I am also a liberal, a conservative, a Texan, a taxpayer, a rancher, a businessman, a consumer, a parent, a voter--and I am all these things in no fixed order.
I bridle at the very casualness with which we have come to ask each other, "What is your political philosophy?" I resent the question most often not because I suspect it of guile and cunning, but for its innocence, the innocence that confuses dogma with philosophy and presumes that the answer can be given in a word or two. Our political philosophies, I have found, are the sum of our life's experience. God made no man so simple or his life so sterile that such experience can be summarized in an adjective.
It is part of my philosophy to regard individuality of political philosophy as a cornerstone of American freedom and, more specifically, as a right expressly implied in our nation's basic law and indispensable to the proper functioning of our system.
The region--so unproductive and insignificant in capacity in my youth--is now a vital part of the national economy and potential. More important, the wastage of human resources in the whole region has been reduced, if by nothing more than the advent of electricity into homes. Men and women have been released from the waste of drudgery and toil against the unyielding rock of the Texas hills. This is fulfillment of the true responsibility of government.
The other party has always been the party of a single interest, This single interest, by which I mean Business, is a legitimate interest, and it is one which has contributed mightily to the growth of the US. It has a right to and deserves national representation. And there is room for it, or part of it, in the Democratic Party. But it can be only one of many interests. There its rights and privileges, and its duties, are considered alongside those of the farmer and rancher, the working man and the various rights and aspirations of the different sections of the country.
He made the Senate peculiarly his own institution and became the youngest, and at the same time the most effective, floor leader any political party ever had in that body. At the peak of his influence in the Senate, he was struck down by a heart attack that for a time threatened to take him out of politics forever. But he fought back to complete recovery.
In 1960 he hopefully went after the Democratic nomination for President, but Kennedy won the nomination on the 1st ballot. Where that left Johnson no one could tell--for a few hours. Then it was announced that he had accepted the nominee's plea to join him on the ticket as candidate for Vice President.
He landed a job on a road gang near Johnson City. One raw, cold evening, Lyndon came home from an especially hard day on the highway and announced, "I'm sick of working just with my hands, I don't know if I can work with my brain, but I'm ready to try. Mama, if you & Daddy can get me into college, I'll go as soon as I can."
The young man who had scorned higher education now soaked up knowledge furiously. As many youths of his age turn to sports, he turned to debate and campus politics. He became the college's star debater.
"For those who would seek to keep any group in our nation in bondage I have no sympathy or tolerance. I believe sincerely, that we have a system of representative government that is strong enough, flexible enough, to permit all groups to work together toward a better life."
As Majority Leader, he lived up to the sentiments he had expressed when he was a freshman Senator. He spearheaded the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It was the first civil rights legislation to be enacted in 82 years. He was equally successful in getting congressional approval for the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which established a new registration procedure designed to insure Negroes the right to vote.
Johnson called for the permanent Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee. The Majority Leader early gave heavy emphasis to the importance of international cooperation in the use and exploration of space. He presented the American position on the subject in an appearance at the UN in NY. The New York Herald Tribune editorially congratulated Johnson for his "forceful affirmation" of US policy, saying his "eloquent performance undoubtedly made a deep impression on the uncommitted nations."
After his graduation from college, he joined the faculty of a high school in Houston to teach public speaking and debate. The school had many Latin-American students. Conflicts arose at times between them and the Anglo pupils. In ironing out these differences, the young teacher used and developed his talent for influencing people to get along among themselves.
He liked teaching. But the family tradition of politics was much on his mind. When the opportunity came, late in the year 1931, to go to Washington as secretary to a Texas congressman, he jumped at it. 1 way or another, after that, he was always in politics.
His efforts brought him his first taste of national fame. The organization he built in Texas was used as a model by many other states. He put thousands of youngsters to work on such projects as playgrounds, highways roadside parks and soil conservation. He pleaded the merits of his boys and girls to private employers. He urged college officials to see that their NYA appointments were used effectively to give deserving and needy students a chance.
Within a year, there were thousands of young Texans who called him "Lyn" and regarded him as personally responsible for their economic salvation.
A short time before, Roosevelt had announced his plan to "pack" the Supreme Court. "If the people of this district are for bettering the lot of the common man; if the people of this district want to run their government rather than have a dollar man run it for them; if the people of this district want to support Roosevelt on his most vital issue, I want to be your congressman. But if the people of this district don't want to support Roosevelt, I'll be content to let some corporation lawyer or lobbyist represent them."
The immediate result of this was one Johnson had foreseen. The other candidates turned their fire on him. With all of them talking about him, he was getting more publicity than any other candidate, & lining up virtually all of the hard-and-fast New Deal vote. He had almost twice as many votes as his nearest opponent
Johnson argued, "There is no reason why the farmer should not have electricity at cheap prices now. He needs it to help him with his work, make his home a better and more comfortable place to live, and to give him the opportunity available to city folks."
One result of his fight for extension of electric service to rural homes was the establishment of his own district of the biggest rural electrification project in the world. In 1939 the Central Texas empire of public-owned electric utilities had become a reality with the execution of a contract for purchase by the Lower Colorado River Authority of properties owned by a private company in a 16-county area. Rates paid by farmers for electric power were slashed 25%. Their use of electricity zoomed and the resulting benefits were plain.
