 Johnson's great successes in foreign policy have been overshadowed by the discussion of Vietnam, which is something that Frank Gavin is, and I want to ask you to talk about that. Well, you can do it. I know about the book, but haven't read it. Interestingly enough, I remember, I mean, surely there's no coincidence to it, but it's interesting that this is what Dean Rusk said at the time of, I think, of the President's death. He said, today's writers are inclined to talk about President Johnson solely in terms of Vietnam, but writers in the future are going to talk about it any time or something. But anyway, it is interesting. And then I want to talk about, then I want to ask you about Mrs. Johnson, and then we'll get into that book in whatever way we can. This is reel two, Ellsworth Rostow. Ellsworth, putting Vietnam aside for a moment, there is a new book out now by a scholar named Tom Schwartz who has spoken here at the library on occasion. And I understand that the book is about the Johnson successes in foreign policy that have been obscured by all of the attention given to Vietnam. And that is a theme, I believe, that is being pursued by a scholar at the LBJ School who is something of a, well he's certainly a friend of yours and I think he looks upon you as something of a mentor, Frank Gabbett. And anyway, do you know about this book and do you have any observations about the subject matter? It's very easy to talk about a book you've not read, so indulge me. How about the subject matter? I agree. There have been other studies, for example, Francis Bator done a study of Johnson's policy in respect to Europe where he gets very good marks for handling the prickly subject of relations with General De Gaulle in terms of building up not only the special relationship with Great Britain, but also keeping the Cold War from getting to a level that could have resulted in a nuclear exchange. Sure, Vietnam was like a cloud that obscured the other parts of the period that LBJ was in the White House. I've taught Johnson administration as a part of various courses that I've done at the LBJ School and I've always been amazed to see how many very useful activities occurred that had nothing whatsoever to do with Vietnam. To be sure the Alliance for Progress started under Kennedy, didn't reach the goals that had been set in 1961. Goals were too high. What I call the Marshall Plan Syndrome operated, we had in 1947 a remarkable success in launching in the Marshall Plan an effort to bring Europe back to the level of 1938 and people were pessimistic, said it's going to cost $32 billion and take ten years. Actually it only cost $12 billion, well $12.8 billion and the goals of not getting back to the levels of productivity of 38 occurred within three, four years instead of ten. Well this is a remarkable success in public policy and people have thought that they could imitate it by just throwing dollars at Latin America, at the Indian subcontinent. Hubert Humphrey said he wanted a Marshall Plan for the cities. Well the reason it's a fallacy as well as a syndrome is that Europe was already developed and damaged in World War II and bringing a country back to a level that it occupied before is a totally different task than trying to raise countries up that have not had the experience of modern markets of technology at a much higher level. So trying to do the, trying to repeat the Marshall Plan success is doomed unless you have a very peculiar circumstances of 1947 to 1953 let's say. The fact that we didn't have a total success, well it was not a success in the Alliance for Progress didn't mean that a lot of good things didn't happen in Latin America. They did. In terms of Asia, Vietnam aside, Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore said that what had happened with U.S. policy in Asia was buying time for Asian development. Lee Kuan Yew went to Harvard where he'd been before and taxed the critics of Vietnam saying you don't understand what has happened in Asia because of your president and they didn't understand and they didn't approve of what Lee was saying but nonetheless the mere fact of the protesters, the March and the Pentagon and the very real costs of Vietnam don't underestimate the costs that we paid and in a sense continue to pay for the way the Vietnam story ended and of course it didn't end with LBJ, it ended later on with Nixon, Ford, Kent State comes much after etc etc but the the Schwartz approach which again I've yet to read is exactly what a more dispassionate view of the future will see. That's what I was trying to say in talking about the similarities I see to LBJ's impulses within the U.S. and his impulses abroad. It's going to be, it will happen and this sort of revisionism will occur if only because historians make their reputation by taking conventional wisdom and turning it on its head and they can't fail to do it because that's how you sell books but the revisionism will not just be a way of establishing presidential historians reputation but it will be correct because this was a period of activism in the White House and a period of change and these are always periods that are harsh in some respects, critical, criticized in many respects but they move the country forward in terms of various objectives and I'm not just thinking of civil rights or education or the National Endowment for the Arts. It was a period of very considerable achievement, indented, attacked, overcast, shattered by Vietnam but that shadow will, in time I think, it will not go away because Vietnam matters but it will be viewed as a part of a larger whole rather than the entire story by itself. Moving the focus a bit now away from the President to Mrs. Johnson, you have had a certain and longer association with her than you had with the President because it has included all these years of retirement, particularly the years that you were Dean of the Aubrey J. School but at any rate I'd just like to have you reflect on your relationship, on her and your