Buy new:-5%$17.14
Buy new:
-5%$17.14
DeliveryThursday, November 13
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
Save with Used - Good$15.44
Save with Used - Good
$15.44
DeliveryWednesday, November 12
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: Vandelay Ventures
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer -no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House Paperback – January 29, 2019
byJoshua Zeitz(Author)
Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. Try again.
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$17.14","priceAmount":17.14,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"14","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Br9l0KfAMhWjFIpMS%2Bc8j%2F8UJUNXdU8Wy7t8eKu8DestowCgeIOKJREGaglAl%2B9o0fG08NnUOoOwRmByCun1uTuRF6LmkMubonV5t14bRmfwdkPbu%2BvpHDEm46KfkDX9%2FEIPKdPDb9MDlpKhmAAAsA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$15.44","priceAmount":15.44,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"44","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Br9l0KfAMhWjFIpMS%2Bc8j%2F8UJUNXdU8WDOjSObGJnZH3FxbWWeQfoUikVow11wq2ghU09381FhxwxLTKsOfXGma7mlV0pSLSZK%2FtGMHhs4kalkO9QJ7ziNp%2FGyh6G%2B8ts%2B1LAjidWqNF0v6nuMbujGIliB1ljB5YP5iZul7cdeCCfEEBtmXPZ0lTnYGmsPfk","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}
Purchase options and add-ons
The author of Lincoln's Boys takes us inside Lyndon Johnson's White House to show how the legendary Great Society programs were actually put into practice:Team of Rivals for LBJ. The personalities behind every burst of 1960s liberal reform - from civil rights and immigration reform, to Medicare and Head Start.
"Absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched -- all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond. It's a more than worthwhile addition to the canon of books about Johnson."--NPR
"Beautifully written...a riveting portrait of LBJ... Every officeholder in Washington would profit from reading this book." --Robert Dallek, Author ofAn Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 andFranklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
LBJ's towering political skills and his ambitious slate of liberal legislation are the stuff of legend: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and environmental reform. But what happened after the bills passed? One man could not and did not go it alone. Joshua Zeitz reanimates the creative and contentious atmosphere inside Johnson's White House as a talented and energetic group of advisers made LBJ's vision a reality. They desegregated public and private institutions throughout one third of the United States; built Medicare and Medicaid from the ground up in one year; launched federal funding for public education; provided food support for millions of poor children and adults; and launched public television and radio, all in the space of five years, even as Vietnam strained the administration's credibility and budget.
Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, Joe Califano, Harry McPherson and the other staff members who comprised LBJ's inner circle were men as pragmatic and ambitious as Johnson, equally skilled in the art of accumulating power or throwing a sharp elbow.Building the Great Society is the story of how one of the most competent White House staffs in American history - serving one of the most complicated presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office - fundamentally changed everyday life for millions of citizens and forged a legacy of compassionate and interventionist government.
"Absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched -- all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond. It's a more than worthwhile addition to the canon of books about Johnson."--NPR
"Beautifully written...a riveting portrait of LBJ... Every officeholder in Washington would profit from reading this book." --Robert Dallek, Author ofAn Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 andFranklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
LBJ's towering political skills and his ambitious slate of liberal legislation are the stuff of legend: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and environmental reform. But what happened after the bills passed? One man could not and did not go it alone. Joshua Zeitz reanimates the creative and contentious atmosphere inside Johnson's White House as a talented and energetic group of advisers made LBJ's vision a reality. They desegregated public and private institutions throughout one third of the United States; built Medicare and Medicaid from the ground up in one year; launched federal funding for public education; provided food support for millions of poor children and adults; and launched public television and radio, all in the space of five years, even as Vietnam strained the administration's credibility and budget.
Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, Joe Califano, Harry McPherson and the other staff members who comprised LBJ's inner circle were men as pragmatic and ambitious as Johnson, equally skilled in the art of accumulating power or throwing a sharp elbow.Building the Great Society is the story of how one of the most competent White House staffs in American history - serving one of the most complicated presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office - fundamentally changed everyday life for millions of citizens and forged a legacy of compassionate and interventionist government.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateJanuary 29, 2019
- Dimensions5.48 x 0.82 x 8.38 inches
- ISBN-100143111434
- ISBN-13978-0143111436
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction.Explore more
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
EachGreat on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app:
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more aboutGreat on Kindle, available in select categories.
Frequently bought together
This item: Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House
$17.14
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
+
$18.87
Get it as soon asTuesday, Nov 11
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Total price: $00
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Try again!
Added to Cart
One of these items ships sooner than the other.
Choose items to buy together.
Frequently purchased items with fast delivery
Page1 of1Start over
Customers also bought or read
Page1 of1Start over
- Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever WrittenPaperback$13.29DeliveryFri, Nov 7
- Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's SoulPaperback$15.99DeliveryTue, Nov 11
- Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American ConsensusPaperback$13.60DeliveryMon, Nov 10
- White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Politics and Society in Modern America)Paperback$24.59DeliveryWed, Nov 12
- White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa#1 Best SellerCentral Africa HistoryPaperback$19.60DeliveryFri, Nov 7
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in AmericaPaperback$13.44DeliveryFri, Nov 7
- Germany 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler's Putsch, and Democracy in CrisisHardcover$15.99DeliveryTue, Nov 11
Loading...
