THE AGE OF NIXON

A review of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008)

(Rating 4 of 5)

There is the Great Man Theory of history and there is Social (bottom up) Theory history.  Rick Perlstein gives us both with Nixonland .  He tells the story of how America seemed in the middle of a ‘liberal consensus’ with the Johnson landslide in 1964, and how the tide changed into a reverse landslide in 1972.   Nixon's reelection and even set the stage for greater conservative triumphs in the 1980s.  In Nixonland the reader views a transformation of the United States from the top to the bottom. 

In 1964, Johnson had crushed Goldwater in the election.  Since the rise of the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt, the liberals had reigned.  Even the one Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been a moderate and, in some ways, an open liberal. But that liberal empire was about to fall, first the Vietnam War would tear the liberal alliance apart, then the extremism of various factions combined with a social white backlash against the progress of minorities at perceived expensive of themselves.

There is a lot enjoyed about this book, Perlstein doesn’t write in a ‘professional’ manner; he writes more like he is just talking to you.  (Which, I find refreshing.) With that said it is not always an easy read, for he often speaks using cultural allusions that if you don’t catch you might be a little lost. I really like how Perlstein refers to the movies of the time period and how each influenced a particular side in the culture war.  Good examples were Bonnie and Clyde influencing the young radicals and Patton influencing conservatives like Nixon.  (Although, I thought Perlstein’s statement about Planet of the Apes was a bit off.)  

      

“The lies went back to Harry Truman, the article explained.  Military aid to France had ‘directly involved’ the United States in preserving a European colony; the Eisenhower administration played ‘a direct role in the ultimate breakdown in the Geneva settlement’ and the cancellation of free elections scheduled for 1956. (President Nixon always said honoring Geneva was the reason we had to continue the war.) Kennedy—this in the Pentagon’s study’s words—transformed the ‘limited-risk gamble’ he had inherited into a ‘broad commitment.’  Lyndon Johnson laid plans for full-fledged war as early as the spring of 1964—campaigning against Barry Goldwater with the line ‘We seek no wider war.’

            What became known as the Pentagon Papers—three thousand pages of historical narrative and four thousand pages of government documents—was shocking to all but the most hardened antiwar cynics.  The expansion into genuine warfare began, the Times summarized, ‘despite the judgment of the government’s intelligence community that the measures would not cause Hanoi to cease its support of the Viet Cong insurgency in the South…The bombing was deemed militarily ineffective within a few months.’ To catalog the number of times Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon looked the American people squarely in the eye and said the exact opposite would require another book.” (p.574)

This book was published in 2008 as President Obama was going to have his triumph victory—a confirmation of the legacy of both the 1960s and 1860s.  In the last forty years right had reorganized, unified, and then complexly collapsed by the end of the first fifteen years of the 21^st century.  In some ways the new right of this current decade reminds me of the left of 70s.  Not similar in ideology of course, but in their approach to politics. 

“The New Politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle—andantipolitics.  But in the real world politics without equivocation or compromise is impossible.  Thus an unintended consequence for the would-be antipolitician.  Announcing one’s inflexibility sabotages him in advance.  Every time he makes a political decision, he looks like a sellout.  The reformers fantasized an open politics, in which all points of view had time to be heard.  That meant that Tuesday session adjourned eleven hours after it began, at 6:15 a.m.—a fortunate thing, coolheaded Democratic strategists decided, terrified over what this all looked like on TV.” (p.695-6)

In the end I would highly recommend this book, it describes precisely how the country was knocked off track.  It doesn’t offer any solutions but it doesn’t have to, for it is descriptive not prescriptive.  Nixonland represents an embrace of extremes and a failure to listen.  

(Video was posted by on YouTube by Simon and Schuster)

BRINGING IN THE GREAT SOCIETY

A review of Irwin and Debi Unger’s LBJ: A Life (1999)

(Rating 5 of 5)

Irwin and Debi Usher wrote this book about our thirty-sixth president. They tell the tale of a man who would spend a life in politics fighting for the poor and underprivileged, yet would involve the nation is one of the bloodiest and stupidest wars in its history. The late Tim Russert once described him as the victor of a thousand battles who was ultimately beaten in the end. The story of Lyndon B. Johnson is one of tragedy and triumph.

Johnson was born in 1908, the year William H. Taft was elected president, his grandfather and father; both named Sam Johnson, were fighters for the common people. The Ushers tell a story of a Lyndon Johnson who followed his father's career in the state legislature very closely, watching him do politics and fight for benefits for the common people. In some ways, the reason why Johnson would go off to Washington so early in his career, is he had already experienced a career in Austin by being so close to his father.


(Campaign poster for young Lyndon Johnson)

Johnson would first go to the U.S. Congress as a congressional aide before winning his own seat in 1936. Johnson was a very eager young new dealer, the tall skinny Congressman from Texas was on very good terms with the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR would refer to Johnson as 'his boy' in Texas. His time in Congress was interrupted by World War II. LBJ would serve as a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.


