 Delighted to be here, Julian Salazar, author of The Brilliantly Timed, as well as Brilliantly Written, Fierce Urgency of Now, and we're going to talk for a while and then take your questions and I hope you'll all buy multiple copies of his book. All right, Julian, so the conventional narrative perhaps, one might say, of The Great Society, is kind of the great man theory. The Robert Carrow, Lyndon Johnson created this through force of personality. That's not the thesis of your book. Your book is much more focused on Congress. Why is that? Yeah, I mean, for many decades, everyone looked at Lyndon Johnson as the worst president. Until the recent revival, he was the guy who brought us Vietnam. He was the guy who destroyed the country, destroyed his legacy. I believe there's been a revival and he's a quintessential example now of how a great leader, a great man, a single person, the president, can really drive the agenda and change the nation. And so I don't want to challenge that Lyndon Johnson was a very good politician and very skillful and effective, but I want to say it takes a lot more than that, especially on Capitol Hill, to actually have that kind of success. So rather than Lyndon Johnson being the explanation for why so much happens in 1965 and 1966, I talk about how the Civil Rights Movement, how voters in the election of 1964 create a Congress that temporarily is willing, is determined, is eager, is demanding big changes in health care, education, voting rights, and then how that window closes and renders Johnson pretty ineffective when he no longer has that Congress. Well, now, I might as well get to the point, which is the movie, which I have not seen, but you have. And there is this controversy now about who gets more credit? Does Johnson deserve more credit? Is Johnson neglected in this movie? Is the Civil Rights Movement slighted in some ways? She came up during Hillary Clinton's, when she ran for president in 2008, where she talked about Lyndon Johnson's, how do you allocate credit, talk about the differences in who was responsible for the Civil Rights Act, the voting rights act? So the movie Selma is out, and I urge people to see it. It's actually, overall, my response is it's a tremendous film that captures both the process and dangers and courage of organizing, but also part of what I want to convey in the book that the movement often drove Washington, and it was often the movement, it was often the protest that were allowing things to happen in Washington, and that's really at the heart of the film. Well, but explain that a little bit, what does that mean that the movement forced Washington? How did that work? Well, the story with Lyndon Johnson is Johnson wanted voting rights by January 1965, that's where the movie's wrong, a month earlier he already had his attorney general, Nick Katzenbeck, draft the legislation, and by February he would be having negotiations with Senator Dirksen in Dirksen's office over the details of the bill. So Johnson was very much committed to a bill, he wanted it, he believed in it, he accepted the movement's arguments. That said, he didn't think it was time to pass this in early 1965. He was worried it would tie up his whole agenda, he wouldn't get Medicare, he wouldn't get education assistance, he was worried a lot of moderate Democrats would get too scared about trying to do two civil rights bills so close together, and King and the movement said we're not going to wait, and there's a conversation which you can hear this play out where Johnson says I want this but I'm not going to get this through Congress, I can't, Johnson understood the limits of his power more than anyone, and King is like we can't wait because every time we wait on legislation it doesn't happen, wait, pragmatism, incremental politics was the death often of civil rights bills, so he wanted it now, and what happens the marches take place in March of 1965, and by March 15th members of Congress are telling Lyndon Johnson if you don't put something to us we're going to propose it on our own, the pressure within the White House is overwhelming, and Johnson makes his speech on March 15th calling on Congress to pass a civil rights bill, so timing which is really significant in American politics, it's not simply another esoteric issue, was at the heart of the debate, and the movement really forced the president tack much earlier than he hoped to and we had a bill as a result. Now one of the most interesting parts I thought of the book was the place of the Republican Party, I guess in part because it's so different from the Republican Party of today, and there are in many respects two key figures, there's Everett Dirksen in the Senate and in the House I'm forgetting his name from Ohio, the guy, McCulloch, who I first heard of when I read Todd Pernum's quite excellent book just about the Civil Rights Act, very sort of unsung figure in American history, talk about the role of the Republicans in getting all this through, in particular the crucial issue of getting through a filibuster. Well without Republican support you wouldn't have either a civil rights or voting rights bill, so basically the Democrats were divided in this period between Southern Democrats who were very powerful in Congress, they controlled the committees and they opposed civil rights, and Northern Democrats who were liberal, they were progressive, they were pushing for the great society about a decade earlier before Johnson was ever president, and so what they could do in the Senate the South, even though their numbers weren't a majority, they could filibuster, and they could filibuster bills which they did all the time until they were defeated, so one of the ways around to filibuster was to gain Republican votes and Johnson needed that if he was going to succeed, so within the Republican party you had liberal Republicans like a Jacob Javits who were more progressive on issues like race than most Democrats, but you also had leaders like Senator Everett Dirksen, Senate Minority Leader, or William McCullough who was a key member of the Judiciary Committee, who for various reasons by 64 and 65 came around to the cause of civil rights, McCullough had supported civil rights for many decades. Dirksen was more hesitant, but he was convinced like many people by the movement that the time had come, and so Dirksen ultimately will deliver about 25 votes when the Southerners are filibustering civil rights and helps to end that filibuster, and with voting rights as I said he helps to negotiate a bill Dirksen before the protests ever start, they basically