He was convinced that the US would not be able to avoid becoming involved in the war. He knew the nation was far from ready, and he wanted to do anything he could to help it get ready. He was anxious for his own state to make every possible contribution.
He was made chairman of a special investigating subcommittee of the Naval Affairs Committee. This group forced the Department of the Navy to adopt more businesslike methods of procurement. It brought about the rewriting of the Navy's contract for petroleum from the Elk Hills Field in California, an action which almost saved the Treasury a small fortune. Johnson brought to light large-scale abuses and laxities in Navy requests for draft deferment for civilian personnel.
The general public regarded the act as a necessary curb on the tremendous power and influence the labor unions had come to possess. The law was popular in Texas. But leaders of organized labor bitterly stigmatized Taft-Hartley as reactionary legislation.
Communism had spread over once-free European countries and had sealed the back entrance to Soviet Russia through the conquest of China. It seemed to Johnson, looking with alarm at these facts, that Communism had achieved most of its major goals everywhere except the US and nations allied with the US by means of the Atlantic Pact. In Johnson's view, the American military establishment had been whittled down to a dangerously low point.
He pointed out that the forces of the UN were seriously outnumbered. He declared that American military equipment available for the task in Korea "is plainly inadequate in quantity and it is not the right kind."
"We must not act too slowly, too cautiously, with too much consideration for the comfort of those who remain behind. We can no longer sit by and see our strength decimated by delay-defeat-retreat." He urged three immediate steps: development of a long-range global plan of strategy; immediate full mobilization of available manpower; prompt mobilization of the American economy.
A few of the elders protested. Every Democratic Senator wound up with at least one desirable committee appointment. With perhaps one or two exceptions, everybody was pleased. Before long, even the old hands who had complained slightly about Johnson's departure from tradition were acclaiming the wisdom of his policy on committee assignments.
That was the case when Eisenhower asked for a renewal of government reorganization powers vested in the Executive, when he submitted to Congress a resolution condemning Communist bad faith with respect to international agreements, when he urged extension of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act, once again when he sent the Administration's Mutual Security bill to Congress.
In supporting the Administration on these and other matters, Johnson proved conclusively that his talk about "politics of responsibility" meant just what it said. "The President must wonder at times," he commented sardonically, "whether he could not do a better job for his country if he were not weighed down by the Republican Party."
As a Democrat in a position of leadership, he was convinced the greatest service he could render his party was to guide it into and along the path of moderation. He believed the party had made great strides in regaining much of the respect it had lost because of accusations that it was irresponsible. He wanted to hold these gains and add to them.
"Eventually," he said, "the people will reject any political organization that is ruled by the extremists, either the right or the left. If I can leave any imprint on the Democratic Party, I want it to have the effect of making ours a moderate party, not a party of extremes." He succeeded in making the issue of the 1954 campaign the "politics of responsibility" record of the Democrats in Congress.
Nothing was happening to bear out the prediction made in the 1954 campaign that election of a Democratic Congress would give birth to a regressive "cold war" between the executive and legislative branches of the government. "The objectives of foreign policy should be to promote and preserve the security and the integrity of the US. From the very beginning of this Congress, the Democratic leadership made it clear that they would support the President in any effort to obtain those objectives."
"That promise was fulfilled. It was fulfilled in the Formosa Resolution when the President sought to draw a line against Chinese Communist aggression. It was fulfilled in the approval of the Paris pacts, which laid the cornerstone for the defenses of Europe against communism."
"Johnson has distinguished himself as a conscientious composer of differences not only between a Democratic Congress and a Republican Executive but also among factions of Democrats. His leadership has been notable for the smoothness of its functioning, the absence of caviling and obstructionist tactics and the harmony which has been induced within his own traditionally wide-split party."
One of the Washington newspaper writers headed a column, "Everybody Loves Lyndon." That seemed to sum up the situation fairly enough.
"We must keep strong!" Johnson said. "We must be strong militarily and productively and morally. We must have military strength to fulfill our moral obligations to the world."
The headlong rush of the American people away from war and thoughts of war could not be checked. Even so, Johnson took the lead in fights to stop the premature closing down of the synthetic rubber industry, to check the sale at junkyard prices of war plants worth many millions of dollars, and to bring about the establishment of a 70-group Air Force in the face of strong opposition.
"I think we should look into our stockpiling program so that we can avoid the great hazard of being caught short in essential strategic materials. Also, we must look thoroughly into the condition of our military housing and other factors relating to personnel so that the morale of our forces will not be lowered and their efficiency reduced at this period when the utmost is demanded from all of us, individually and as a team."
|
The above quotations are from The Lyndon Johnson Story by Booth Mooney. Click here for other excerpts from The Lyndon Johnson Story by Booth Mooney. Click here for other excerpts by Lyndon Johnson. Click here for a profile of Lyndon Johnson.
Please consider a donation to OnTheIssues.org!
| Click for details -- or send donations to: 1770 Mass Ave. #630, Cambridge MA 02140 E-mail: submit@OnTheIssues.org (We rely on your support!) |