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Secrecy and Openness in Lyndon Johnson's White House: Political Style, Pluralism, and the Presidency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David M. Barrett
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Extract

Two dominant characteristics of President Lyndon Johnson's political style were (1) openness to diverse views and information and (2) extreme secrecy surrounding the advisory process. The two characteristics were in tension, but inextricably linked and served serious purposes: openness brought Johnson policy proposals and political analyses from diverse, credible sources, while secrecy kept his options open until the moment of presidential decision and improved the chances of turning proposals into government policy. I reject characterological analyses which over-emphasize sub-rational causes of Johnson's inclination to secrecy and which contend that he was closed off from diverse advice. The roots of Johnson's style resemble those of post-World War II pluralists, who (like LBJ) were influenced by Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. They and Johnson saw presidents facing a deadlocked democracy and heading an unresponsive executive branch, thus only political skillful and assertive presidents could overcome that dilemma.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , Winter 1992 , pp. 72 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1992

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References

For critiques of previous versions of this article, I thank Peri E. Arnold, John Roos, George Lopez, Alan Dowty, Alan Gibson, Matt Kerbel, Vaughn Davis Bornet, Harry McPherson, W. W. Rostow, Fred Greenstein, and Karen Hult. I am also indebted to: the staffs of the Lyndon Johnson Library, Austin, Texas, and the Richard B. Russell Library, Athens, Georgia; to the Lyndon Johnson Foundation and a committee of anonymous reviewers at the University of Texas for a Moody grant; and to Tom Johnson.

1. An increasingly popular data base for quantifying LBJ's advisory encounters is the Daily Diary at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, but researchers should be cautious: an archivist there told me that secretaries charged with tracking Johnson's meetings became increasingly systematic over the course of the administration. The Diary is of questionable reliability in comparing early with late years. Further, I was told, tracking of LBJ's meetings or phone calls with informal advisers, especially during evening hours was not comprehensive. My research confirms this. For example, Burke, John and Greenstein's, FredHow Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989) uses the Diary to report remarkably on p. 140Google Scholar that Johnson — discouraging advisers from exploring critical questions about Vietnam — had no one-on-one meetings with Sen. Richard Russell (who questioned escalation in Vietnam) in the crucial period from 6 February through 28 July 1965. Papers at the Russell Library, Athens, Georgia, show him at the White House and on the presidential yacht various evenings in these months. See also Lady Bird Johnson's oral history, Russell Library.

2. Character, says Barber's, James DavidThe Presidential Character, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), is “the way the President orients himself toward life — not for the moment, but enduringly” (pp. 6–8, 11).Google Scholar I define style as characteristic patterns, chosen and employed by a president, in dealing with his job and interacting with others.

3. Johnson, Sam Houston, My Brother Lyndon (New York: Cowles Book Co., 1970), p. 250.Google Scholar

4. On keeping options open until the last moment, with no decision being final until announced, see Johnson's oral history interview with Elspeth Rostow, p. II, 11, and Benjamin Read's oral history, p. 17, both LBJ Library.

5. Anderson, , The Presidents' Men (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), p. 328.Google Scholar A section of the book is titled “Caligula's Court.” Berman, Larry, in chapter one of his Planning A Tragedy (New York: Norton, 1982)Google Scholar, similarly notes and labels such interpretations of the Johnson White House. One prominent “Caligula”-style interpretation of Johnson does not (yet) deal with Vietnam: Caro's, Robert multivolume biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol. 1, The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982)Google Scholar and vol. 2, Means of Ascent (New York: Knopf, 1990).Google Scholar A persuasive critique of Caro is Wills's, Garry “Monstre Desacre,” New York Review of Books, 26 04 1990, pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

6. Barber, , Presidential Character, p. 80.Google Scholar Chapter two of Redford's, Emmette and Mcculley's, RichardWhite House Operations (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986)Google Scholar demonstrates that White House personnel turnover was not high in the Johnson administration.

7. In a personal interview in October 1990, Reedy reemphasized the difference he believed existed in Johnson's advisory interactions during his Senate days and those of his White House years. Earlier, he wrote that, on Vietnam, the president “succeeded in closing the debate only in the White House and could not understand just why it persisted in the nation as a whole” (Reedy, , Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir [New York: Andrews and McNeel, 1982], pp. 18, 142–43, 157Google Scholar).