have an agreement because he and Nicholas Katzenbach worked out a bill, so there wasn't a significant filibuster against voting rights. So the GOP was really, if Johnson had the kind of GOP that the current president faces it would have been a very different story. These were key votes. What was in it for Dirksen? I guess we are all prisoners of our own time. I think about the contentious relationship between the Republicans and the president, where denying the president a victory is a goal in and of itself. I mean Dirksen had to know that this would be a tremendous achievement for President Johnson. Why would Dirksen go to bat in such an important way? He did, and a lot of issues, he still wanted to deny the president victories. It's important to remember the Republicans were not all on board with the great society. Part of the reason was he was a true legislator. This was a period where a lot of these guys, including Johnson, measured their success by great legislation. And I think by the mid-60s Dirksen realized this would be part of his legacy as well, his own legacy and the legacy of the party. Part of it is politics. Dirksen was being pressured by civil rights activists and many Republicans were to support this bill. As the debates are taking place on both bills, civil rights activists are protesting in cities like Chicago. They are threatening many times to protest at Dirksen's personal home in Illinois, where he didn't actually live, but his mother-in-law did. But to embarrass him and force the issue, religious leaders were very important. Let me stop you right there, because that was also very interesting to me. Again, coming out of our world, religious, we think of evangelical, we think of conservative, we think of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell. In fact, religious leaders, and we're not talking about the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, not the African American church leaders, we're talking about the white methodists of Presbyterians were important in this fight. Hugely important. Both civil rights fights and some of these other pieces of legislation, relatively liberal religious leaders from the Midwest were instrumental, because in many of these states, African Americans did not have the clout to totally shift the opinion of a Republican. But a religious leader did. They had a lot of sway in the community. Personally, they had a lot of sway with members of Congress, and they did all sorts of things. In 64, they come to Washington, and they have a vigil to raise attention for the need to end the civil rights filibuster. Religious leaders come and lobby and talk to members of Congress throughout a lot of these debates. National religious associations coordinate with local preachers to have certain messages and sermons and to encourage congregants to write their members and tell them to support the bill. And many Republicans said that was really important to turning a lot of members of the GOP. They didn't care about civil rights, some of whom were not in favor of legislation, but realized that politically it was turning disastrous for them not to support them. A question I had, and maybe this is an unfair question to you, because it's a little beyond the scope of your book, is I read that and I think, well, where did they go? Like, where are these religious leaders now? I mean, like, you know, what happened to them as a political force? I mean, it's not like I think they're pushing in a different direction. They just seem absent from politics. Yeah, there was a little I remember in 2008, and I can't remember his name. I did a talk with him. He was a kind of liberal religious leader. Maybe I'll remember later, who was behind, who was part of the campaign in 2008 for Obama and trying to mobilize. But it fades. It's very notable the presence of liberal religious figures in this period. You know, there's a whole coalition of liberalism. It's not just religious leaders that will fade, and it's an important part of the story. You have the union movement, which is very large at this point, 30% of the workforce. The AFL-CIO is a major force in Washington that's pushing behind many bills, not simply bills directly related to labor, including civil rights. You have the civil rights movement. You have this now missing kind of liberal religious constituency. And they're constantly not only building pressure at the grassroots, but lobbying in Washington and doing the hard work of getting legislators to turn their vote from a no to a yes. And so we've seen how that faded in religion. I don't know what happened. Obviously, part of it, they were surpassed in the 70s by the evangelical right, which became a more powerful force. But a lot of the components of this liberal coalition in the 60s started to disintegrate. But it's really important to understand why a lot of this was succeeding in the mid 1960s. Johnson depended on them, just like he depended on a Republican. The haunting backdrop of your book, which comes up occasionally, is Vietnam. Talk about how Vietnam intersected with the Great Society legislation. Well, the Vietnam traditionally is obviously treated as his great failure, the disaster of his presidency. And part of what I convey in the book, it was part of a bargain Vietnam. It wasn't simply that Johnson adhered to the domino idea that if one country felt the communism others would follow. Part of the reason he keeps getting deeper and deeper into Vietnam is Johnson fears politically that for any liberal Democrat to succeed, you had to be a hawk on national security. And there's many key moments when these political concerns of his are front and center. Gulf of Tonkin takes place right in the middle of the 1964 election. Barry Goldwater has spent the summer railing against him for being weak on defense and not willing to stand up to the communists. And part of the conversations he has surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin is he wants to show not just the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese, but show the American public he is going to be tough on defense. And he can be a hawk if necessary. And the political concerns are incredibly explicit in a lot of the phone conversations. Johnson and Democrats of his era were all shaped by the 1952 election where Republicans won the White House and they won Congress in part on the issue of Korea and communism. And Johnson's always worried that if he looks weak, they're going to get him on that kind of issue. So part of Vietnam that I talk about is this political bargain he makes to