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise forBuilding the Great Society
"Building the Great Society is endlessly absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched — all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond. It's a more than worthwhile addition to the canon of books about Johnson.”
—NPR, Michael Schaub
“[A] well-researched and readable history of a vast governmental effort to make America anew.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Zeitz draws creatively on memoirs and White House documents. His tales… zip along with style.”
—The New Republic
“Zeitz’s lively narrative foregrounds the personalities and power plays of Johnson’s White House staff…[his] lucid account yields engrossing insights into one of America’s most hopeful, productive, and tragic political eras.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Zeitz presents accessible, nuanced portraits of the men behind Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic programs...[and] effectively demonstrates how Johnson assembled one of history’s most productive White House staffs: an amalgam of committed John F. Kennedy holdovers along with new talents from academia, the newspaper world, and think tanks."
—Library Journal
“Joshua Zeitz’s beautifully written book is not only a riveting portrait of LBJ and the talented men around him, but also a compelling reminder of what extraordinary political skill it took to enact the body of laws that made America a more humane and admirable society. Every officeholder in Washington would profit from reading this book.”
—Robert Dallek, authorof An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 andFranklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
“Zeitz argues convincingly that Johnson's team . . . quickly became a smoothly running and effective machine, accomplishing a great amount in a relatively short time . . . A timely reconsideration of the Johnson years.”
—Booklist
Praise for Joshua Zeitz andLincoln's Boys
“A century before Harry Hopkins, Clark Clifford, or Ted Sorensen, John Hay and John Nicolay performed the duties of presidential aide, adviser, political operative, and confidant. Even the great Abraham Lincoln needed support, and Joshua Zeitz captures perfectly the intimate, interior world of the White House.”
—David Plouffe, former White House Senior Adviser
‟What a wonderful, welcome book. Zeitz has pulled off a difficult task—revealing how the myth of Lincoln came to be without distorting the true greatness of our extraordinary sixteenth president.ˮ
—Ken Burns (filmmaker)
“Joshua Zeitz’s delightful study of John Hay and John Nicolay interweaves intimate biography, political drama, and the shaping of historical memory to produce an arresting and original narrative. Above all, it reminds us that, thanks to Lincoln’s secretaries, the moral dimensions of the emancipationist Civil War could not be bleached from the historical record by an increasingly fashionable understanding of the struggle as a romantic ‘brothers’ conflict.’”
—Richard Carwardine, author ofLincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
“Abraham Lincoln was blessed with truly first-rate biographers in John Nicolay and John Hay, so it is ‘altogether fitting and proper’ that Nicolay and Hay have now attracted a terrific chronicler of their own life and times in Joshua Zeitz. This fine book traces the extraordinary evolution of Lincoln’s two private secretaries from clerks into tireless historians and rabid keepers of the flame. Historians have long remembered their roles as canny observers of the White House during the Civil War, but this study adds much fascinating new material about their peerless role in crafting and preserving the Lincoln image.”
—Harold Holzer, author ofThe Civil War in 50 Objects
“Beautifully researched and written, it restores to full stature two figures who might have been young, but left a deep mark upon history. Highly recommended.”
—Ted Widmer, former presidential speechwriter and author ofYoung America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City
"Building the Great Society is endlessly absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched — all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond. It's a more than worthwhile addition to the canon of books about Johnson.”
—NPR, Michael Schaub
“[A] well-researched and readable history of a vast governmental effort to make America anew.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Zeitz draws creatively on memoirs and White House documents. His tales… zip along with style.”
—The New Republic
“Zeitz’s lively narrative foregrounds the personalities and power plays of Johnson’s White House staff…[his] lucid account yields engrossing insights into one of America’s most hopeful, productive, and tragic political eras.”
—Publishers Weekly
"Zeitz presents accessible, nuanced portraits of the men behind Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic programs...[and] effectively demonstrates how Johnson assembled one of history’s most productive White House staffs: an amalgam of committed John F. Kennedy holdovers along with new talents from academia, the newspaper world, and think tanks."
—Library Journal
“Joshua Zeitz’s beautifully written book is not only a riveting portrait of LBJ and the talented men around him, but also a compelling reminder of what extraordinary political skill it took to enact the body of laws that made America a more humane and admirable society. Every officeholder in Washington would profit from reading this book.”
—Robert Dallek, authorof An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 andFranklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
“Zeitz argues convincingly that Johnson's team . . . quickly became a smoothly running and effective machine, accomplishing a great amount in a relatively short time . . . A timely reconsideration of the Johnson years.”
—Booklist
Praise for Joshua Zeitz andLincoln's Boys
“A century before Harry Hopkins, Clark Clifford, or Ted Sorensen, John Hay and John Nicolay performed the duties of presidential aide, adviser, political operative, and confidant. Even the great Abraham Lincoln needed support, and Joshua Zeitz captures perfectly the intimate, interior world of the White House.”