8. Fulbright, , oral history interview, p. 6Google Scholar, Richard Russell Library, University of Georgia. See also Goodwin, Richard, Remembering America (Boston: Little Brown, 1988), chap. 21.Google Scholar Chapter 9 of Jeffreys-jones's, RhodriThe CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar portrays a president and White House whose “siege mentality” made Johnson “blind” to important issues (p. 163).

9. Cooper, Chester, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1970), p. 223.Google Scholar In truth, as Cooper notes, NSC meetings were not usually important advisory forums for Johnson.

10. Rulon, Philip R., Compassionate Samaritan: The Life of Lyndon Baines Johnson (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1981)Google Scholar; Valenti, Jack, A Very Human President (New York: Pocket Books, 1977), pp. 52, 58.Google Scholar

11. Helms, , oral history, p. 1, 13Google Scholar, LBJ Library; see Fortas, Abe on this, in Thompson, Kenneth W., ed., The Johnson Presidency: Twenty Intimate Perspectives of Lyndon B. Johnson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Rusk, , oral history, p. 1, 37Google Scholar, LBJ Library; see also Kahin, George M., Intervention (New York: Knopf, 1986), pp. 348, 362, 366.Google Scholar

12. Not that they disagree absolutely: Reedy describes Johnson as “the consummate political leader of his era,” who sometimes, “even when his White House setbacks produced a touch of paranoia … was willing to give serious consideration to opposing points of view.” On the other side of the spectrum, Valenti admits the president could be abusive.

13. Kearns, , Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 238, 323–24Google Scholar; Burke, and Greenstein, , with the collaboration of Larryberman, and Immerman, Richard, How Presidents Test Reality, pp. 144–45, 237, 280, 214–16, 238Google Scholar. Also Hatcher, Patrick, The Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists and Vietnam (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 185–88, 286–88.Google Scholar

14. Redford, and Mcculley, , White House Operations, pp. 72, 74.Google Scholar

15. Ward's, BarbaraThe Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (New York: Norton 1962)Google Scholar has commonly been cited as one book which Johnson read and reread.

16. Evans, Rowland and Novak, Robert, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar This is one of the finest early studies of Johnson's political career. On LBJ and mentors see Kearns, , Johnson and the American Dream, pp. 214, 239–40Google Scholar; also Reedy, , Lyndon B. Johnso pp. 39–44.Google Scholar

17. Evans, and Novak, , Lyndon B. Johnson, p. 148.Google Scholar

18. Kearns, , Johnson and the American Dream, p. 148.Google Scholar

19. Evans, and Novak, , Lyndon B. Johnson, pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

20. Bundy, William, oral history, p. 31Google Scholar, emphasis in the original; see also Helms, Richard, oral history, pp. 1, 23, 30, 33, all LBJ Library.Google Scholar

21. Bundy, McGeorge, oral history conducted by Richard Rusk, p. 17Google Scholar, Dean Rusk papers, Richard Russell Library. Bundy isn't quite calling Johnson a liar here; George Reedy writes that Johnson “never told a deliberate lie. But he had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the ‘truth' which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies” (Reedy, , Lyndon B. Johnson, p. 3Google Scholar).

22. Wheeler, oral history, p. II, 8, LBJ Library. Dean Rusk says LBJ “didn't like to have his hand disclosed before he was ready to announce it.” Rusk, interviewed by Richard Rusk, tape QQQQQ, pp. 10–11, Rusk papers, Russell Library. See also Heller, Walter, “President Johnson and the Economy,” in To Heal and to Build, ed. Burns, James M. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), p. 152.Google Scholar

23. On Johnson's liberalism, see Schambra, William, “Progressive Liberalism and American ‘Community,’” The Public Interest, Summer 1985, pp. 32–37Google Scholar; also Mckay, David, Domestic Policy and Ideology: Presidents and the American State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Mcpherson, , A Political Education (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp. 263–64.Google Scholar On Johnson and Roosevelt, and LBJ as a “congressional president,” see Hess, Stephen, Organizing the Presidency, 2nd ed. (Washington: Brookings, 1988), pp. 94–5, 103Google Scholar. Also Earle Wheeler's oral history, LBJ Library.