protect his coalition on domestic policy. He accepts this incremental acceleration of a war that actually kills a lot of what he wants to do. The second way in which it's relevant is after the 66 midterms when conservatives regain their strength on Capitol Hill, one of the biggest issues they use against him is the budget and the costs of the war and the great society. And the final chapter of my book is all about the guns and butter debate, where conservatives in Congress basically say if you want money for Vietnam, you're going to have to cut domestic spending and domestic spending for the most vulnerable constituencies. And the cost of the war, you know, we know a lot about the antiwar movement and the college protest. But the real heart of Vietnam, at least in 67 and 68 is about the budget. And it's about how the right how conservatives use the cost against him. And this becomes the dominant issue of his final two years. So all around it, it's a bargain that devastates him. Before we get to the 66 elections, which I think are very, very critical. And let's talk a little bit of Medicare and Medicaid, because that is not normally part of the sort of heroic narrative of the great society, which understandably focuses on civil rights. Where did that those ideas come from Medicare and Medicaid? Because I mean, just in terms of the vast influence, it's just enormous. Yeah, I mean, Medicare is the biggest breakthrough, you can argue in social policy at that time. And the idea had been percolating for over a decade. It was really coming from two sources, liberal Democrats who had been coming into Congress since the 1950s had been pushing for this. It was an alternative to national health care. Many believed after President Truman unsuccessfully proposed national health care. This was the best step to take next. It was a it was a more contained program but significant. It dealt with a population that people saw as deserving the elderly, and it would be financed and run through the Social Security program, which was popular organized labor also was a strong supporter of social of Medicare. They even form a group that lobbies for it and are pretty instrumental to it. And the problem is it had a lot of opposition. So this conservative coalition in Congress, in this case led by Wilbur Mills, who was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a Democrat Southern Democrat said no. And he wouldn't even let the bill come up for a vote between 1961 and 64. The AMA mounted a fierce campaign against Medicare, which in some ways makes the campaign against Obamacare look timid. They called it socialized medicine. They were handing out pamphlets in the offices of physicians, warning that your next visit, people would pick it up will be determined by a bureaucrat rather than your doctor who you just saw, they mounted Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan reports a record against Medicare where he says this is the first step to socialism. And the wives of physicians and local communities would have coffee clashes. And that's what they would they would listen to Ronald Reagan. So it was a big campaign and Medicare is top of the agenda. Kennedy wants it very much. And in contrast, there are a lot of images of Kennedy, he's pushing for it, but he can't get it through. And even after Kennedy's death, even when there's all this public sentiment about the assassination, the bill comes up again, the Senate tries to get it through with an amendment to other legislation and Mills kills it says no way it's not going to happen. So it's this big social measure that's just dormant until the election of 64. Barry Goldwater runs. And part of that campaign that Johnson mounts is to say Goldwaters against Medicare, I'm for it. And there's a lot of ads about this, you know, vote for me. After the election, there's huge majorities. Those majorities support Medicare. A lot of the new people elected ran on platforms that included Medicare. Wilbur Mills throws up his hands by December of 64 and says, I'm going to support something. And in the first few months, he actually turns into not just a someone who agrees to push Medicare forward Wilbur Mills, but actually helps craft a bill that's much bigger than anything the administration ever envisioned and it will pass in that spring. And it's a you know, it's a it's a watershed moment in social policy. In many respects, politically, the more remarkable thing is Medicaid as opposed to Medicare because Medicare is for the elderly who are generally a popular and certain numerous political constituency. Medicaid, the only beneficiaries of Medicaid are poor people. How does that pass? Yeah, it was a small program. Most people weren't paying attention to it. It had been an existing program that passed in 1960. It wasn't called Medicaid. And when it passed in 60, it was a way originally to prevent Medicare. Conservatives basically pushed it forward, a small program just for the poor. And so this will be enough to siphon off support for anything bigger. But it's included in the 1965 legislation. It's still small. Most people don't talk about it during the debates. And in the following years, it would expand into yet another major healthcare program. The 1966 election is a big watershed and it is a disaster for the Democrats and especially for the liberals. Do you think there's anything Johnson or the Democratic Party generally could have done to forestall loss like that? The Johnson said no, and he loved to tell it. So so in that midterm elections, Democrats retain control of Congress, but the balance between liberals and this conservative coalition shifts back to the conservatives. Democrats gained 47 seats in the House. And the liberals in six Republicans gained 47 seats in the House in 1966. And the balance shifts to that conservative coalition again. And Johnson was really upset and frustrated and realized his time was done, that he'd get some things through but nothing like what had happened in the previous few years. He liked to explain it to people by saying, well, that's how midterms are. And midterms go poorly for presidents and especially after a landslide like I enjoyed this was inevitable. But obviously, you know, two issues were at the heart of the midterm. One was a racial back a backlash against a civil rights bill that Johnson had proposed a third civil rights bill. What would that third civil rights bill have done? Fair housing. So this was to prevent discrimination in the rent rental or sale of housing. And it was a pretty strong bill that he puts forward. And it causes a real