(President Roosevelt was an important patron for young Congressman Johnson)


(Johnson family, all LBJs)

In 1948 he would fulfill a prophecy his grandfather made when he was born, that he would be a U.S. Senator. Johnson would take to the Senate like a fish to water. In only two years, he convinced his colleagues in the Democratic caucus, after the massive defeat in the 1952 presidential election that saw the Democrats lose of the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time in twenty years, to make him the new minority leader. Two years later, he had the Democrats back in the majority and for the first (and only) time in the history of the U.S. Senate the body had a ruler. Johnson would be the master of the Senate, whatever came out of that body during the next six years had to have Johnson's approval, and if it did not it was dead on arrival.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, a little accomplished senator from the state of Massachusetts, shocked the world by winning the presidential nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention. Johnson would end up joining the ticket, to the horror of Bobby Kennedy, and was probably the most important pick a presidential candidate had ever made in regards to a running mate and was crucial to Kennedy's narrow victory over Richard Nixon.

“When it came to Congress he felt like a powerless outsider among the people he had once so successfully dominated. And he could barely bring himself to help Kennedy in the legislative area, where his services would have been most appreciated. 'Johnson pulled back...after that caucus,' related a Kennedy aide. 'He hadn't expected it, and it made him reluctant to approach senators.' At the weekly White House breakfast meetings for legislative leaders, Johnson was uncharacteristically silent. He looked tired and tense, giving his opinion only when specifically asked by Kennedy to offer one, usually mumbling his answers.” p.261

(Johnson was unhappy under President Kennedy)

Johnson was miserable as vice president; he was not a Kennedy insider and was not close to those who were. He was no longer allowed in the Senate caucus and was at times utterly miserable. Johnson and President Kennedy got along enough but Johnson was at a career low. In Dallas, on November 22, 1963, while campaigning, the President of the United States was assassinated in front the nation on live television. On Air Force One, Johnson was sworn in as the new president. Assuming the role of mourner-in-chief, Johnson led a grieving nation. With the martyr ghost of JFK at his side Johnson would get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. The Republicans would nominate the extreme Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Johnson would slaughter him in the biggest landslide elections in our nation's history.


(Sworn in on Air Force One)

“There were still pestiferous amendments to get out the way, 115 in all. All told there were 106 Senate roll-call votes on the bill. It was clear that the real battle was over, however, when at one point, Richard Russell was speaking and Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy cut him off, telling him his time was up. Dick Russell had never been treated so rudely before. As Russell took his seat, he had tears in his eyes. Finally, Dirksen came up with a 'revised' bill, one that almost a duplicate of the strong measure the House had passed in February. The one proviso that diluted the bill somewhat was the 'Mrs. Murphy's clause,' exempting from nondiscrimination provisions boardinghouses with no more than five rooms to rent. Nine days after cloture was invoked, the Dirksen bill passed the Senate, 73 to 27. On July 2 Johnson signed into law the most comprehensive civil rights act in the nation's history.” p.311

(Johnson as President)



Johnson would unveil his 'Great Society' programs in a revival of New Deal polices that would see the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Johnson's programs would become as important as Roosevelt's New Deal reforms in the 1930s. However as the war in Vietnam escalated, Johnson sent more and more troops in, feeling that doing anything else was appeasement. Facing a hostile right and an increasingly dissatisfied left—that had very little appreciation for what had been accomplished but was really concerned about what had not. Race riots that were occurring that became worse after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that June killed the hopes of the Democratic Party in the election of 1968.

“In truth, his advisers' views did not entirely conflict with Johnson's own inclinations. The president's understanding of twentieth-century history, especially the abysmal appeasement chapter of Munich, would not allow him to surrender part of the Free World to Communist subversion without a fight. Shortly after the Ann Arbor speech, Johnson discussed American policy in Southeast Asia at a news conference. In Vietnam, he said, he would be guided by four principals: One, 'American keeps her word.' Two, 'The issue is the future of Southeast Asia as a whole.' Three, 'Our purpose is peace.' Four, 'This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.'” p.319

(The President and First Lady)

Johnson having already declined to run for another full term sat back and watched his vice president, Hubert Humphrey; lose the presidency to Richard M. Nixon. On January 20, 1969, Johnson was replaced as president by the man who he had replaced as vice president eight years earlier. Johnson entered his post-presidency extremely unpopular; he went back to Texas to work on his ranch. He watched the party he loved make the serious mistake of nominating George McGovern, who was beaten nearly as badly in 1972 as Goldwater was in 1964.


(The death of Robert Kennedy made Nixon's win that much easier)



Lyndon Johnson died on January 22, 1973 had he served another term as president then he would have lived only two days after the term ended. I highly recommend this book about President Johnson; the Ungers do an incredible job telling the story of a complicated president.

{Videos taken from YouTube were produced by the University of Virginia}