The Choices We Face
by Lyndon Baines Johnson
Bantam, 1969. 151 pages
“Perhaps the greatest single lesson a President learns is that America’s power to control events in the world is limited. Because we have, in our nuclear arsenal, the power to destroy the world, some have been misled to believe that we also have the power to shape the world to our wishes – to compel cooperation and respect.”
It seems odd that those words would come out of the pen of Lyndon Baines Johnson. His book, “The Choices We Face” is both a defense of his legacy and an attempt to exert influence on future policy.
“Choices” discusses a wide range of topics, including Vietnam, economic growth, jobs, dissent, housing and quality of life. While his tone is upbeat, every now and then there’s a subtle tone of bitterness.
“The stress I place on informing the public may sound odd to those persuaded by the myths about secretiveness that have grown up in recent years – “managed news” in President Kennedy’s years, “credibility gaps” in mine.”
The term “managed news” is a term for media manipulation. A 1963 article from Time magazine sheds light on Johnson’s failure to charm newsmen. It reads as follows:
"Several weapons are available to any President—suppression, concealment, distortion, false weighing of facts—and (NY Times Columnist Arthur) Krock says that Kennedy has employed them all. But it is in the field of indirect management of news that the President (Kennedy) has moved ‘with subtlety and imagination for which there is no historic parallel known to me.’ A favorite ploy is to claim unpopular decisions are ‘in line with or compelled by policies adopted by the Eisenhower Administration… Krock complains about the ‘social flattery’ which the President directs toward Washington newsmen, but he is forced to confess: ‘I have myself on occasion been infused with the warmth of good will engendered by this courtship of a suitor of such charm and unique distinction.’”
If Johnson wasn’t as fortunate as Kennedy in this realm, he only has himself to blame. During Johnson’s term, there were several weeks when over 500 Americans died in Vietnam. The stakes were high during Kennedy’s term, but not nearly as brutal. With such a dire world situation, Lyndon Johnson could not afford to be a jerk.
“And future generations will say of us: At the very moment when they had more wealth than any civilization in history, they allowed poverty to become a permanent part of the American way of life.”
Conservatives attack Johnson’s Great Society programs for their waste. Believing that there is no problem that government can’t make worse, they cite its expensive bureaucracy as being the main reason why taxes are so high. They believe that The Great Society breeds entitlement.
Whether or not the Great Society enhanced America or destroyed it financially, Johnson believed that money was the solution to all evils. He writes:
“A few years ago, I was told that we were spending about $350,000 annually on housing and urban research – hardly enough to pay the architect’s fee on a great office building. Today the figure is $10 million.”
“In my term, the amount of American aid to help them meet their (third world countries) duty (for family planning facilities) was increased from $2 million a year to $35 million a year.”
Conventional wisdom of that time said that the Great Society and the Vietnam War could not co-exist. Joseph W. Barr, undersecretary of the Treasury told the Armed Services Committee that Americans would have to lower their standard of living if they wanted to shoulder the burdens of the world. To them, Johnson writes:
“However unhappy any cost of war is, the fact remains that Vietnam has taken up but 4% of our national income – compared to the 14% that was taken by the Korean War.”
Clearly, Johnson believes he’s gotten a raw deal from his critics.
Children of the Baby Boomers are usually left with a confused vision of Lyndon Johnson. While researching 1968 at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, I felt a variety of emotions, including pity. Johnson appears to be a good man with bad timing. He could never live up to the stunted legacy of President John Kennedy. He could never achieve the style to deal with nosy newsmen.
“He was the first hippy President,” someone once told me. Unloved by his own hippy countrymen, Johnson was caught between the domino theories of the past and the Boomer’s new emphasis on peace and spirituality. He signed the Civil Rights bill, but used racial epithets in private conversation. By the time this book was published, the term “negro” had been replaced by the word “black.” But he could never get used to it:
“The average Negro’s income is still only about 60% of average white income..."
Present and future generations will no doubt look on this book and wonder why the problems Johnson wrote about, such as the environment, national health care, globalization and wire-tapping still lingered. America had a president who was willing to engage new ideas and the activists who touted them. Why do these problems still exist?
Perhaps that’s why the anger and disappointment will remain a stain on Johnson’s legacy for years to come.