backlash among Democrats. One of the people who loses their seats because of this is Paul Douglas, a liberal from Illinois. He loses to a businessman, very handsome businessman named Charles Percy, who's a moderate on civil rights, but capitalizes on his backlash in cities like Chicago. And you know, actually, you're right about this. Why is housing sort of a bridge too far for the moderates? Why? Why do they? Why are they okay with voting rights? Why are they okay with, you know, accommodations, which is part of the civil rights act? Why? Why does housing tip the balance, you know, in against Johnson's bill brings it to the north. And so Richard Russell said, you know, he understood exactly why this was such a problem for Johnson, because now the Northerners had to deal with the issue of race relations. King actually moved to Chicago in 1966 to bring attention to this issue. And he says, the violence that he saw in response to this surpassed anything that he had seen in the South. And I think that's that you know, that is the reason it dealt with property, it dealt with neighborhoods. And it was very contentious. Okay, so had that bill not been on the table, it might have diminished some of the sentiment. But Vietnam, again, was also an issue. And which way did it cut in the camp? It cut with conservatives attacking and not the left. So Johnson couldn't care less less about the left at this point in his presidency. What he cared about was in 66, the right Republicans, Southern Democrats were saying, our president is not tough enough on Vietnam. He's not willing to use enough force. He's not willing to bomb the North Vietnamese with everything that the United States has. And he's going to lose. And they were also arguing that the budget was spiraling out of control, we were going to have inflation, huge deficits, and we needed some return to austerity. So Vietnam is another factor that couldn't just stop, but it was playing into the impact of the midterm. What happens after 66? Because it's not nothing. Not nothing. And the housing bill will pass in 1968, two years after it's proposed. That's probably his biggest accomplishment in those years. But the final version, which passes after King's assassination, is a pale version of what was proposed. It doesn't have any enforcement mechanism. It only includes a limited part of the housing stock. And it's really a symbolic measure to say we don't accept discrimination in housing, but it doesn't have the teeth of what was originally proposed. He has some other smaller measures on the environment, gun control after Robert Kennedy. Yeah, that's a more conservative version. So he does a crime and gun control bill, which is part of his response to pressure from the right to crack down on the riots, but nothing of the significance of the 64 to 66 period. The biggest bill to pass in the final two years is this tax surcharge, which imposes a 10% tax surcharge to pay for the war in Vietnam, and he cuts domestic spending in exchange. And again, a lot of the cuts fall on programs like the war on poverty. That was the principal bill of the final two years. Okay, so before we invite our colleagues to talk, to participate, let's talk about what the relevance of this is for today. Because there are, I mean, very explicitly echoes of President Obama's experience two years of, you know, a substantial legislative activity followed by a Republican landslide in 2010. Do you think Obama was more like Johnson or more different from Johnson? You know, I think he personally is different than Johnson. And it's not so much the shmoozing aspect or his comfort with Congress. It's Johnson came from Congress. So this was a guy who spent most of his life in Washington, who spent most of his life on the hill, and who had not just relations, but a great sense of the power of Congress. And so when I say that as president, he always understood the limits of his power, he always used to say, Congress gets the best of every president. And he knew it would get the best of him. That came from his experience and his understanding of how how the city worked, how the political system worked. And I don't think Obama obviously has that same background. And you could argue it's been harmful. But most important, they faced very, you know, when Obama did have good circumstances early on, it was a pretty productive moment and shows what a Democratic Congress can do for a liberal president in this day and age. And when Congress turned on him, he hasn't had much success. But I think it's the conditions that are very different. Johnson had the majorities. Johnson had this huge liberal movement that doesn't exist today, pushing for a lot of this legislation. And Obama just lacks all those tools, and I think it's constrained him. One thing that struck me is a significant difference, too, is that Johnson faced a Republican landslide in 66. Obama did in 2010, which was followed by redistricting, which meant that the new Republican majorities could lock in the advantages they won in 2010 in a way that in the non-redistricting year they couldn't. Absolutely. And so you have a situation now where you can see how structurally it becomes harder and harder for a Democratic president to envision recreating the kind of playing field that Johnson enjoyed without something like reforms to the way we do redistricting, because it's harder to have a dramatic swing like you had in 1964, and House Republicans now keep growing, and it's going to be harder to shift that balance. Well, one criticism you often hear of Obama is that he doesn't use the bully pulpit effectively enough, and he doesn't, as you mentioned earlier, schmooze appropriately, or successfully, or much. The, I sense from your book that you don't really think that's that important. No, I think it's relevant, obviously, the fact Johnson did all this stuff was not irrelevant, and it's important to have the most effective president you can. But he could schmooze all he wants with John Boehner, Speaker Boehner, and it wouldn't really make a difference in terms of most of the bills that are being discussed given the composition of the GOP and now Republican control. There's only so much in terms of hardball tactics that he would be able to use, and he's tried it to change the voting dynamics on Capitol Hill. So I think that's really an overblown argument, both in terms of the criticism of why Obama has failed, but also in terms of understanding why Lyndon Johnson succeeded. That's the connection between the two periods. I think we always do this with presidents. I don't think he's the