—David Plouffe, former White House Senior Adviser
‟What a wonderful, welcome book. Zeitz has pulled off a difficult task—revealing how the myth of Lincoln came to be without distorting the true greatness of our extraordinary sixteenth president.ˮ
—Ken Burns (filmmaker)
“Joshua Zeitz’s delightful study of John Hay and John Nicolay interweaves intimate biography, political drama, and the shaping of historical memory to produce an arresting and original narrative. Above all, it reminds us that, thanks to Lincoln’s secretaries, the moral dimensions of the emancipationist Civil War could not be bleached from the historical record by an increasingly fashionable understanding of the struggle as a romantic ‘brothers’ conflict.’”
—Richard Carwardine, author ofLincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
“Abraham Lincoln was blessed with truly first-rate biographers in John Nicolay and John Hay, so it is ‘altogether fitting and proper’ that Nicolay and Hay have now attracted a terrific chronicler of their own life and times in Joshua Zeitz. This fine book traces the extraordinary evolution of Lincoln’s two private secretaries from clerks into tireless historians and rabid keepers of the flame. Historians have long remembered their roles as canny observers of the White House during the Civil War, but this study adds much fascinating new material about their peerless role in crafting and preserving the Lincoln image.”
—Harold Holzer, author ofThe Civil War in 50 Objects
“Beautifully researched and written, it restores to full stature two figures who might have been young, but left a deep mark upon history. Highly recommended.”
—Ted Widmer, former presidential speechwriter and author ofYoung America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City
About the Author
Joshua Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Princeton University. He is the author of several books on American political and social history and has written for the New York Times,the Washington Post, New Republic,The Atlantic, Dissent, and American Heritage. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Put the Ball Through the Hoop
Seated behind his desk in the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson appeared pensive and subdued when, on the evening of Thursday, November 28, 1963, he delivered brief remarks to the nation. It was 6:15, and LBJ was only in the sixth full day of his presidency. "Tonight, on this Thanksgiving, I come before you to ask your help, to ask your strength, to ask your prayers that God may guard this Republic and guide my every labor," he began. "All of us have lived through 7 days that none of us will ever forget. We are not given the divine wisdom to answer why this has been, but we are given the human duty of determining what is to be, what is to be for America, for the world, for the cause we lead, for all the hopes that live in our hearts." Reading with deliberate care from a prepared text, the president acknowledged what was surely on every American's mind: "A great leader is dead; a great Nation must move on. Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose."
The day before, LBJ had delivered his first speech before a joint session of Congress-a solemn and widely acclaimed address in which the new president pledged to pick up the mantle from John F. Kennedy and secure passage of the New Frontier's sweeping but stalled policy agenda, including a major tax cut that Kennedy's advisers believed would stimulate the economy; aid to primary and secondary education; and hospital care for seniors. Dozens of LBJ's former colleagues from Dixie sat in stone-cold silence as Johnson affirmed to stirring applause that "no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law."
Now, on Thanksgiving, Johnson doubled down, asking his countrymen to join him in prayer "for His divine wisdom in banishing from our land any injustice or intolerance or oppression to any of our fellow Americans whatever their opinion, whatever the color of their skins—for God made all of us, not some of us, in His image. All of us, not just some of us, are His children."
For most Americans, Thanksgiving week marked the start of the holiday season. For Lyndon Johnson, it signaled the beginning of an intense, yearlong sprint to prove thathe could break the logjam, achieve the New Frontier, and surpass it beyond even the wildest expectations of John Kennedy's supporters. It would be no easy lift.
"I think the Congress looks more powerful sitting here than it did when I was there in the Congress," Kennedy remarked roughly a year before his death. For well over two decades, a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and northern Republicans had stymied the expansion of domestic policies first established during the New Deal era. In the Senate, an institution that the journalist William White once dubbed "the South's unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg," conservatives made frequent use of the filibuster to prevent social welfare and civil rights legislation from coming to a vote, while in the House powerful southerners kept such measures forever bottled up in committee. Now, in a sharp rebuke to Kennedy's promise of dynamic action and national rejuvenation, the conservative coalition had all but ground the government to a halt. Not only did the House and the Senate refuse to take up key New Frontier measures. Theyalso refused to pass eight of twelve routine appropriations bills, thus leaving whole parts of the government unfunded and operating on a continuing resolution that set spending at the previous year's levels.
Congressional Quarterly deemed the state of affairs "unprecedented," while Walter Lippmann, the dean of American journalism, bemoaned the "scandal of drift and inefficiency" that had beset Washington. "This Congress has gone further than any other within memory to replace debate and decision by delay and stultification. This is one of those moments when there is reason to wonder whether the congressional system as it now operates is not a grave danger to the Republic." Yet as Harry Truman famously asserted, the buck stopped with the president. A week before Kennedy's assassination, the columnist James Reston noted "a vague feeling of doubt and disappointment about President Kennedy's first term. . . . He has touched the intellect of the country, but not its heart. He has informed but not inspired the nation. He is the most popular figure, but he has been lucky in his competition. . . . [H]is problem is probably not how to get elected but how to govern."
Such was the state of affairs when Lyndon Johnson entered the White House.