25. Truman, , The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951), pp. 399, 401–403, 422, 428.Google Scholar

26. Neustadt, , Presidential Power (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1960), pp. 6, 9–10, 185, 188, and, in general, chap. 6.Google Scholar

27. Burns, , The Deadlock of Democracy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 5–7, 257.Google ScholarMcconnell, Grant found in The Modern Presidency (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967)Google Scholar that the presidency was too weak, but uniquely “responsible to all of the people” and the medium for reasserting national values.” See pp. 90–94.

28. Kernell, , Going Public (Washington, D. C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1986), pp. 10–17.Google Scholar

29. Oral history interviews of Johnson, conducted by William Jorden and Elspeth Rostow for the Johnson Library, contain similar views as those expressed in Johnson, , The Vantage Point (New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1971).Google Scholar

30. Vantage Point, pp. 18, 27, 28, 29.

31. Ibid., p. 433.

32. Ibid., pp. 18, 28, 41, 433, 566. Johnson differed from certain academic pluralists in believing that there was such a thing as a “national interest”; Truman and many others asserted that there is no “national interest” apart from a given balance of forces among and between groups in the country at any given time.

33. Truman, , Governmental Process, p. 403.Google Scholar

34. Vantage Point, pp. 157–58, 438, 447.

35. Wheeler, , oral history, p. 1–3Google Scholar, LBJ Library.

36. Roche, oral history, p. 1, 50, LBJ Library.Google Scholar See also pp. 1, 9, 54, 63, 72, 73 of this insightful record.

37. Califano, , Governing America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), pp 140–41.Google Scholar This is a very readable comparison of the Carter and Johnson presidencies.

38. Hoopes, Townsend, Limits of Intervention: An Inside Account of How the Johnson Policy of Escalation Was Reversed (New York: D. McCay Co., 1969), p. 58.Google Scholar

39. President Kennedy apparently did not expect Diem's murder — see Taylor's, Gen. MaxwellSwords and Plowshares (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 301.Google Scholar On Kennedy and Diem, see Nolting, Frederick, From Trust to Tragedy (New York: Praeger, 1988).Google Scholar

40. But see Neustadt, Richard and May, Ernest R., Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 88.Google Scholar

41. Hatcher, , Suicide of an Elite, pp. 185–188, 286, 288Google Scholar; Berman, , Planning a Tragedy, pp. 99–100Google Scholar; Goodwin, , Remembering America, p. 410.Google Scholar

42. Kahin, , Intervention, pp. 348–49, 366.Google Scholar Kahin is quoting William Bundy, a former assistant secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

43. Barrett, David M., “The Mythology Surrounding Lyndon Johnson, His Advisers, and the 1965 Decision to Escalate the Vietnam War,” Political Science Quarterly 103, no. 4 (1988–1989): 637–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. For examples of Ball's advice see, for instance, Ball's oral history interview, pp. 1–18, 20, and Ball to Johnson memo, 18 June 1965, p. 4, NS File, Deployment of Major Forces, box 42, LBJ Library. Ball's stance gained recognition in Halberstam's, DavidThe Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972).Google Scholar

45. Meeting Notes File, 21–27 July 1965, box 1, LBJ Library. Also, “Views of Clark Clifford on Vietnam,” notes by Jack Valenti, 25 July 1965, Reference File, Miscellaneous Vietnam Documents Folder, LBJ Library.