only president who we kind of wish somehow just knew how to make the system work better. We live in an era where Washington seems broken, so we're constantly searching for that leader who will know the magic, and now it's said to be the magic Lyndon Johnson understood, and we continually disappoint ourselves. And I think we don't pay enough attention to the factors, to the ways in which moments have existed where we've been able to create a Congress that will do stuff. That's really the question we have to be asking. Well, and another difference, I mean, it's more mechanical, but it struck me in reading your book, is that yes, there were filibusters in fighting parts of the Great Society, but they were exceptional. I mean, that was not the norm. Whereas today, it is simply stated that you need 60 votes to get anything through the Senate. That wasn't the case in those days. It's true, but it was pretty bad. So part of what we missed, so it's true, filibusters were used much less frequently then, and it was really for high-profile measures like civil rights, whereas now you'll filibuster anyone, filibuster a quorum call if you can. But back then, there were other tools that were used, which is part of why filibusters weren't necessary. The committee chairs had so much power, bills didn't even come up for a vote. There was James Eastland, who was very racist Southerner, who chaired a subcommittee in the 50s that had power over civil rights. He used to joke that he had special pockets in his pants that were made just to bury all the bills he wouldn't let up for a vote. So conservatives had other tools then, which at the time liberals hated as much as liberals talk about the filibuster under Republicans. Committee power was really seen as undemocratic as a kind of noxious part of Washington. So it's important to remember the way a lot of these procedures beyond the filibuster were able to obstruct progress. Okay, this gentleman over here, just wait for the microphone so everyone can hear. Jonathan Roush at Brookings, thank you, it was marvelous. At various points you said Johnson's a great figure, but Congress has an underrated role and the times force their hands. So there are three actors there. Could you just parse a bit more the extent to which you think Johnson's special qualities change history? In other words, if you subtract him from the equation and somebody else is there, how different do things turn out? Right, so that's always the hard question just because counterfactual history is kind of ripped out of you in graduate school. And so as soon as you say that, I can think of all these things that change if you just remove Lyndon Johnson, so the story is just different. In the end, other presidents, given those majorities and given those majorities with liberals being the dominant voice, many presidents including a Kennedy, I think could have done pretty well. I think even if they didn't have all the acumen of Lyndon Johnson and all the skills, I think those majorities were willing to move on bills. And so sending them there, you'd have a pretty good chance of success. Immigration passes in 65 and Ted Kennedy who had been pushing for this unsuccessfully for years says, boy, a year ago this would have been impossible, this was easy. And so in the end, that's the top factor for me much more than Johnson. My colleague, Calvin Trillon, says the Immigration Bill of 1965 was the single most important development of American cuisine in history because it's where all the Chinese restaurants come from. It's actually true. But I mean, talk a little bit more about John F. Kennedy because obviously Lyndon Johnson becomes president in fortunately very unusual circumstances. How much of this coalition do you think could have been, I mean, I'm asking you to do the counterfactual thing. Could Kennedy have gotten all this through? I guess that's the... I think he could have gotten a lot through. I think Kennedy was starting to move by his final years on a lot of these bills finally. Early on he had been very hesitant to do anything about domestic policy, not just because he didn't care about it, but a lot of his advisors were saying it's all gonna die because that's what's been happening for over a decade with this Congress. And the movement forces his hand by 63 with Birmingham, the protests in Birmingham, Johnson changes his mind, Republicans on the Hill are saying if you don't support civil rights, we're just gonna propose it and take credit away from you. So he moves by that time and the bill is actually moving. So Kennedy's actually moving the bill and I think the movement was giving a lot of power to civil rights. And I think if he had remained in office it would have continued to help drive the legislation. Again, Johnson's moves were important and I don't wanna discount what he brought to the table but I think that was a pretty good playing field for the legislation by that point. And then the great society, I think Kennedy could have done well. If you have that many votes and none of them had to be persuaded to do any of this. They wanted to do this. I think he could have had success. Again, it's a counterfactual but I think given a lot of respect for Johnson's skills it was the context that really mattered at that moment. And that's why after 1966, it's not like Johnson loses his skills, it's not like Johnson loses the treatment. He could still hover over anyone he wants and he could still intimidate you and threaten you and seduce you but he's not getting the same kind of legislation anymore once the conditions change. But isn't it also true that by 66-67 he had so alienated the liberal base of the Democratic Party with Vietnam that they were not ready to march behind him in the way that they had before? Or is that not right? I don't think that's totally true. I think on most domestic issues by 67, there's still support when there's cuts proposed to the war on poverty. Labor, for example, and other liberal groups are very upset with this and they're pushing the administration and standing behind them don't accept these cuts that conservatives are calling for. So I don't think the frame that you see of the Democratic Coalition is so severe because of the war in his presidency yet that it totally kind of diminished what he could do. Yes, sir. We'll wait for the microphone. Thank you. Hi, my name's Dave Price, a retired educator and journalist who hangs out in New America for potato chips and free ideas, okay? It's a wonderful thing. Two questions, one in the past, one looking to the future. There's a myth, or I shouldn't