LBJ first came to Washington as a young congressional staff member in the early 1930s before returning to Texas in 1935 to serve as state director of the National Youth Administration (NYA), a marquee New Deal jobs project. Two years later, and against all odds, he won a special election to Congress at age twenty-eight. An ardent supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson established a more liberal voting record than most southern Democrats with whom he served in the House. Though he consistently opposed legislation to abolish the poll tax and to make lynching a federal crime, he joined northern Democrats in supporting expanded rights for organized labor, greater administrative oversight of business and industry, and funding for public works. Notably, he continued to do so long after most of his southern Democratic colleagues forged an informal alliance with northern Republicans to oppose the Roosevelt administration. On the strength of his New Deal credentials, FDR strongly backed Johnson in a special election to fill an unexpired Senate seat in 1941. LBJ most likely won the primary (in Texas, as throughout the South, the only vote that mattered), but party rivals stole it from him in a brazen display of election-night ballot fraud. Though in the coming years he aligned himself more closely with his state's oil and gas interests, when he ran a second time for the Senate in 1948, Johnson was once again recognized as the liberal option. After achieving a razor-thin primary victory over the conservative former governor Coke Stevenson-this time, it was likely LBJs allies who stole the election-Johnson drifted rightward during his two terms in the Senate, in part out of recognition that Texas was moving strongly in that direction and in part to curry favor with the chamber's powerful southern chairmen, most notably Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia. Johnson delivered his maiden floor speech in opposition to civil rights, turned against former New Deal allies who now stood accused of communist loyalty, and, in his time as Democratic leader after 1953, cooperated closely with the Eisenhower administration. Many of the liberals in his caucus came to despise LBJ, particularly after he neutered their civil rights bill in 1957. They correctly perceived that he wanted to pass a weak bill in order to make his prospective presidential candidacy in 1960 palatable to northern Democrats but unobjectionable to his fellow southerners. On the day that he assumed office, very few people knew what to make of Lyndon Johnson. Was he simply a pragmatist who, deep in his heart, remained an ardent New Dealer? Or was he a southern conservative who would betray John Kennedy's unfinished legacy?
If Johnson's belief system was a matter of wide speculation, few observers doubted his keen understanding of Congress. LBJ knew that conservative Democrats, in loose cooperation with Republicans, had willfully manufactured a bottleneck of important legislation to form a bulwark against Kennedy's civil rights bill. Only when liberals capitulated and withdrew the Civil Rights Act would southern Democrats consent to bring Kennedy's tax stimulus to a vote and fund the many government initiatives-including bridges, highways, post offices, and defense projects-that their more liberal and moderate colleagues hoped to deliver to hometown constituents. Johnson knew the playbook because, as a freshman senator, he had helped to write it. As long as conservatives could hold the government hostage, much as they had in 1949, when they successfully fought back Harry Truman's civil rights agenda, they could forestall consideration of Kennedy's New Frontier agenda, including civil rights legislation that lay dying on the Hill.
It took LBJ less than a day to spring into action. In a series of phone calls before and after Thanksgiving 1963, the new president highlighted the imperative of using his political capital to clear the logjam; then, and only then, would members of Congress feel at liberty to bring civil rights and other New Frontier measures to a vote. In the meantime, however, he would keep up the pressure. On Saturday, November 30—just over a week after assuming the presidency—LBJ asked the former Treasury secretary Robert Anderson, a Republican and outspoken fiscal conservative, to intervene with Howard Smith, the chairman of the Rules Committee, which had broad authority to prevent legislation from proceeding to the House floor. Johnson reminded Anderson that "this country is not in any condition to take that kind of stuff . . . and that's going to hurt our people. And it's going to hurt the conservatives." Anderson agreed to speak with Smith and to convey the president's willingness to support a seldom-used measure—a discharge petition—to bypass Smith's committee altogether and bring the legislation directly to the full House.
Playing the other side just as artfully, Johnson placed a call to Dave McDonald, the president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and a member in good standing of the liberal coalition. "They've got to petition it out," the president instructed. "That means we got to get 219. We'll start at about 150 Democrats; that means we got to get 60, 70 Republicans." The president spoke with the passion of a true believer ("we've been talking about this for100 years. And they won't give us a hearing on this thing, so we got to do something about it") and implored McDonald to fire up his union's formidable lobbying operation—not only to support the discharge petition in the House, but also to move the tax and appropriations bills through committee.
Before and after the Thanksgiving holiday, Johnson repeated these conversations time and again, at once lining up support for a discharge petition in the House while affirming the need to clear the logjam of tax and spending billsbefore making a final push on civil rights in the Senate. Among those who understood the president's strategy was Senator George Smathers, a conservative Democrat from Florida who ultimately opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but who represented a faction of the southern caucus that was disinclined to grind all government to a halt indefinitely over civil rights. The "sooner we can get a civil rights bill over with," he told Johnson, "get that part of it ended and out of the way, the better off the South's going to be, and the better off the North's going to be, and the better off everybody's going to be. And they wouldn't hide behind the tax bill—and hide behind a lot of other bills, just on the pretense of being against them when the real fact is they're against the civil rights bill."
