, the only college he could afford. Interrupting his college career, Johnson became a teacher and principal at the Welhausen Elementary School, in Cotulla. It was all Mexican. In 1930 Johnson received his B.S. degree, and in 1931 Representative Richard Kleburg hired him as his congressional secretary in Washington, DC. In 1935 LBJ was named state director of the National Youth Admin, for Texas. Under his tenure, the NYA in Texas provided funding for schooling and training for nearly 10,000 young Texans, and jobs for 10,000 others.
In 1937 LBJ won a special election to fill the vacant Congressional seat of James Buchanan. LBJ was an ardent supporter of FDR (see photo, p. 18). Johnson secured $14 million for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), to construct several dams in the east Texas hill country. In 1933 90 percent of farms still operated without electricity. The LCRA projects brought electricity to the hill country. After the attack on Pearl harbor, LBJ went on active duty with the Navy, and served on the crew of a B-26 bomber in New Guinea until July 1942.
As the public mood became more conservative in 1946, under Truman, Congressman Johnson shifted to the right. As a Southerner, he found it politically expedient to vote against civil rights proposals put forward by Truman. And he voted for the Taft-Hartley Act that placed restrictions on the labor movement. Johnson voted conservatively on these issues because his constituents were conservative, not out of strong personal conviction. In 1948 LBJ narrowly "won" an election to the Senate (by 87 possibly fraudulent votes). He served in the Senate from 1948-1960 (two terms). The outgoing LBJ made it his business to get to know everyone in Washington. In 1953 he was elected the Senate Minority Leader (Democrats at that time were the minority party). In January 1955 he was elected as the Senate Majority Leader, but in July suffered a heart attack. He steered an increase in the minimum wage through the Senate (the first one in 6 years).
Johnson (p. 40) walked a tightrope between northern liberalism and Texas (southern) conservatism. On economic matters not related to oil and gas, he joined with most liberal northern Democrats in the Congress. Senator Johnson supported aid to education, a higher minimum wage, rent controls, public housing and increased farm subsidies. But as a Senator, he opposed or compromised away every piece of civil rights legislation proposed by Truman and Eisenhower in the 1950s. LBJ was not a segregationist, but he knew that his constituents were conservative and so he took the "path of least resistance." Politically he did what was expedient, on the issue of civil rights, down to 1963.
In March 1956 more than 100 Southern Congressmen and Senators issued the Southern Manifesto. It denounced the Brown decision, and argued that segregation was a matter of states rights, and the Federal Government had no jurisdiction in the matter. All of the Southern Senators signed the Manifesto—except for three. The three were Al Gore, Sr. (Dem-Tennessee), Estes Kefauver (Dem-Tennessee), and Lyndon Johnson. LBJ could argue that as Majority Leader he needed to be neutral. He also realized that of he appeared to be a Southern regional fanatic, he would never be able to appeal to liberal voters in the North, as a national figure. And LBJ wanted to be president one day. If he alienated the northern wing of the Democratic Party, he could never become president. LBJ personally opposed racial segregation, but before 1957 did not see the political utility of taking risks, given the conservative views of his constituents. In 1957 Southern Democrats launched a filibuster against Eisenhower’s civil rights bill. Johnson brokered a compromise. The bill was intended to toughen the laws requiring compliance with court ordered desegregation. The bill was watered down to provide for a jury trial for anyone accused of violating a court order in a civil rights case. In the South, this would mean that violators would go before racist judges and all-white juries, and so could break the law in the confidence that juries would acquit them. This made the bill next to useless, and the Southerners in turn agreed to end their filibuster. This next to useless bill was purely symbolic, however it was the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, and LBJ could posture as a moving force in securing its passage.
Johnson disliked people who were passionately committed to abstract ideals. Instead, he was a bargainer and negotiator. He was a master of the "backroom deal" or horse-trade, which was practical politics.