say myth, there's a story out there that LBJ took great pride in doing what the boy from Boston, John Kennedy, couldn't do or didn't do. Is there truth to that, if so, how much? And the future, certainly Ferguson is not Selma, yet we have this unrest today, but as you point out, and I think so well, it's a whole number of factors that have to come together. You don't have the religious leadership today necessarily. So for change, what do you see, what conditions would need to happen for people who said, we've set back on civil rights, we need to come back. What would have to happen? Well, Johnson did not. I mean, he greatly didn't respect John Kennedy, and part of what he didn't like was that they didn't use him enough, and he thought he was a great asset, and as vice president, he could have helped try to understand Congress, helped to build relations with Congress, and they didn't use him. He also had jealousies about Kennedy being president, and he understood that Kennedy people didn't like him so much, and he felt that, he felt, so all that is true. On the second, that's a harder argument, part of it about the movement itself. I mean, what's remarkable about the civil rights movement at least is, A, how broad the coalition was for this legislation as we've discussed. It included groups that weren't directly affected by civil rights, and organized labor is another, it's a great example of this. So it had built this big umbrella force behind these specific pieces of legislation. I think one of the things also that was different, there was specific legislation that was at stake, and so the protest at Selma take place with a voting rights bill as the goal. That's what King was trying to get. He wanted that bill to pass, and now I think it's still, at least now, more amorphous than it was. Well, and I think one similarity between the post Ferguson demonstrations and Occupy, which people hardly can even remember, though it's about two, three years old, is the absence of a clear agenda for like, for what, I mean, people were angry about the Garner case in New York, Ferguson case, so they march to what end. Now, it is true that the catharsis has its own value, but as a political vehicle, you just need, I mean, I think you need to be for something. People in the back, all the way in the back there. Hi, my name is Eugene Mason, and I'm part of American University. And you might not already answer this, but just more clarification, please. Why did LBJ decide not to run for re-election in 1968? And because of that, I'm thinking about 2016, how Obama kind of would prefer Hillary Clinton or another Democrat to secede him because then it could uphold all the agendas and executive orders. So I'm wondering, did Nixon undo a lot of the things that LBJ did, or why didn't LBJ try to hold his legacy by keeping another Democrat in office after him? Well, the first question is, LBJ often would tell people that he was not gonna run anymore. He was often saying this, but then he didn't do that. And finally he makes this decision. No one knows about it, by the way. It was a true surprise, not just to America when he says he's not gonna run in the end of March 68. Even his closest advisors didn't know this. There's a story where his advisors show Hubert Humphrey, the vice president, the speech, the morning he's gonna make it, and Humphrey just sits on his bed reading this and looks like he's having an anxiety attack when he realizes what's gonna happen. Johnson feels defeated. That's one of the reasons, by this point, his approval ratings are horrible. The party is starting to turn against him very clearly. Conservatives are regaining power. He's not doing what he loves to do anymore, which is domestic stuff, not foreign policy stuff. And he's fearful that he's gonna lose in the primaries in New Hampshire. Eugene McCarthy does better than expected. He doesn't actually win, but it was enough to scare a lot of members of the administration that this might be an ugly convention and primary season. So part is a sense of defeat. Part of it is a sense that the best way to protect his legacy at that point was to make himself apolitical and to use the final months, trying to do something about Vietnam, trying to finish off this guns and butter debate, which is happening right as he decides to resign in more favorable terms to a lot of his domestic programs. And then part of it is concerns about his health that his wife has and kind of what another round of the presidency would do to him. So a lot of factors are worked. I just sometimes think that is an underestimated. He was physically falling apart. He had had a heart attack. He was smoking all the time. And he does in fact die. On January 25th, 1973, the day that Roe v. Wade has decided a fun fact. Yes. And in terms of Nixon, who he'll die during that president, Nixon doesn't undo most of the great society. That's a pretty remarkable part. In the 68 election, Nixon barely mentions any great society programs. And a lot of Democrats make fun of him as running this notoriously vague campaign where you literally don't know what he's for or against. And the programs will be sustained not only through Nixon, but through today. So a remarkable part of the great society, which I'm trying to talk about, is even though these windows for legislating are very short, even though this window for legislative success is quick, the programs that pass can endure. And through the age of Reagan, through the age of Bush and conservatism, almost every great society program other than the Voting Rights Act now, has survived. And so I have in the book, the famous line with the Tea Party protest against Obama's healthcare program, get your government hands off my Medicare, which is what concerns her holiday. Part of it was funny and ironic, but part of it reflects how ingrained a lot of the great society became or are conservatively dependent. One of the big objections to the Affordable Care Act was that it would threaten Medicare. And that's something that you saw on television commercials from Republicans all the time. More questions? Anne-Marie? Oh yeah, this gentleman? Thank you, Glenn Marcus, media and governmental studies, Johns Hopkins University. You mentioned legacy and forgive me, I'd like to go back to Selma for a minute. I agree with you, it's a great film. But there's nothing trivial about issues of the president of the United States and the depiction thereof. So would you like to talk about the larger issue of how cooperative Johnson was as opposed to the antagonistic view which seems to dominate the