Without prompting—and without the knowledge that LBJ had been making a similar case to his economic advisers for several days—Smathers suggested that the president make a concerted effort to woo Harry F. Byrd, the deeply conservative chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. If Johnson were willing to indulge Byrd's obsession with fiscal discipline and bring the 1964-1965 federal budget under $100 billion, then the chairmanmight allow the tax cut to clear through his committee. "Wish you'd feel Byrd out," LBJ agreed, "and give me a pretty good, full report." Unknowingly, George Smathers would help set in motion a chain of events whose consequences would be far reaching.
The strategy that Lyndon Johnson developed in the first week of his presidency had a profound but highly calculated effect. The pressure that his supporters placed on Howard Smith—and the chairman's realization that a discharge petition, if successful, would permanently undermine his authority—persuaded the cantankerous Virginian to allow the Civil Rights Act to reach the House floor. Beginning with outreach from Smathers, LBJ simultaneously courted Harry Byrd until the patrician senator effectively agreed to swap budget cuts for a tax stimulus. With major economic legislation now cleared through Congress, the president had paved the way for passage of long-awaited civil rights legislation.
Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, some of Johnson's advisers cautioned him that presidents should not spend valuable capital on hopeless causes. "Well," he purportedly replied, "what the hell's the presidency for?"
LBJ ultimately brought his budget under $100 billion, pushed Kennedy's tax cut through Congress, and secured passage of the Civil Rights Act-all by late June 1964. He accomplished these measures while also declaring an "unconditional war on poverty" and creating the blueprint for the Great Society—the most ambitious domestic agenda since the New Deal. Though LBJ's early success owed in part to his mastery of legislative strategy, equally fundamental were efforts by advocacy groups-religious and lay alike-on behalf of civil rights and social justice legislation. Above all, Johnson benefited from a deep well of public support in the wake of Kennedy's assassination. The president's approval ratings, which fluctuated between 70 percent and 77 percent throughout the spring, owed at least as much to the country's determination to lock arms with its new leader as to LBJ's policy and political triumphs.
Unlike most of his predecessors, LBJ did not enjoy the benefit of a transition period to build the team that would help him, in turn, build his vision. Instead, he had little choice but to improvise on the spot—to pull a trusted friend like Jack Valenti along with him to the White House or entreat old hands from his House and Senate days to join him on a new and unfamiliar journey. These handicaps notwithstanding, in that first year of seemingly unrestrained activity and accomplishment—from the time of Kennedy's death to his own election to the presidency in late 1964—Johnson assembled an ad hoc staff that defied the expectations of even the most cynical Washington hands. They were a "coalition government" of Kennedy and Johnson men—a "strange amalgam of Austin and Boston, of cool, brainy Easterners and shrewd, folksy Texans, of men who had always been fiercely loyal to him and men who had fought and belittled him before the 1960 Los Angeles Democratic convention," according to Charles Roberts, who covered the White House forNewsweek. "It is some kind of tribute to Isaiah and the LBJ Way that the transition went as smoothly as it did."
Put the Ball Through the Hoop
Seated behind his desk in the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson appeared pensive and subdued when, on the evening of Thursday, November 28, 1963, he delivered brief remarks to the nation. It was 6:15, and LBJ was only in the sixth full day of his presidency. "Tonight, on this Thanksgiving, I come before you to ask your help, to ask your strength, to ask your prayers that God may guard this Republic and guide my every labor," he began. "All of us have lived through 7 days that none of us will ever forget. We are not given the divine wisdom to answer why this has been, but we are given the human duty of determining what is to be, what is to be for America, for the world, for the cause we lead, for all the hopes that live in our hearts." Reading with deliberate care from a prepared text, the president acknowledged what was surely on every American's mind: "A great leader is dead; a great Nation must move on. Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose."
The day before, LBJ had delivered his first speech before a joint session of Congress-a solemn and widely acclaimed address in which the new president pledged to pick up the mantle from John F. Kennedy and secure passage of the New Frontier's sweeping but stalled policy agenda, including a major tax cut that Kennedy's advisers believed would stimulate the economy; aid to primary and secondary education; and hospital care for seniors. Dozens of LBJ's former colleagues from Dixie sat in stone-cold silence as Johnson affirmed to stirring applause that "no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law."
Now, on Thanksgiving, Johnson doubled down, asking his countrymen to join him in prayer "for His divine wisdom in banishing from our land any injustice or intolerance or oppression to any of our fellow Americans whatever their opinion, whatever the color of their skins—for God made all of us, not some of us, in His image. All of us, not just some of us, are His children."
For most Americans, Thanksgiving week marked the start of the holiday season. For Lyndon Johnson, it signaled the beginning of an intense, yearlong sprint to prove thathe could break the logjam, achieve the New Frontier, and surpass it beyond even the wildest expectations of John Kennedy's supporters. It would be no easy lift.