COLD WAR LIBERALISM (recap)
After the end of World War II, Cold War liberalism emerged. It was a curious hybrid or mixture. It combined
Liberal support for an anti-communist
foreign policy (containment)
tough on military spending/defense
retention of New Deal Welfare state
(Social Security) limit spread of
minimum wage communism
advocacy of civil rights
The far right wing of the Republican Party (ultra-conservative) hated the New Deal, and wanted to repeal it. It wanted to abolish Social Security, opposed unions and the minimum wage. Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950 spoke of twenty years of treason, referring to the New Deal.
recall previous lectures on global containment of communism
THE LESSON OF 1949: WEAK ON COMMUNISM
In 1949, when the Communists came to power in China, Republicans crucified Truman and the Democrats as weak and soft on communism. They said that Truman and the Democrats had "lost" china to communism. LBJ learned that there would be hell to pay, politically, for anyone who appeared weak on communism. Political success required that politicians appear "tough" on communism, and politicians tried to out-do one another to prove who was tougher on communism, or who was more anti-communist than whom (like who was holier than whom). The detonation of an atomic bomb by the Soviets in 1949, and the Rosenburg trial, added fuel to American fears, anxieties and insecurities.
McCarthyism
In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy alleged that there were communists in the State Dept. and in the government. Since Truman was a Democrat, these accusations reflected on the Democrats. The impression was given that the Democrats were weak on communism, while Republicans like Richard Nixon gained reputations as relentless anti-communists with impeccable credentials.
THE LESSON OF KOREA
Also, during the Korean War (1950-1953), when MacArthur advanced to the Yalu River on the border with China, China intervened. For LBJ and others, the lesson that they learned was that if one fought a ground war in Asia, adjacent to the border with China, it could and would intervene with MILLIONS of troops.
Basically, until about 1967, even American LIBERALS were locked in a mindset of global combat with the "evil" Soviets. Americans were afraid that if we did not stand up to the Soviets and Chinese, we would be practicing the same kind of appeasement that Britain and France had practiced with Hitler in the 1930s. American feared that there was a worldwide conspiracy directed from the Kremlin to take over the world, and if one country "fell" its neighbors would fall too, like dominoes. If the US "lost" south Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia would fall, and then Thailand and Malaysia and Indonesia, and then Burma and India and Australia would be in peril, and before you knew it the communists would be sailing into Japan and San Francisco. Further, if the US did not show that it would stand and fight, the Soviets would be encouraged to think that they "try us" in Europe and the Middle East, and we wouldn’t fight there either. Our credibility would be destroyed.
Liberals were terrified of appearing weak on communism, and they clung desperately to anti-communism until 58,000 American troops had died in Vietnam.
NEW HYSTERIA (new material)
The Eisenhower Administration ended up impaled on its own sword. In October 1957 the Soviets launched a satellite into a high altitude orbit. It was called Sputnik (Little Traveler by some accounts, The East according to others. The most authoritative sources say that Sputnik means Fellow Traveler*. It beeped on a radio frequency that coul dbe heard on shortwave radios, and caused a panic in the US when it was detected on radar. A cartoon of the time depicted people running because the sky was falling (like chicken little). Americans were aghast that we were "falling behind" the Soviets. Sputnik aroused fears of a new Pearl Harbor, this time from space. Americans again felt vulnerable, and the possibility of attack by Russian missiles created hysteria. The Eisenhower Administration was blamed for being asleep at the switch. The US responded with the creation of NASA.
FRANCIS GARY POWERS
Then, in May 1960, the Soviets shot down a reconnaissance or spy plane, 1200 miles inside the Soviet Union. At first the US denied that it was a spy plane. We said that it was collecting weather data and strayed off course. But the plane was 1200 miles inside Russia. Our "cover story" fell apart. It was learned that the US had been conducting secret spy flights since 1956. The US was caught in a lie, and the Soviets had the U-2 plane and the pilot. It was embarrassing, and made us look weak and inept. John Kennedy would use this incident to suggest that the Eisenhower Administration was not quite up to the job of dealing effectively and successfully with the Soviets. Kennedy said that the Eisenhower Administration was not "tough enough." Taking the stance of being tough with our opponents wins elections. Eisenhower and the Republicans had used this against Truman and Adlai Stevenson (the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956). Now Kennedy stole a page from the Republican "play book." He tried to show that he was tougher on communism than Nixon and Eisenhower were. He beat the Republicans at their own political game. He "out-Republicaned the Republicans," and "out-conservatived the conservatives."
