LBJ, A Biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson
By Irwin Unger and Debi Unger.
592 pages, 1999, GBP 19.50, ISBN 0-471-17602-8
Book available from the publisher
John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.
Baffins Lane
Chichester, Sussex, PO19 1UD
United Kingdom
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Reviewed by: Reviewed by Robert L. Bratman, M.D., retired gynaecologist, with a degree in history, and an emeritus member of the Clinical Faculty of Stanford University Medical School, now living in Wales.
It is hard to imagine compressing his life into just one volume; but while the authors have done just that, it has been done with enough loss of detail that a reader not familiar with the history of the times might sometimes be left wondering who is who in the cast of characters marching in the American political scene along with Lyndon Johnson. The volume would benefit from short footnote type biographies of the many national characters who pass in and out of the narrative. For example, a non-American reader might benefit from a small description of Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, so as to avoid confusion with his son, also Albert, also a Senator, and the current Vice-President.
Lyndon Johnson was born and raised in what is known as the Texas Hill Country along the banks of the Pedernales River, an area that also spawned World War II Admiral Chester Nimitz. His background, schooling, and early career are adequately described as is his entry onto the national scene in Washington. It is in Washington that the book begins to cram detail into the narrative by just merely listing events, most times without the kind of explanation one would like to have. The reader is led, racing, through the years as Majority Leader of the Senate; probably his finest hour.
The controversial events in Johnson's career are handled with studied non-controversial evenness--his military career and decoration; his use of his new wife's inheritance to fund his first election campaign; his election as Senator in 1948 as "Landslide Lyndon" by eighty-seven votes; his selection as John Kennedy's running mate in 1960; his purchase of Texas radio stations and subsequent creation of his fortune; his relationship with the held over members of Kennedy's staff' in particular Attorney General Robert Kennedy; his calculated, ambivalent, non-support of Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 election; his sexual peccadilloes; and his escalation of the war in Viet Nam. Very little of his family enters the book though; just a few comments here and there, but there is enough of Lady Bird to get the flavor of their relationship especially when it comes to his decision not to run for re-election in 1968.
Lyndon Johnson, as the first truly southern President since Andrew Johnson, won passage of major civil rights, anti-poverty, aid to education, and health care legislation' the so-called "Great Society." However, his Presidency foundered on the Viet Nam war. Nothing is said about the events surrounding the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Most likely Johnson's ego got in the way of clear judgement, for Admiral James Stockdale, leader of the first strike after the "incident," spent eight years in a Vietnamese prison worrying that his captors might find out that he knew the whole thing was a fraud. Johnson did not consult his commanders on the scene, who were not in favor of the action. It is hard to imagine someone like Eisenhower making a similar mistake. Then, like B'rer Rabbit and the Tar Baby it went on from there, and the Johnson Presidency was destroyed. All in all, an excellent, but sometimes scanty, portrayal of an extremely complex individual.