"I think the Congress looks more powerful sitting here than it did when I was there in the Congress," Kennedy remarked roughly a year before his death. For well over two decades, a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and northern Republicans had stymied the expansion of domestic policies first established during the New Deal era. In the Senate, an institution that the journalist William White once dubbed "the South's unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg," conservatives made frequent use of the filibuster to prevent social welfare and civil rights legislation from coming to a vote, while in the House powerful southerners kept such measures forever bottled up in committee. Now, in a sharp rebuke to Kennedy's promise of dynamic action and national rejuvenation, the conservative coalition had all but ground the government to a halt. Not only did the House and the Senate refuse to take up key New Frontier measures. Theyalso refused to pass eight of twelve routine appropriations bills, thus leaving whole parts of the government unfunded and operating on a continuing resolution that set spending at the previous year's levels.
Congressional Quarterly deemed the state of affairs "unprecedented," while Walter Lippmann, the dean of American journalism, bemoaned the "scandal of drift and inefficiency" that had beset Washington. "This Congress has gone further than any other within memory to replace debate and decision by delay and stultification. This is one of those moments when there is reason to wonder whether the congressional system as it now operates is not a grave danger to the Republic." Yet as Harry Truman famously asserted, the buck stopped with the president. A week before Kennedy's assassination, the columnist James Reston noted "a vague feeling of doubt and disappointment about President Kennedy's first term. . . . He has touched the intellect of the country, but not its heart. He has informed but not inspired the nation. He is the most popular figure, but he has been lucky in his competition. . . . [H]is problem is probably not how to get elected but how to govern."
Such was the state of affairs when Lyndon Johnson entered the White House.
LBJ first came to Washington as a young congressional staff member in the early 1930s before returning to Texas in 1935 to serve as state director of the National Youth Administration (NYA), a marquee New Deal jobs project. Two years later, and against all odds, he won a special election to Congress at age twenty-eight. An ardent supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson established a more liberal voting record than most southern Democrats with whom he served in the House. Though he consistently opposed legislation to abolish the poll tax and to make lynching a federal crime, he joined northern Democrats in supporting expanded rights for organized labor, greater administrative oversight of business and industry, and funding for public works. Notably, he continued to do so long after most of his southern Democratic colleagues forged an informal alliance with northern Republicans to oppose the Roosevelt administration. On the strength of his New Deal credentials, FDR strongly backed Johnson in a special election to fill an unexpired Senate seat in 1941. LBJ most likely won the primary (in Texas, as throughout the South, the only vote that mattered), but party rivals stole it from him in a brazen display of election-night ballot fraud. Though in the coming years he aligned himself more closely with his state's oil and gas interests, when he ran a second time for the Senate in 1948, Johnson was once again recognized as the liberal option. After achieving a razor-thin primary victory over the conservative former governor Coke Stevenson-this time, it was likely LBJs allies who stole the election-Johnson drifted rightward during his two terms in the Senate, in part out of recognition that Texas was moving strongly in that direction and in part to curry favor with the chamber's powerful southern chairmen, most notably Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia. Johnson delivered his maiden floor speech in opposition to civil rights, turned against former New Deal allies who now stood accused of communist loyalty, and, in his time as Democratic leader after 1953, cooperated closely with the Eisenhower administration. Many of the liberals in his caucus came to despise LBJ, particularly after he neutered their civil rights bill in 1957. They correctly perceived that he wanted to pass a weak bill in order to make his prospective presidential candidacy in 1960 palatable to northern Democrats but unobjectionable to his fellow southerners. On the day that he assumed office, very few people knew what to make of Lyndon Johnson. Was he simply a pragmatist who, deep in his heart, remained an ardent New Dealer? Or was he a southern conservative who would betray John Kennedy's unfinished legacy?
If Johnson's belief system was a matter of wide speculation, few observers doubted his keen understanding of Congress. LBJ knew that conservative Democrats, in loose cooperation with Republicans, had willfully manufactured a bottleneck of important legislation to form a bulwark against Kennedy's civil rights bill. Only when liberals capitulated and withdrew the Civil Rights Act would southern Democrats consent to bring Kennedy's tax stimulus to a vote and fund the many government initiatives-including bridges, highways, post offices, and defense projects-that their more liberal and moderate colleagues hoped to deliver to hometown constituents. Johnson knew the playbook because, as a freshman senator, he had helped to write it. As long as conservatives could hold the government hostage, much as they had in 1949, when they successfully fought back Harry Truman's civil rights agenda, they could forestall consideration of Kennedy's New Frontier agenda, including civil rights legislation that lay dying on the Hill.
It took LBJ less than a day to spring into action. In a series of phone calls before and after Thanksgiving 1963, the new president highlighted the imperative of using his political capital to clear the logjam; then, and only then, would members of Congress feel at liberty to bring civil rights and other New Frontier measures to a vote. In the meantime, however, he would keep up the pressure. On Saturday, November 30—just over a week after assuming the presidency—LBJ asked the former Treasury secretary Robert Anderson, a Republican and outspoken fiscal conservative, to intervene with Howard Smith, the chairman of the Rules Committee, which had broad authority to prevent legislation from proceeding to the House floor. Johnson reminded Anderson that "this country is not in any condition to take that kind of stuff . . . and that's going to hurt our people. And it's going to hurt the conservatives." Anderson agreed to speak with Smith and to convey the president's willingness to support a seldom-used measure—a discharge petition—to bypass Smith's committee altogether and bring the legislation directly to the full House.