1960 ELECTION
In 1960 LBJ wanted the Democratic nomination for president. John Kennedy also wanted it. In the end, Kennedy won the nomination. Lyndon Johnson of Texas and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had also sought the Democratic nomination. But he was controversial because he was Irish and Catholic. When JFK won the West Virginia primary, in an overwhelmingly Protestant Border State, this proved that he was a viable candidate in the South. One factor in the win in West Virginia was an endorsement from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr, son of the late president. JFK said privately that it was as if the son of God had told the Protestants that it was okay to vote for a Catholic. To shore up his support in the South, after he won the Democratic nomination, Kennedy chose LBJ as his vice presidential running mate. JFK barely won the election. He won by less than one percent of the vote, although in the Electoral College he won 303 votes to Nixon’s 219, and 15 for Harry Byrd (mississippi and 6 of the 11 electoral votes of Alabama) . Without states such as Texas and Illinois, New York and PA JFK would not have won the general election. Nixon carried almost every state west of Missouri (except Texas, New Mexico and Nevada), and won Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Iowa! JFK’s victory was razor thin. He won by only 118,000 votes (out of 68 million votes cast) and carried Illinois (27 Electoral votes) by only 8,856 votes. He carried Texas (24 electoral votes) by 46,000 votes. Without these states he would not have won. It was also the case that many white Protestants in South Carolina voted Republican or for a third party candidate (Harry Byrd of Virginia), but Kennedy carried the state (8 electoral votes) by 10,000 votes with the help of the African American votes.
JFK ran as a Cold Warrior. He turned the tables on the Republicans. He alleged that there was a "missile gap," and that the US was falling behind the Soviets in the number of nuclear weapons. This was not accurate, because the US had far more bombers, and also missiles that could be launched from Polaris submarines. According to the CIA, in 1960 Russia had only 35 inter-continental ballistic missiles and 200 long-range bombers, most of which could not reach the US. . In Feb. 1961 the CIA estimated that the Soviets had 35 ICBM’s, and 200 long range bombers. The US had 16 Atlas ICBMs, 60 Thor medium range missiles (in Britain), 32 secret Polaris missiles on nuclear submarines, and 600 long range bombers that could be refueld in the air to reach any target in the Soviet Union. The US also had 30 Jupiter medium range missiles being installed in Italy, and 15 Jupiter missiles in Turkey, less than 100 miles from the Soviet border (Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, p. 59). The missile gap was a myth. If anything, the US was ahead of the Soviets. They lagged behing us. THEY had a missile gap!
But the myth of the missile gap was a convenient public relations ploy for a Cold Warrior politician seeking to frighten the nation and trying to strike a pose as tough on communism and strong on national defense. And the data on the Polaris missiles, at the time, was secret, so the public did not know, although Kennedy had been briefed. And Nixon and Eisenhower could not reveal the info without breaching national security secrets.
JFK looked young and handsome and vigorous, whereas in the televised debates Nixon looked worn and haggard and seemed not to have shaved well, and visibly perspired. He exuded as much charm and trust as a used car salesman. To repeat, in effect Kennedy "out-Republicaned" the Republicans. He "out-conservatived" the conservatives. Whereas Kennedy looked, vigorous, young and "strong on defense", and showed that he wanted to stand up to the Soviets, Eisenhower and Nixon looked old, tired, sick, feeble. The people loved Ike as a "grandfather." But now they wanted a young, virile warrior-leader who would make them feel strong again, in command again. Kennedy hid the fact that he suffered from Addison's disease, and took injections of cortisone to kill the pain.
JFK AS PRESIDENT
The great crises of Kennedy’s administration were the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961) and the Cuban Missile crisis (October 1962) and the racial unrest in Birmingham, Alabama (spring 1963).