film or maybe even a few detailed things like how the FBI tapes were ascribed perhaps to him and how King might have feared some revelations and that's why he didn't go to Selma, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, the FBI, part of it, the film, a lot of it is about the FBI and the surveillance of King and it does come across as if this is a Johnson creation. I mean, you can't come away. When it really, it was under Kennedy that much of this happened. Kennedys were very aggressive in surveillance of Martin Luther King. And by the time Johnson's president, it's really J. Edgar Hoover almost as a rogue agent who Johnson is scared of who's driving the remaining surveillance. So that part of the movie is actually just not true and I think it really twists the history. The other part of this though, which is bigger, is it's actually a missed opportunity in the film which is unfortunate because again, it's a great film. But you have this moment where you have a president who's not an activist by any stretch. He's a member of the political class of America who had reached a point in his career where he was allied with this very radical social movement of the period. And while he had fears about what he could do, while he still had ambivalence about what should come when, what comes across so clearly in all these conversations with King is he had come to, this president had come to the side of the movement. And he was looking for a cooperative relationship to make this work. That doesn't happen. That's actually a big issue in American politics. We've talked a lot about this with President Obama where there's been more of a disconnect. How does that happen? How do we get those moments when presidents don't see the movement as simply something to be circumvented, something that was gonna cause them problems? But the movie Selma doesn't do this because it's about FBI surveillance or Johnson is portrayed, just not as really interested in voting rights as he was. You don't get the commitment. Maybe it was the acting, maybe it was the screenwriting, but you don't get the sense of commitment that had happened. And there's plenty of drama with Selma that you don't need to have this kind of depiction of Johnson because the drama's on the streets and it's right there as the movie shows. And I think it's not simply one little part of the story. I think the movie would have been even richer to understand how the president had come come to the side of this cause, which when you see what it meant in the South was clearly a dangerous position at the time. And still quite dramatic stand for a president of that moment. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, wait for the... Thank you. Mark Schmidt here at New America. I have a quick comment. I wanna challenge a little bit the assertion that all the great society and more poverty programs survived. Because the big ones did, but like the community action agency, those kinds of things didn't. That was the agency that Nixon put Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in charge of. So in a way, it's like you have the big entitlements and the big rights survive, but the sort of longer term, more patient investments that you needed kind of didn't. And I think that shapes a lot of the, some of the backlash later. I guess the question I wanted to ask you, you know, as I've told you before, I'm a big fan of your book on Capitol Hill, which describes kind of the reform of Congress. And from that book, you get a feeling of Congress up until really the early 70s as a super insular place. And you don't feel like there's a lot of, you know, there's not much getting in. And as you note in that, I mean, I remember like the AFL-CIO lobbyist, Andrew B. Miller, is doing the work of like, when I worked on Capitol Hill, there would be like 300 liberal lobbyists doing the work of this one guy. But you're sort of describing a world that sounds a little different from that, where Congress is a little more open and responsive, even as early as the early to mid 60s, and a world of social movements that seems a lot richer. I mean, we're used to the story of the big social movement infrastructure, really being a late 60s, 70s thing. And it feels a little different from the way you're describing it here. And I think you can comment on that a little bit. I think on the PowerPoint, it's correct. So there are programs that get some gutted or some cut. You know, part of the poverty, head start, food stamps, those still remain pretty formidable parts of American life, but some parts of the poverty program do fall away. And that was a loss. In the second part, I think you're absolutely right. And it's part of my own development, I'd say. I think in part writing this book, I started to put Congress in a bigger context, which I don't think I did enough of. I mean, on Capitol Hill, I try to do it when I talk about congressional reform and try to understand why is there this moment in the 70s when Congress is willing to change the way it does business. And part of the answer is the political atmosphere from scandals and from Watergate that make this an actual political issue to do things like campaign finance reform or change the committees. So I was getting at it, but I think in some ways in this book, I've kind of come around to the impact elections could have, to the impact that social movements can have, and to integrating that more into my work on Congress. And so I think your read is actually spot on. And I think with this story, I'm kind of moving there. It's not that Congress isn't insular in many ways. It is in this period, but there were many pressure points. And in these years, you could really see the impact on the health. And I wanted to bring that out because it's part of my understanding of the institution now. Yes, sir. Hi, Michael Bryan, a civil rights author. Wondering if you could expand a little bit more about the fair housing stuff and that bill that was written, what exactly happened? I mean, he gave a little bit of a background, but who actually walked away? Was it the Republicans? Was it the liberal Democrats who walked away? Well, it's proposed in 66. The conservatives in Congress, this coalition, there's no support for it. This is a civil rights bill gone too far. Everett Dirksen, who's the Republican who helped on the first two bills, says right away, I'm not gonna deal on this one. This is not something I wanna support. It threatens property rights. The real estate industry conducts a massive lobbying campaign against it nationally where they're blitzing members