In honor of President Johnson’s birthday we have excerpted from The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power by H.W. Brands. Brands is a Professor of History at Texas A&M University. In the excerpt below he looks at the origins of Johnson’s foreign policy ideals.
…When Kennedy alluded in his inaugural address to the fact that he was the first American president born in the twentieth century, Johnson might have reflected that he too was a child of the present century, only he had seen a good deal more of it than Kennedy. What Johnson saw most distinctly—so distinctly that the view forever colored his outlook on the world—was the decade of the 1930s. Johnson experienced this most formative period in modern American history in a way Kennedy only read about. The 1930s molded Johnson’s understanding of both domestic and foreign affairs. As a junior congressman from a district wrung by the depression, Johnson learned to appreciate the potential of government for ameliorating poverty and restoring hope to communities suffering from too much of the former and too little of the latter. He witnessed the depth and force of the American desire to be left alone by the world, to tend America’s garden unmolested. He observed the failure of the Western democracies to stand up to aggression, especially at Munich in 1938. Once Johnson became president, his domestic program evinced his desire to complete the New Deal and extend the comforting hand of government to those parts of society still suffering. His foreign policy demonstrated his determination to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s and spare humanity a repetition of the horrors of the subsequent world war.
The postwar period did nothing to alter Johnson’s fundamental opinions on world affairs. His rapid rise in the Senate placed him among those regularly briefed on significant issues, first by Truman, then by Eisenhower. Though Johnson paid more attention to domestic developments than to international events, he learned much about global affairs from the front-row seat his position in the Democratic leadership afforded him. John Foster Dulles’s frequent consultations privied Johnson to the diplomatic thinking of the Eisenhower administration, which Johnson broadly shared. With Dulles and Eisenhower, Johnson accounted communism close kin to fascism—fascism with a red face. As fascism had battened on the irresolution of the democracies, so would communism if given a chance. What alone would keep the Cold War from becoming another world war was the fortitude of the Free World…
Beyond reminding him of what he already knew, Johnson’s exposure to the American policy-making process as majority leader and vice president increased his knowledge of world affairs. Johnson never became a student of international relations the way Richard Nixon, for example, did. But Johnson, like Nixon, early developed designs on the presidency, and he understood that anyone who intended to be president needed to keep an eye on happenings abroad. Johnson listened carefully to Dulles and Rusk, and he noted what he saw when he traveled. Besides, a man as smart as Johnson, in his position, would have learned a great deal about the world without even trying. Johnson inspired a variety of feelings in those who knew him, yet all agreed that he possessed daunting mental firepower. Robert Kennedy remarked, “I can’t stand the bastard, but he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” Eric Goldman, a Princeton historian who worked in the Johnson White House, commented that he had never encountered anyone with more raw intellectual ability than Johnson. Richard Helms remarked upon the president’s “enormously intelligent mind” and his “great capacity to grasp facts.” When Johnson believed an issue merited his attention, he blotted it up. “He mastered the details down to the last riffle,” Helms said. John McCloy depicted Johnson as “much more exacting and penetrating” in his efforts to get at the root of questions than Kennedy had been. “Mr. Johnson always gave me the feeling that he knew a great deal about his subject,” McCloy remembered. “I was always impressed by the depth of his penetration.” Dean Rusk was too. The secretary of state said of Johnson, “He was a man of great intellectual capacity and had an ability to understand the issues that were in front of him clearly and in great depth.”
Allied with Johnson’s intellect was his overwhelming personal presence. David Bruce described the Johnson force field. “I’m not frightened of him,” the ambassador said, “but I must say that when he entered a room, particularly if you were going to be the only person in it, somehow the room seemed to contract—this huge thing, it’s almost like releasing a djinn from one of those Arabian Nights’ bottles. The personality sort of fills the room. Extraordinary thing.” John McCloy related a narrow—and rare (and temporary)—escape from the Johnson treatment. In 1964 the president attempted to persuade the former high commissioner to Germany to replace Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador in South Vietnam. “Talk about twisting your arm!” McCloy said.
I will never forget it…He went from appealing to my patriotism and shaming me with my lack of it, or lack of willingness to take on a tough job. . . I came out of there limp and feeling a bit ashamed of myself because I hadn’t agreed to it.
(Johnson later nailed McCloy to serve as negotiator in talks with Britain and Germany over troop levels and problems regarding America’s balance of payments.)
Outsiders often assumed that the Johnson treatment did not work with foreigners. Unmodified, it didn’t. But Johnson was clever enough to adapt his approach to changing needs. Eugene Rostow, undersecretary of state for political affairs and Walt Rostow’s brother, found the president “extraordinarily sensitive and adept” in diplomatic conversations. “Simply superb,” the undersecretary summarized. David Bruce conceded that many in Britain considered Johnson a “picturesque character,” yet the ambassador noted that Johnson got on admirably with British prime minister Harold Wilson. George Ball explained that Johnson’s political background stood him well in dealing with that most difficult of foreign leaders, Charles de Gaulle. “I think the president respected de Gaulle as a brilliantly effective politician. He had a sort of high professional respect for him, and at the same time totally distrusted him.” Benjamin Read described how Johnson managed visiting dignitaries at Kennedy’s funeral. Read and others at the State Department prepared index cards for Johnson identifying the scores of guests and suggesting pertinent topics of conversation. Johnson palmed the cards and worked the reception line as if he had known the visitors since birth. “He handled it just extraordinarily skillfully,” Read recounted. “It left us with the greatest feeling of admiration.”
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