President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historical legacy in foreign policy is most often associated with the disastrous American military intervention and escalation in Southeast Asia. While the passage of time has not diminished criticism of LBJ’s decision-making in Vietnam, scholars have come to recognize that his administration faced other, often complex international challenges. Some of these issues, like the emergence of a new set of European leaders pursing state interests that often clashed with Johnson’s grand strategic priorities, were of the traditional sort. Other global forces were novel and could not be understood only through a Cold War lens. These new challenges included tense dynamics within the Western alliance, the dilemmas of détente, the aftermath decolonization and the rise of new states, global public health, international monetary relations, and nuclear nonproliferation. This chapter explores how President Johnson navigated some of these complicated, cross-cutting international forces.

Chapter 2 presents a theory of why members choose to collaborate – often with unlikely allies – in a polarized and conflict-prone legislature. Drawing on organizational theory, collaboration is clearly defined as members of Congress working together toward a shared policy goal. This behavior is then placed in the context of social exchange theory, in which social interactions are viewed as interpersonal exchanges of both tangible and intangible goods. Applying social exchange theory to the US House of Representatives predicts that members of Congress will collaborate when all involved have a common goal and expect that they will be better off working together than going alone. The expected costs and benefits of collaboration are informed by previous experiences and interactions, as well the rules and norms of Congress. The social exchange perspective emphasizes collaboration as a function of both self-interest and interdependence. As long as it improves the likelihood of achieving their goals, members will seek to collaborate. Their ability to do so depends on whether they can find a colleague with whom they can reach an agreement for mutual gain. 

We live in LBJ’s America. More than any other individual, Lyndon Baines Johnson shaped the era of American history that has played out since the 1960s and established the political and social milieu within which we live. Above all, his legislative accomplishments represent a breathtaking leap forward that profoundly reshaped the nation. LBJ championed transformative bills that extended civil rights to African Americans, Latinos, and other historically marginalized groups, definitively ending the Jim Crow era and opening the way to a more just America true to its founding principles. More broadly, under the banner of the Great Society, he extended the social safety net by creating economic opportunity for impoverished citizens left behind even as the nation experienced a level of prosperity never before seen in human history.

The modern era of partisanship in Supreme Court confirmations began during LBJ’s presidency. It saw two successful Supreme Court nominations and two failed ones that had lasting consequences. As the president, the Senate, nominees, interest groups, and the public mobilized, they created and politicized the confirmation process, and Republicans realized how powerful a tool the threat of an “activist Supreme Court” could be in shaping and uniting the GOP.

Chapter 6 focuses on relationships in Congress, examining why some members are more likely to work together than others. As collaboration is an inherently relational activity that requires agreement between two or more actors, social network analysis is used to account for the interdependence of members. This chapter demonstrates that the relationships among members of Congress are a function of strategic considerations, personal relationships, and shared policy goals. Most notably, almost half of the relationships in the collaborative Congress are bipartisan, as members expect that working across the aisle will broaden the appeal of a policy and significantly increase the likelihood it will be successful. Even in a polarized environment, members are clearly motivated to try and find common ground with members of the opposite party. Members are also more likely to collaborate when they have mutual friends, are from the same state, or sit on the same committee, reflecting how the existing interpersonal and institutional relationships in Congress can lower the costs of collaboration.

This chapter explores the limits of Lyndon Johnson’s capacity to empathize with and understand the peoples of the decolonizing world during his presidency and the implications of his experience for the America he left behind. It traces Johnson’s view of the decolonizing world in the context of the Cold War, showing how his understanding of revolutionary nationalism and the social, political, and economic problems left behind by European colonialism evolved – or failed to evolve – alongside his increasingly progressive definition of democracy at home. Acknowledging his truly ambitious vision of a “global Great Society,” which promised innovative global health, education, and anti-poverty initiatives to the Third World, the chapter ultimately shows how Johnson failed to fulfill his promises to redefine US national interests in the world around compassion for the marginalized. Instead, in his dealings with Third World leaders, he often reverted to the kind of transactional power politics that had served him so well in the Senate, failing to see how central the value of self-determination was to anti-colonial movements and their representatives. In the final analysis, this chapter uses Johnson’s example to investigate the limitations of compassion in US foreign relations more broadly.

Chapter 5 examines how collaboration varies across members. Nearly every member of Congress collaborates to some degree, but there is significant variation with some members coauthoring one or two policy proposals in a Congress and others forming relationships with fifty colleagues or more. Examining this variation reveals clear patterns in the characteristics of the most and least collaborative members and illustrates how collaboration is a function of a member's incentives and opportunities. Members who interested in policymaking are incentivized to collaborate more, and those who are well connected in Congress have more opportunities. Members representing competitive districts are more likely to collaborate with the other party, while those representing partisan districts work with their co-partisans. Consistent with social exchange theory, members collaborate to support their electoral and policy goals but are constrained by their ability to identify a worthwhile partner.