46. A draft of a Humphrey memo urging Johnson to “cut [American] losses” in Vietnam is in VP Files, 1965–1968, Foreign Affairs: Vietnam, Memos to President, February 1965, Humphrey papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota. Humphrey, later published the memo in his autobiography, The Education of a Public Man (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 320–24.Google Scholar The archival evidence on Russell's advice is thinner, as Russell and Johnson relied primarily on face-to-face discussions, often over dinner or drinks at the White House or on the presidential yacht. But see memo from Mike Mansfield to Johnson, summarizing views of six senators, including Russell, that “insofar as Vietnam is concerned we are deeply enmeshed in a place where we ought not to be,” in International Series-Vietnam, Subject file — 23–31, July 1965, Russell Library. On both of these men, see Barrett, , “The Mythology,” pp. 651–55, 646–48.Google Scholar

47. Barrett, , “Mythology,” p. 644Google Scholar; Coffin, Tristram, Senator Fulbright: Portrait of a Public Philosopher (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966), pp. 188–89.Google Scholar

48. Mansfield wrote Johnson (as he also told him) that escalation “will win us only widespread difficulties.” He added, “I know that my thoughts have received your careful attention. I know that your assistants and the bureaucracy have studied them and occasionally even have concurred in ideas expressed in them.” This letter is from 24 March 1965, NS File, Memos to the President from M. Bundy, vol. 9, box 3, LBJ Library. On the Mansfield-Johnson relationship see Barrett, “Mythology,” pp. 648, 651.

49. The widely accepted thesis is in Berman, , Planninga Tragedy, e.g., pp. 121, 152.Google Scholar It is based on a claim by writers of the commentary (not original policymaking documents) in the Pentagon Papers: The Gravel Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), vol. 3, p. 475 and vol. 5, p. 299.Google Scholar See critiques in (especially) Kahin, , Intervention, pp. 362, 527Google Scholar, also Barrett, , “Mythology,” pp. 639, 658Google Scholar, and Betts, Richard in Braestrup, Peter, ed., Vietnam as History (Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1984), p. 46, 47Google Scholar, and former Under Secretary of State Ball's, GeorgePast Has Another Pattern (New York: Norton, 1982), pp. 399–403.Google Scholar Ball writes of Johnson's “agonizing reluctance to go forward [with escalation] and his desire to explore every possible alternative.” The Berman thesis is reconsidered and less stoutly defended in Berman's collaboration with Burke, John, Greenstein, Fred, and Immerman, Richard, How Presidents Test Reality, p. 215.Google Scholar

50. Schlesinger, , Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973), p. 883Google Scholar; Berman, , Lyndon Johnson's War, pp. 37, 56.Google Scholar

51. Fulbright, , The Arrogance of Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), pp. 188–97Google Scholar. See also Berman, William, William Fulbright and the Vietnam War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), pp. 78, 92.Google ScholarChomsky, , “The Logic of Withdrawal,” Ramparts, September 1967; revised and reprinted in American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 246–69.Google Scholar For contemporaneous evidence of standard “dovish” views in 1967, see also: Neil Sheehan, “Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk,” New York Times Magazine, 9 October 1966; Schlesinger, Arthur, The Bitter Heritage (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1967), p. 34Google Scholar; Taylor, , Swords and Plowshares, p. 379Google Scholar; and Schlesinger, , Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 833.Google Scholar

52. One who did, to Johnson's irritation, was his friend and director of the United States Information Agency, Leonard Marks. See his “Johnson and Leadership,” in Thompson, , Johnson Presidency, pp. 285–86.Google Scholar

53. Memo to the President from Tom Johnson, 7–12–67, “Meetings from Feb. ‘67 to Feb. ‘68” folder, T. Johnson Notes, box 3; Komer to McNamara and C. Vance, 4–24–67, folder: N. Katzenbach, Files of Komer, box 5; Komer to J. McNaughton, 4–8–67, folder: McNamara, Vance, McNaughton, Files of Komer, box 5, all LBJ Library; also Pentagon Papers, 4: 390–91, 440–41.

54. McNamara to Johnson, 5–19–67, in Pentagon Papers, 4: 169–75.Google Scholar

55. See Tom Johnson's notes of meetings, 6–12–67, 8–5–67, 8–16–67, and 8–24–67 (from which the quotation is taken), LBJ Library; also, Schoenbaum, Thomas, Waging Peace and War: Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 458Google Scholar; and an interview of Rusk by his son, Richard Rusk, tape PP, pp. 10–11, Rusk papers, Richard Russell Library.

