Obituary
L.B.J.
Denis Brogan
Hey, hey, L.B.J., How many kids have been killed today?
It was one of the tragedies of Mr Johnson's presidential life that the brilliant success not only of his electoral campaign in 1964 but of the first year or two of his administration was eclipsed by the equivalent of Napoleon's Spanish ulcer, the war in Vietnam. It is, of course, a matter for mere speculation whether it made much difference to the war that it was conducted by L.B.J. after the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy; but many things were forgiven to John Fitzgerald Kennedy that were not forgiven to Lyndon Baines Johnson.
For one thing, Jack Kennedy was very much better looking. In fact, he was one of the best looking American president S of modern times (the competition has not been keen). Lyndon Johnson looked like a Texan who had made it. He did not look like the natural leader of the American people; and if he looked like a natural leader of Texas, this did him very little good outside Texas.
Yet there can be no doubt that a brisk dismissal of President Johnson is unjust and, historically speaking, disastrous. First of all, there is an unresolved problem. Do we know that had Jack Kennedy continued to be president he would have avoided sinking in the mud of the Mekong? Do we know that he would have found useful collaborators in the ruling class of Vietnam? Do we know that, in any normal sense, there was a solution to the mess left behind by the 'collapse of Frenclh colonialism, and by the State of muddle about Vietnam which marked Washington and was visible in the minds of even such intelligent Americans as Robert Macnamara, the Secretary of Defence, or General Max Taylor? As it was, the damnosa heredias that fell to Lyndon Baines Johnson destroyed during his presidency and retirement most of the prestige and power he gained by his successful first two years in office.
Of course, he gained a good deal by having to fight (if that is the proper word) Senator Barry Goldwater. Senator Goldwater was a charming man and, unlike L.B.J., a good loking man, but he had various faults, one of them being that he was idle. Idle, it is true, in a much more charming and less dangerous way than the idleness practised by Calvin Coolidge. Nevertheless, the United States could not afford a president who was idle, and very little else. Senator Goldwater was a pushover, and he was pushed over with startling ease by the President who succeeded after the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It is possible that the unfortunate destiny of the Lyndon Johnson administration could not have been avoided. There was, perhaps, no solution at all. After all, the present state of Ulster does not cast much gratifying light on John Bull's Other Island. I know at least one very intelligent and very well informed American official who holds that it was a great mistake to encourage passively, 'and perhaps positively, the overthrow of Diem. But it was done all the same, and since then the political problems of Vietnam have been insoluble except with a degree of political intelligence and political will which have not been available in the past — and as the Nixon-Kissinger peace settlement still leaves in doubt.
One disastrous result of the war (I am ignoring the disastrous results for the unfortunate inhabitants of Vietnam) was the destruction of the consensus which Lyndon Johnson had built up. I was astonished to read in a well known English paper about the great popularity of Lyndon Johnson: I have never come across any serious symptoms of this popularity. Admiration, yes. Belief in his competence, yes. Belief in his courage, yes. But if any modern American president acquired, after losing it, the admiration of the American people, it was Harry Truman, not Johnson.
It may be that the United States suffered the fate of many great imperial powers of managing, despite its power, to bite off in South-East Asia a great deal more than it could chew. There is, therefore, a danger that, at this moment at any rate, Mr Johnson's career will be underestimated. It was a very remarkable parliamentary career. In a parliamentary government, especially in •a British or Canadian parliamentary government, Senator Johnson's claims to be what the Elizabethans called an " undertaker " could hardly have been disputed. He was the type of political manipulator much admired by the hard working machine politicians who existed in Britain as well as in the United States, a superior Schnadhorst. He was more than that, for whatever his motives when he finallY decided to appear as a national, and not as a state or sectional, politician he displayed in his fight for the nomination all the skills which had made him so formidable 0 senatorial leader. He could overdo the arts of "the undertaker." I can remember lunching with a close friend of mine in the Senate. Lyndon Johnson came up to MY friend (with whom he was on notoriouslY bad, terms though both were Democrats), and after a little idle chatter, he asked who I was. He was given my name, which I regret to say, conveyed nothing to hiol, and then my host said, after allowing 8 few moments for digesting the neW information, "I ought to tell you, Lyndon, that my guest is not a Texan; he is not even a United States voter." It was ten or perhaps fifteen seconds before the Senate leader's arm dame off my shoulder.
But Lyndon Johnson acquired, and deserved to acquire, a number of extremely competent assistants, and In some ways an extremely competent cabinet. He had not mastered all the parliamentary arts for nothing. Nor 15 there any reason to doubt that he recollected his days of teaching the miserably poor Negro and Mexican children of Texas whose parents he later cultivated with a great deal of success. In many ways, he was like Asquith, that great pioneer of the welfare state (pace till the indignant Welsh who rally round the memory of LG). If he had had the luck t° be President in a peaceful age, or even in 0 I moderately peaceful age, he might have i gone down as a serious and successfo1,1 political leader, as Woodrow Wilson woul° have gone down as a successful congres• sional leader but for the impact of World War I.
Johnson showed great good sense In abdicating and adopting the role of Ch V rather than the role of Theot.ore Roosevelt. But by the end of 1966 the che was cast. Vietnam was the issue which could only be won — if it could be won', by an immense expenditure of blood art,', money: white money and Negro blood. will be some years before Lyndon Johnson's serious claims to be one of the , makers of the modern American welfare state are fully appreciated. But it 05 quite a long time before the serious claintS of Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman vverie accepted. At this moment of his funeral, former President Johnson is simply leading Texas politician (Eisenhower WnAs himself a Texan by birth, but he manage; to clean his record of this perilous star` quite early in his career). I will make a guess that ten years froin, now President Johnson will emerge in American records as an energetic, condrageous, and intelligent defender en, expander of the welfare state who Wn' thrown off his track by a war in a counrdi (to quote from Neville Chamberlain) 9,1 which we know little. Whereas there W11,, not be much of Neville Chamberlain tv remember, there will be a good deal, and good deal to his credit, to remember Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Previous page