Playing the other side just as artfully, Johnson placed a call to Dave McDonald, the president of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and a member in good standing of the liberal coalition. "They've got to petition it out," the president instructed. "That means we got to get 219. We'll start at about 150 Democrats; that means we got to get 60, 70 Republicans." The president spoke with the passion of a true believer ("we've been talking about this for100 years. And they won't give us a hearing on this thing, so we got to do something about it") and implored McDonald to fire up his union's formidable lobbying operation—not only to support the discharge petition in the House, but also to move the tax and appropriations bills through committee.
Before and after the Thanksgiving holiday, Johnson repeated these conversations time and again, at once lining up support for a discharge petition in the House while affirming the need to clear the logjam of tax and spending billsbefore making a final push on civil rights in the Senate. Among those who understood the president's strategy was Senator George Smathers, a conservative Democrat from Florida who ultimately opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but who represented a faction of the southern caucus that was disinclined to grind all government to a halt indefinitely over civil rights. The "sooner we can get a civil rights bill over with," he told Johnson, "get that part of it ended and out of the way, the better off the South's going to be, and the better off the North's going to be, and the better off everybody's going to be. And they wouldn't hide behind the tax bill—and hide behind a lot of other bills, just on the pretense of being against them when the real fact is they're against the civil rights bill."
Without prompting—and without the knowledge that LBJ had been making a similar case to his economic advisers for several days—Smathers suggested that the president make a concerted effort to woo Harry F. Byrd, the deeply conservative chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. If Johnson were willing to indulge Byrd's obsession with fiscal discipline and bring the 1964-1965 federal budget under $100 billion, then the chairmanmight allow the tax cut to clear through his committee. "Wish you'd feel Byrd out," LBJ agreed, "and give me a pretty good, full report." Unknowingly, George Smathers would help set in motion a chain of events whose consequences would be far reaching.
The strategy that Lyndon Johnson developed in the first week of his presidency had a profound but highly calculated effect. The pressure that his supporters placed on Howard Smith—and the chairman's realization that a discharge petition, if successful, would permanently undermine his authority—persuaded the cantankerous Virginian to allow the Civil Rights Act to reach the House floor. Beginning with outreach from Smathers, LBJ simultaneously courted Harry Byrd until the patrician senator effectively agreed to swap budget cuts for a tax stimulus. With major economic legislation now cleared through Congress, the president had paved the way for passage of long-awaited civil rights legislation.
Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, some of Johnson's advisers cautioned him that presidents should not spend valuable capital on hopeless causes. "Well," he purportedly replied, "what the hell's the presidency for?"
LBJ ultimately brought his budget under $100 billion, pushed Kennedy's tax cut through Congress, and secured passage of the Civil Rights Act-all by late June 1964. He accomplished these measures while also declaring an "unconditional war on poverty" and creating the blueprint for the Great Society—the most ambitious domestic agenda since the New Deal. Though LBJ's early success owed in part to his mastery of legislative strategy, equally fundamental were efforts by advocacy groups-religious and lay alike-on behalf of civil rights and social justice legislation. Above all, Johnson benefited from a deep well of public support in the wake of Kennedy's assassination. The president's approval ratings, which fluctuated between 70 percent and 77 percent throughout the spring, owed at least as much to the country's determination to lock arms with its new leader as to LBJ's policy and political triumphs.
Unlike most of his predecessors, LBJ did not enjoy the benefit of a transition period to build the team that would help him, in turn, build his vision. Instead, he had little choice but to improvise on the spot—to pull a trusted friend like Jack Valenti along with him to the White House or entreat old hands from his House and Senate days to join him on a new and unfamiliar journey. These handicaps notwithstanding, in that first year of seemingly unrestrained activity and accomplishment—from the time of Kennedy's death to his own election to the presidency in late 1964—Johnson assembled an ad hoc staff that defied the expectations of even the most cynical Washington hands. They were a "coalition government" of Kennedy and Johnson men—a "strange amalgam of Austin and Boston, of cool, brainy Easterners and shrewd, folksy Texans, of men who had always been fiercely loyal to him and men who had fought and belittled him before the 1960 Los Angeles Democratic convention," according to Charles Roberts, who covered the White House forNewsweek. "It is some kind of tribute to Isaiah and the LBJ Way that the transition went as smoothly as it did."
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Books
- Publication date : January 29, 2019
- Edition : Reprint
- Language : English
- Print length : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143111434
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143111436
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.48 x 0.82 x 8.38 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #625,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #651 inTelevision Performer Biographies
- #712 inCivil Rights & Liberties (Books)
- #788 inUS Presidents
- Customer Reviews:
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Joshua Zeitz is a contributing writer at Politico Magazine and has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Princeton University. He is the author of several books on American political and social history, including the New York Times bestseller, Lincoln's Boys. He as written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Dissent, and American Heritage. Josh lives with his wife and two daughters in Hoboken, NJ. Follow him on twitter @joshuamzeitz and his personal webpage joshuamzeitz.com
Customer reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
69 global ratings
How customer reviews and ratings work
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book to be a good read. The book receives mixed feedback regarding its insight, with one customer finding it extremely insightful while another mentions it provides good information about the Johnson administration.