56. Others favoring a bombing limitation OR opposing further troops escalations included speechwriter Harry McPherson, Sen. Mike Mansfield, and even national security adviser Walt Rostow (who supported McNamara's suggestions on bombing limitations — see Rostow to the President, “Response to Sen. Mansfield,” 8–7–67, NS file, Vietnam, Memos to the President, vol. 1, box 56, LBJ Library). Rostow supported other types of escalation, however. See also former national security adviser Bundy's, McGeorge letter to Johnson, Pentagon Papers, 4: 157–69.Google Scholar

57. Roche oral history, p. I, 18–20, 45–46, LBJ Library.

58. The quotation comes from Barbara Kellerman's favorable review of Berman's, LarryLyndon Johnson's War in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1990, pp 628–31.Google Scholar The classic description of Johnson's advisory circle being sealed off from reality [the “enduring stupidity and the self-protecting tenacity of the inner circle” where “never was heard a disparaging word] is Hoopes's influential The Limits of Intervention. See, for instance, pp. 59–61, 150, 181, 207, 218. Clifford helped this interpretation along by his cooperation with Hoopes, a former Pentagon subordinate. More balanced is Schandler's, HerbertLyndon Johnson and Vietnam: The Unmaking of a President (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

59. Some of Johnson's notes have been available for years. Johnson, who retains literary copyright of the notes (at the LBJ Library) says they were taken in speedwriting and then typed up. They are not perfect, he says, but represented his best effort to reflect accurately the advisory sessions. He adds that no one except the president had access to the notes; the president used them to keep track of the twists and turns of Vietnam decision-making in his administration, and also intended that they would be available to researchers eventually. Johnson says the president, who always read the notes after they were typed, never asked him to change their contents.

60. Clifford opposed a complete, unconditional bombing halt proposed by U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg as “fruitless,” and supported Rusk's suggestion of stopping all bombing north of the 20th parallel only “if enemy would stop artillery, mortars and rockets in DMZ area.” Rusk thought attaching conditions would kill the already slight chances that a bombing curtailment would lead to peace talks. Tom Johnson's notes, 3–4–68, 3–6–68, 3–19–68, 3–20–68; Rostow to former President Johnson, “Subject: Decision to Halt Bombing,” 3–19–71, NS file, country file: Vietnam; and statement by Rusk, 3–5–68, in same file, tab V, box 127, all LBJ Library.

61. Times story, quoted in the Pentagon Papers, 4: 588.Google Scholar

62. Rostow, Walt, quoted in Schandler, , Johnson and Vietnam, p. 202.Google Scholar Wheeler recognized that Johnson might yet alter the numbers sent — on 3–6–68, Wheeler told Johnson, “I sent General Westmoreland the message you asked me to give him last night. I told him … we did not have the capability to send more than 22,000 men to him at this time. But I emphasized that no decision has yet been made on this” (emphasis in the original).

63. Tom Johnson's notes, 10–15–68, LBJ Library.

64. Rusk virtually disappears from the description of decision-making in the final days before Johnson's 31 March speech in L. Berman's Lyndon Johnson's War. This is proof, if any were needed, that the availability of archival materials to political scientists will not necessarily resolve empirical, much less theoretical, controversies.

65. On 10–27–68, as plans progressed toward a complete bombing halt in response to certain concessions from North Vietnam, Johnson (though seemingly ready to take a further deescalation move) appeared comfortable playing the “devil’s advocate” against the halt. He asked, “Why do we have to yield?” Rusk responded, “They have made the major step.” Clifford added, “If ten steps separated us, they have taken eight and we have taken two.” Rusk rejoindered, “I would say it is nine to one.” Tom Johnson's notes, LBJ Library.

66. M. Bundy to Johnson, 3–21 and 3–22–68, Office files of the President: M. Bundy, box 1, LBJ Library.

67. On Cousins, see Edgar Berman to Hubert Humphrey, 3–19–68, regarding a 15 March Johnson-Cousins meeting lasting an hour and forty-five minutes at the White House. The memo, reporting Berman's conversation with Cousins, indicates that Johnson called Cousins to arrange the meeting. See Berman Memos to Vice President, 1968, Humphrey papers, Minnesota Historical Society.