This chapter argues that the presidency of Lyndon Johnson remade Cold War conservatism in the mid to late 1960s. Rather than a movement defined by the political candidacy of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the right cut its political teeth in opposition to President Johnson, growing savvier, more politically effective, and more ideological complex as it defined itself against the Great Society and the revitalized Cold War liberalism of the Johnson administration. In particular, Cold War conservatism took a populist turn, as the right navigated the majoritarian politics of the civil rights era and the popularity of more heterodox conservative figures like Alabama Governor George Wallace, who, while not a movement conservative, appealed to the same base that the right hoped to harness in national politics. After examining the emergence of Cold War conservatism and Senator Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, the chapter then focuses on the ways conservative activists sought to counter, coopt, and contain Johnson’s presidency, ultimately developing the political coalition that would lead to the election of Ronald Reagan.

When Lyndon Johnson took the United States into large-scale war in Vietnam in 1965, he did so despite deep misgivings on the part of numerous close associates, including his vice president and senior Senate Democrats, as well as key allied governments. Johnson himself frequently expressed doubts about the prospects in the struggle, even with the commitment of major US combat troops and heavy air power. Yet he took the plunge, despite the fact that some part of him suspected – correctly – that the war would ultimately be his undoing. Why he did so is harder to explain than is often suggested, but it’s not inexplicable. At each step, escalation represented the path of least political resistance for him. Thus although Johnson may have been a doubting warrior, he was also a determined one, from his first day in office to his last. He stayed the course even as domestic opposition grew in 1967 and 1968, and even as his principal subordinate on the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, grew disillusioned. In January 1969, Johnson left Washington, a man broken by a war he didn’t want but felt compelled to wage.

Chapter 3 introduces an innovative measure of collaboration in Congress based on internal communications in Congress known as Dear Colleague letters (DCLs). The chapter begins with a brief history of DCLs, tracing their usage back to the early twentieth century and showing how members use them to advertise and build support for their ideas among their colleagues. These letters shed new light on the day-to-day work of Congress, as members send them in the earliest stages of the policy process and across a wide range of policymaking activities, from bill introductions to letters to the executive branch. When members sign a letter together, they are claiming joint ownership of its content, reflecting an underlying collaborative relationships. These signatures are used to create a network representation of the collaborative Congress that accounts for the inherently relational dynamics of collaboration in the House of Representatives.

Congressional staff assert that collaborative policy is more successful, especially if the collaboration is bipartisan: Policy letters gain additional attention, invitations have a broader appeal, and bills are more likely to pass. Chapter 7 tests that assumption by examining the outcomes of collaborative legislation. At every stage of the legislative process, collaborative bills are more successful than single-author bills. Collaborative legislation attracts more cosponsors and is more likely to be reported out of committee, pass the House, and be enacted. Bipartisan bills do particularly well, particularly for rank-and-file members with limited institutional power, but majority party members also benefit from partisan collaboration. By working together, members can signal that a bill has broad support – either within or across the political parties – and facilitate a smoother legislative process from introduction to enactment. Thus, collaboration is a valuable tool for members of Congress seeking to advance their agenda.

The War on Poverty was in many ways a political slogan rather than a concrete set of policy initiatives. Often invoked interchangeably with the “Great Society,” it included anti-poverty programs that contributed to America’s patchwork safety net and other initiatives intended to maximize the individual citizen’s ability to realize his or her fullest potential. Conservatives then and later derided the War on Poverty as a failed attempt at economic redistribution that led millions of Americans into a state of permanent dependency on the government, but in truth, LBJ and his aides never seriously contemplated policies that would enforce equality of income, wealth, or condition. They did not broadly support quantitative measures like a guaranteed minimum income or employment. Instead, they believed that qualitative measures like education, workforce training, and access to health care and food security would level the playing field and help poor people realize their share of a growing economy. When economic growth sputtered in the early 1970s, the limitations of these policy decisions became immediately evident. But, considered on its own terms, the War on Poverty proved a lasting and important component of the nation’s response to poverty.

This chapter is about Lyndon Johnson’s relationship with Mexican Americans and his work in the arena of US–Latin American relations. Johnson always credited his teaching experience at the “Mexican school” in Cotulla, Texas with his lifelong sympathy toward Mexican Americans, and as the influence that made him want to help them when he was president. But Johnson’s presidency also coincided with a period of great flux for Latinos in the United States and US–Latin American relations more broadly. The number of Latinos in the United States was growing, in part because of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Johnson signed into law in 1965, and in part because the United States needed Cold War allies, so Johnson maintained the “Good Neighbor” policies of his predecessors in order to secure support from Mexico and other Latin American nations. Throughout the civil rights era and the middle period of the Cold War, when Johnson was in office, Latinos were key deciders of their own fate, waging campaigns for greater rights and inclusion in the social, political, and economic life of the United States.

As the first study of collaboration in Congress, this book significantly expands our understanding of why members of Congress often choose to work together in a polarized Congress and often do so across party lines. Chapter 8 reviews the book's key findings: (a) members of Congress collaborate on substantive policy initiatives, (b) they are strategic about when and with whom to collaborate, and (c) collaborative legislation is more successful at every stage of the legislative process. The chapter concludes with discussions of the implications of this study for understanding legislative behavior and congressional policymaking, avenues for future research, and the outlook for the collaborative Congress and ways to support it in the years ahead.