Select to learn more
5 customers mention "Readability"5 positive0 negative
Customers find the book to be a good read, with one mentioning it held their interest throughout.
"...Good read, held my interest, and well-written. However, you need to have a true desire to be educated about this era to fully appreciate the book...."Read more
"Good book"Read more
"Such agood read..."Read more
"AGreat Read on Important But Lesser Known Presidential Aides and The Policies They Enacted..."Read more
3 customers mention "Insight"2 positive1 negative
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's insights, with one finding it extremely insightful and another noting it provides good information about the Johnson administration.
"...It wasextremely insightful to finally understand the Great Society presidency. Good read, held my interest, and well-written...."Read more
"...Theauthor gives no real insight into why LBJ continued to prosecute such a futile and unnecessary war."Read more
"Good information about the Johnson administration."Read more
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2018Format: KindleVerified PurchaseLBJ’s aides do not enjoy the popular awareness in the public mind that the staff’s of some other presidents do, e,g., Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton. But they accomplished a tremendous amount in just a few years. Zeitgeist lifts the veil and looks at how much a determined president and capable, worked-to-the-bone staff can accomplish.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2019Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis is a time period I knew little about although I remember vividly the assassination of JFK. I teach in an urban school and am very interested in civil rights. It was extremely insightful to finally understand the Great Society presidency. Good read, held my interest, and well-written. However, you need to have a true desire to be educated about this era to fully appreciate the book. Not for anyone hoping for a "story."
- Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2018Format: HardcoverVerified PurchasePowerful and beautifully written book.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2019Format: HardcoverThis book was a trip inside a White House with a President at the peak of his powers. But as LBJ has been analyzed for the past 50 years, this is a look at the actions he took, the people he empowered to act on his orders, and how he lead those aids to create and pass legislation that has continued to function for 5 decades. Along the way, you will SEE what it takes to weld power, and you will meet the people involved. Unlike previously published histories, we don't spend time with the movers and shakers that we already know - we see the orders given to the foot soldiers in the legislative trenches and their path to creating and the reason why legislation was crafted with certain planks in place. This is a history of the GREAT SOCIETY programs - not the Viet Nam war. There are a tremendous number of insightful books on LBJ's mistaken steps into that mistake, but few on the behind the scenes of the Great Society being born. While this is not Arthur Schlesinger's New Deal trilogy, it is about the closest we have to that great work. It is a worthwhile read. (Warning - he is certainly working from the notes of someone who did NOT like Bill Moyers. I take that for what it is worth - Zeitz is using primary sources, as well as contemporary articles. While these people were a great team, it doesn't mean everyone loved one another. Moyers gets slammed frequently in this book, based on notes and comments made by others in the team. I think Moyers can handle it - they were making history, and important legislation, not necessarily lifelong friends. Obviously, more than a few toes got stepped on in the process.)
- Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2018Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseThis book digs into the inner working of President Johnson's White House. It deals with the personnel and how they handled the domestic issues. It is not a detailed look at the Presidency. The War in Vietnam is a side issue. The same can be said about Congress. Instead, we see how Johnson worked with his aides and how they developed and worked on Great Society legislation. For those of us who libed through this era this book tells us what went on outside of our daily news reports.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2018Format: KindleVerified PurchaseTorn between three stars and four. Three major themes are dealt with in the book. (i) LBJ's efforts to improve the lot of African-Americans and the poor of all races. This is dealt with wonderfully: as a teenager in the UK at the time, I was aware of some of the issues, but I had no idea quite how shocking conditions were for these people. That LBJ faced such a struggle to get his legislation through is a damning indictment of those times. (ii) The behind-the-scenes turf wars and territory grabbing by his team in the White House. I assume this is accurate, but it held little interest for me and I saw little point in it being recorded 50 years later. (iii) LBJ's attitude to Vietnam. This is the reason for only three stars, The coverage is disgracefully superficial. The author gives no real insight into why LBJ continued to prosecute such a futile and unnecessary war.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2019Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseGood information about the Johnson administration.
Top reviews from other countries
- Joseph MyrenReviewed in Canada on October 22, 2022
5.0 out of 5 starsAWESOME
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseAWESOME - Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2019
5.0 out of 5 starsGood detailed account of the mechanizations of the LBJ presidency.
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseAn excellent LBJ book. Condenses all the great achievements of this president but takes into account all the people in the background who made it happen not just the big man himself. - SinghReviewed in India on June 8, 2019
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat book
Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseInformative. - Amazon CustomerReviewed in Germany on October 19, 2023
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat insights
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis is a terrific read. You really feel the tempo and character inside the Johnson White House. The account gives a clear understandings of the mechanics of government at the time and the interplay of key personalities. If you already know the general history of the Great Society, you should still read this, as it takes you much closer to the action and the realities of exercising power.
Some reviewers on this site are critical of the scant coverage of Vietnam. They are missing the point. This is not an account of the LBJ presidency. It is a laser focus on just one aspect, and it does that superbly.