68. Fortas to Johnson, mailed on 3–12–68, folder: “Abe Fortas,” Files Pertaining to A. Fortas and H. Thornberry, box 1, LBJ Library.

69. The Acheson quotation is from Oberdorfer's, DonTet (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 309–315Google Scholar, which has an account more detailed but consistent with “Mar. 26, 1968 – 3:15 PM, Special advisory group,” meeting notes file, box 2, LBJ Library. Russell's, quotation comes from the Congressional Record, 4–2–68, pp. 8570–73.Google Scholar

70. Thomas, and Wolman, , “Policy Formulation in the Institutionalized Presidency,” in Cronin, and Greenberg's, The Presidential Advisory System (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), pp. 124–43.Google Scholar See also Smith's, Nancy K. “Presidential Task Force Operation During the Johnson Administration,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 320–29.Google Scholar

71. Thomas, and Wolman, , “Policy Formulation,” p. 127.Google Scholar

72. Kearns, , Johnson and the American Dream, pp. 222–23Google Scholar; see also Smith, “Presidential Task Force Operations”; Conkin, Paul Keith, Big Daddy from the Pedemales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986).Google Scholar In addition, there were ninety “internal or interagency” task forces. See pp. 209–212.

73. Thomas, and Wolman, , “Policy Formulation,” p. 128.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., p. 129; Johnson, quoted in Smith, , “Presidential Task Force Operations,” p. 321.Google Scholar

75. Vantage Point, p. 433.

76. , Thomas and Wolman, , “Policy Formulation,” pp. 131, 135.Google Scholar Emphasis added. The Kennedy administration faced pressures to “balance” its task forces.

77. Ibid., p. 136. See also Smith, , “Presidential Task Force Operations,” pp. 321–22.Google Scholar

78. Thomas, and Wolman, , “Policy Formulation,” p. 137.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., pp. 134, 139, 140, 142–43. Thomas, and Wolman, observe that the Johnson task forces may be “a good example of what Theodore Lowi in The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1969) has called ‘interest group liberalism,' a phenomenon which Lowi feels has come increasingly to characterize American politics in the 1960s” (p. 143).Google Scholar But Lowi describes a process in which policymaking in government is largely captured by the access and influence of interest groups; the Johnson task forces represented a decided effort to escape excessive “access” of interest groups.

80. Seaborg, Glenn T. with Loeb, Benjamin S., Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), p. xix.Google Scholar

81. Seaborg, , Stemming the Tide, p. 19.Google Scholar

82. Ibid., pp. 20, 23.

83. Ibid., pp. 36, 44–45; Johnson, , Vantage Point, p. 466.Google Scholar

84. See Rostow's, Eugene oral history, p. 1, LBJ Library.Google Scholar Also Kearns, , Johnson and the American Dream, pp. 248–49Google Scholar: “If a reporter learned in advance that the President was going to do something on Thursday, and reported that fact in Tuesday's paper, Johnson would often change his plans in order to embarrass the reporter, who had then to explain his error, and to serve notice on those who leaked the story that such indiscretion was a serious act of insubordination.”

85. Seaborg, , Stemming the Tide, pp. 136, 148.Google Scholar

86. Ibid., pp. 145, 146.

87. Ibid., p. 149.

88. At least 11 persons, plus the Gilpatric Committee, are listed as advising Johnson on arms control in the Seaborg account: Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, Rostow, Seaborg, Ball, Helms, Clifford, Fortas, and Senators Russell and Jackson.

89. Nor am I suggesting that Johnson's use of this combination of openness and secrecy always “worked.” When Sen. Richard Russell pressed the president to support his nomination of a man who was apparently conservative on racial issues for a federal judgeship, Johnson consulted not only with Russell, but civil rights groups and Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who opposed the nomination. Through secret machinations, Johnson tried to achieve agreement that the nominee was not racist or anti-civil rights. This would then allow Johnson to support Russell's nominee. Russell lost patience with the process, castigated Johnson, and saw their friendship severely damaged, with results which damaged the nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice. See files on the Fortas-Thornberry nominationsat the LBJ Library, also Fite, Gilbert, Richard B. Russell, Jr., Senator From Georgia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 476-82.Google ScholarOn LBJ and civil rights, see Thompson, , Johnson Presidency, p. 7Google Scholar; Conkin, , Big Daddy from the Pedemales, pp. 214–17Google Scholar; Bornet, Vaughn Davis, Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1983), p. 97Google Scholar; Evans, and Novak, , Lyndon B. Johnson, p. 377.Google Scholar Johnson's judgment surely included a rational calculation of the civil rights bill's chances for passage in 1964. See Wicker, Tom, JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality upon Politicsr(New York: Morrow, 1968), pp. 173–74.Google Scholar