of Congress, they're blitzing local communities with arguments that this is gonna threaten property rights. And then on top of that, you have liberal Democrats including in places like Chicago who are shaky on this, who are telling the administration there's great memos in the archives where they do vote counts. And many Democrats who supported them on everything are saying, I'm gonna lose my seat, I can't do this. And so they are on the fence at best. And so in 66, it dies. And in 67, it comes back in part because some Republicans in the House offer compromise where they shrink the amount of housing stock that will be subject to these laws. They create exemptions. That helps move it forward, but it's still stuck from that same coalition. And in 68, it's moving a little but really changes it is when Martin Luther King is killed, the riots take place afterwards. And it's literally right after that that Congress moves forward. But again, it's compromised even further in the final incarnation. And by that point, the big criticism is enforcement was just, it was literally non-existent in the final version of the bill. So it was unclear how this would ever be administered. But that's, it is that coalition, but many Democrats you have to add to that mix on housing. Paul Douglas says, sorry, in that campaign of 66 against Charles Percy, in October of 66, Johnson realizes this guy's gonna lose and it was a shock because he was one of the kind of great Democrats. And Johnson calls him and says, can I come and can I help? And Douglas says, I really don't think you should come because it's not gonna help you. It's not gonna help me. And he says, kind of unrest among the working class to this is so bad right now. It's become kind of a toxic environment for both of us. I mean, just that reminds me of President Obama's non-appearance during the last, both 2010 and 2014 midterm elections where Democrats tell him, stay away. Yes, no, no, that was true. For Douglas, he wanted to help the president as much of himself. He thought it would harm both of them. These last two questions, so this gentleman back there, all right, this is fine, whatever. The person who has the microphone controls it. We'll get to you next. Here's a question you've heard before. What's your take on Caro's, Johnson? Caro is a phenomenal writer and I read all his books very eagerly and some would argue that our books are opposed. And so he is concerned with a figure who understands how to use power like nobody else. That's at the heart of his book. He can do it in evil ways, early Caro, or he can do it in great ways, mid or current Caro. And I'm focused on understanding kind of more broadly why this guy was succeeding. But in the end, the books work together. I mean, what I learned from Caro is more than from anyone else about the character of Lyndon Johnson, about the scenes and the kind of in cinematic quality, what happened in those rooms. And I'm trying to give you the rest of the world that Johnson had to deal with. I think you need both sides or you don't get a full portrait of what was going on. You could have terrific quotes and these terrific stories about Johnson twisting an arm, but it doesn't explain the big change. So I think they work hand in hand. I think you're wrong. I think they are really much more opposed. I mean, I felt... I mean, I'm a big Robert Carroll fan. I certainly revere him as a journalist. But I think you come away from that book, particularly the last volume or even two, thinking, what a genius. Only he could have done this. And you read your book and you say, no. I mean, you need the votes. I mean, so I think they are more contradictory that you're being too nice. So, yes. Hey, Julien, this is Spos in New America. This is either a really cool money ball kind of question or an annoyingly vague question that you could declare. So you've properly put the president and the great man theory and it's right calls all place in the flow chart. Presidents flow from Congress. What's upstream of Congress? When you look around in the world, the political environment, what influences the kind of Congresses we have? Is it generational shifts? Is it the economy? Is it immigration? Is it internal migration within the country? Is it all this redistricting? When you see, if I actually predict six years out, what kind of Congress will we have, what would you say are the indicators that lead to the kind of Congress we have? Well, the predictions are not my strong suit. But because of some- You gotta work in cable news. There's no accountability for being wrong. So just make them anyway. Well, I mean, some of the trends that Jeff talked about earlier, suggest that the trajectory still is toward what we have in more of it. So while you have these demographic changes with immigration that might favor Democrats or kind of the intellectual class and how those votes might go to the Democrats, the way districting works and the already built-in incumbency advantage of the GOP would suggest it's gonna be very hard and take a long time to undo the current composition certainly of the House of Representatives. In the Senate, even if control flips, it's not as essential because as Republicans showed, a very organized, disciplined Republican minority can wreak havoc on the Senate even if they don't have majority control. So if you're looking at the House as the real arbiter of where things are going, right now I would predict that five, six years unless you do something dramatic with districting with pressure within the GOP and these primaries in terms of where you throw money, you're not gonna have any sea change and it might even become more conservative over time that Republican caucus. So that's where I kind of, I see it going. The thing about it though, let me add, no one saw the 1964 elections coming. So if you read things in 62 and 63, all the literatures about how Washington's broken, Congress won't do anything, liberalism might have some victories but this is about all you're gonna get and then boom, 64 was a big surprise. Not just the scale and scope of the majorities but the Barry Goldwater, this guy would run far right on issues that everyone thought were politically suicidal and then lose and make every Republican scared of being another Barry Goldwater. No one saw how that was all gonna unfold. So I'm giving you a prediction but I could imagine being totally wrong and a kind of some election just shaking the political status quo that way. Please join me in thanking Julian. And even more importantly, please go by his book and thank you all for coming.