BAY OF PIGS FIASCO (April 1961) See more detailed lecture entitled Bay of Pigs
JFK inherited from Eisenhower a secret plan, a covert operation, by the CIA, to sponsor an invasion of Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. Castro had come to power in a revolution in Jan. 1959. The US did not like Castro because he had confiscated sugar cane plantations and cattle ranches and oil refineries owned by Americans and American corporations, worth $1 billion. When the US threatened to cut off economic aid, Castro signed an agreement with the Soviet Union instead.
The American media reported in April 1962 that an invasion of Cuba was planned (but did not say where it would occur, or what the exact date would be). Nevertheless, Castro knew the Americans were coming. The US sent planes to bomb Cuban airfields and positions, the night before the April 16 invasion, but they did not succeed in doing as much damage as was hoped. The Kennedy administration hoped that when 1600 anti-Castro Cubans were landed at the Bay of Pigs, this would lead to an uprising of the Cuban people. These hopes were disappointed. The anti-Castro exiles hoped that the US would send in air strikes. But the official US position was that the US had nothing to do with the "event," it was the anti-Castro Cubans acting on their own. Kennedy's military advisors suggested that the plan could work even without American air strikes. The great difficulty for Kennedy was that the US could not openly provide air cover, and at the same time insist that it was a purely indigenous event and the US "had nothing to do with it." Air strikes would blow our "cover story" and expose our story as a lie.
The exiles were cut to pieces on the beach and captured. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a fiasco. The US got caught in a lie. And the US looked inept. After this Kennedy felt that he could not trust his military advisors and the CIA. kennedy took responsibility for the failure, and the public forgave him. But at the time he looked young and inexperienced. Some of Kennedy's closest civilian advisors also came to suspect that the CIA and the military just wanted to get a conflict started, even if they knew the covert operation would not work. Perhaps they calculated that once bullets began to fly, if the mission was in danger of failure the president would be forced to intervene openly (this comes across in the film 13 Days, in the character of Kenny O'Donnell).
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (October 1962)
Castro and the Soviets believed that the US would attempt another invasion of Cuba, this time openly. To deter this, the Soviets began to install intermediate range missiles in Cuba. On October 14, 1962 the US learned that the Soviets were installing the missiles (24 medium range missiles, with a range of 1,000 miles; and 18 intermediate range missiles, with a range of 2,000 miles). Kennedy's military advisors urged a pre-emptive air strike to "take out" the missiles. JFK decided instead on a naval blockade, called a quarantine, and the US gathered 250,000 troops in Florida, in readiness for an invasion. The US Government demanded that the Soviets remove the missiles, QUICKLY, and warned it would invade Cuba if the Soviets did not remove the missiles. The US warned that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons, if necessary, in any confrontation with the Soviets. In the end the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles, and Kennedy publicly pledged that the US would never invade Cuba. Privately, the US agreed to remove some American Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
The world had come to the brink of nuclear war. This terrifying episode caused the US and Soviet governments to realize that the leaders of the two countries needed to be able to communicate quickly in a crisis. After the Missile Crisis, the "hot line" was established: direct telephone communication between the American and Soviet leaders. And in June 1963 the US and the Soviet Union initialed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It banned atmospheric and underwater nuclear testing (but not underground testing).
(More on Civil Rights in another lecture)
In June 1963, after the famous campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, JFK asked Congress for a civil rights act to end segregation in places of public accommodation, and to end racial discrimination in employment. In November 1963 he was assassinated, and LBJ became president. LBJ finished the task of pushing Kennedy’s civil rights bill through congress, and it passed in June 1964.
The years 1961-1963 were excruciating for LBJ. He hated being sidelined in the vice presidency. He was waiting his turn. The advisors around JFK condescended to LBJ, in some cases showing open contempt for him. They mocked and ridiculed him as a stupid, crude, ignorant, redneck Southerner. The Kennedy circle consisted of well bred, Harvard educated people who regarded themselves as intelligent, elite and refined. LBJ was Al Bundy. Kennedy himself did not mistreat LBJ, but neither did he pay particular attention to his advice. Men are buried in the vice presidency. LBJ was miserable; he felt as if he had been buried alive.