90. In 1965, he even took on the language of the civil rights movement, proclaiming to Congress, “We shall overcome.” Bell, Jack, The Johnson Treatment (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 159–66.Google Scholar It took more than Johnson's lobbying to move Smith. See Whalen, Charles and Whalen, Barbara, The Longest Debate (Cabin Lodge, MD: Seven Locks Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Califano, , Presidential Nation, p. 215.Google Scholar

91. Tuchman, Barbara, The March of Folly (New York: Knopf, 1984), pp. 311, 338.Google Scholar

92. O'neill, , Man of the House (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 183–84.Google Scholar

93. Westmoreland, , A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 234, 230, 414Google Scholar; Rusk, oral interview, no. 1, LBJ Library, pp. 42, 37.

94. Ball, oral interview, p. II, 15, and Eugene Rostow, oral interview, p. 11 both LBJ Library. Emphasis in the original.

95. Aiken, , oral interview, p. 9Google Scholar; Gruening, , oral interview, both LBJ Library, p. 8.Google Scholar

96. Helms oral interview, LBJ Library, pp. 12, 37.

97. Bundy, , oral interview, LBJ Library, pp. 27–29.Google Scholar Bundy says such written characterizations came from former administration officials James Thompson and Richard Goodwin in the late 1960s, and were “inherently small minded” and “rather sordid and opportunistic.”

98. Taylor, Maxwell oral interviews, (1969) p. 25Google Scholar, (1981) p. II, 37, LBJ Library.

99. Christian, , oral history, p. IV, 27, LBJ Library.Google Scholar See also Lodge, Henry Cabot, quoted in New York Times, 5–21–72, p. 14Google Scholar: “during the whole period from the end of 1963 through 1968 that I worked for Johnson, I never had the slightest difficulty in getting his attention and therefore had no reason to ‘complain' … (Johnson] was always courteous and considerate of me. Far from being inaccessible, he gave of himself unstintingly.” Also see White House aide Larry Temple, oral history, on Johnson's reputation for “chewing people out”: “I must say I didn't experience that very much. He always was nice to me, treated me with complete deference, even at times I knew he was unhappy with me.” See p. III, 36, and, for Temple's quotation of Lawrence O'Brien on Johnson, p. II, 18, LBJ Library. See also Berman, Larry, “The Evolution and Value of Presidential Libraries,” in The Presidency and Information Policy, ed. Relyea, Harold C. et al. (New York: Center for the Study of the Presidency, 1981), dealing on pp. 88–89Google Scholar with Budget Director Gordon Kermit Gordon and Johnson.

100. Redford, and Mcculley, , White House Operations, pp. 72–75.Google Scholar

101. Roche oral history, p. I, 42, LBJ Library.

102. Other published works which move us toward a new understanding of the Johnson presidency, include Graham, Hugh Davis, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill, NC: University of N. Carolina Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Humphrey, David, “Tuesday Lunch at the White House: A Preliminary Assessment,” Diplomatic History 8, no. 4 (1984): 81–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palmer, Bruce, The Twenty-five Year War (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Redford, Emmette and Blissett, Marian, Organizing the Executive Branch: The Johnson Presidency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Firestone, Bernard J. and Vogt, Robert C., eds., Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Us of Power (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Welborn, David M. and Burkhead, Jesse, Intergovernmental Relations in the American State: The Johnson Presidency (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Davis Bornet, Vaughn, “Reappraising the Presidency of Johnson, Lyndon B.,” Presidential Studies Quarter Summer 1990, pp. 591–602Google Scholar; Schwarz, John, America's Hidden Success (New York: Norton, 1983).