relationship with her and how you see her historically. Certainly an outstanding First Lady, the term itself is slightly denigrating because it sounds a little bit TN Crumpets but she's indeed a remarkably intelligent, highly disciplined, warm and effective person and I'm not just thinking of beautification, aware of the fact that she as well as others didn't like the term but nobody has been able to find a better way to describe what she's done for the American landscape, what she's done for the parks, etc. but just as a human being she's tough and at the same time gentle. She's deeply interested in people and not just as a good listener but as a deeply concerned person about the impact of her life and her husband's life on the lives not just of Americans but people outside. I just like her. She's a terribly nice person and I value her friendship as something one of the many fringes that I've had by deciding to come to this part of the world after the period in Washington ended. We didn't come down with those who came on Air Force One. I had a term at American University where I was teaching to finish a house to sell and various other things to do but when we came here and it was coming not in a conestogal wagon but in a station wagon with a standard poodle, a teenage son who didn't want to come leaving a daughter behind whose school had boarding facilities. My mother, Walt was really a remarkable husband. He had not only took his mother-in-law aboard when we were in Europe for three years before we returned to MIT in years past but my mother continued to live with us, built in babysitter, yes, the bonus was there but also it's a man of character who can live with his mother-in-law these many years and enjoy it but my mother was a rather special person so it wasn't as tough as it might seem but both Johnson's were wonderful with my mother and from the times that they'd have her in the White House to the times when we lived more or less adjacent to one another in Westlake Hills, I regarded them not just as the historical figures that they were but as extremely nice neighbors and extremely good friends and that was quite a development from what I said. A few minutes ago about my New York biases or Eastern deformations, whatever you want to call them, in the beginning of the 60s but Mrs. Johnson, had she been a political figure on her own, she would have been, I think, remarkable. I don't think that she has maybe the tough hide that politics at the national level requires. For example, as far as I know and you probably know better, I don't think she reads the nastier books that have appeared in print and I understand that. I've had some experience in the same general area but she would have been a remarkable figure had she proved to be not just probably the best first lady, well Alice Longworth said she was the best first lady we'd ever had and coming from Alice Longworth, that was praise indeed. She was not disposed of throwing bouquets to anyone but she was more than that. She was a part of the Johnson Reform package which extends from cultural, social, economic, diplomatic, etc. areas and I'm becoming Johnny One Note but I do see it as a part of a whole just as you can talk in an earlier period about the so-called Roosevelt Revolution. There was a kind of Johnson Revolution going on in the 60s and it was so multifarious, it was so diversified that like the blind men and the elephant, some people saw only the trunk, some people saw the legs, someone got hold of the tail but someday the entire picture will emerge. I'm sorry, the Democratic party had to use the illustration of an elephant but that's... In this series of recollections this is the only opportunity I think, the only time, you got some reflection on the relationship between Mrs. Johnson and the LBJ School and you are uniquely in a position to talk about that, what the relationship was and how the students responded, the whole thing. First of all there's such a contrast between the attitude of the Johnson family and the LBJ School and the attitude of the Kennedy family and their library and school. The degree to which LBJ and I imagine Mrs. Johnson played a detached role I think has to be underlined and stressed. They were not intrusive, they were not dogmatic about what should be done. I remember one time at the ranch when the school was just in the planning stage and it was very clear that President Johnson who had read some document, I don't know what it was about plans for the school, felt that it was on the wrong track. Did he try to, a strong arm, let's say John Gronowski, the founding dean, did he try to intrude? As far as I can tell no. The Kennedys have regarded what goes on in Cambridge as sort of preserving the reputation of the president and also making sure that the right sort of publicity gets out. As far as I can tell, this didn't occur before I was closely involved with the school and it certainly didn't involve afterwards. The students have always been grateful anytime Mrs. J could appear at the school but she only appeared on invitation and there was a degree of almost diffidence. She wanted to hear what they were doing, what they were interested in, what their plans were. The only thing I think that was constant was a wistful hope that more graduates of the LBJ school would stand for elective office and that still continues when I remember telling her that some graduate had been elected something. I don't think it was one of our graduates who was now the Republican governor of Colorado. It must have been somebody else but in any case I said that this had occurred and her eyes brightened. She said, oh goodie, but we are not turning out many contestants for public office though right now one of our graduates is running for the Austin City Council, you know, runoff and we are beginning to have a list of names that might even cheer the president. But beyond that, as dean I found great support for anything that I wanted and of course the Johnson Foundation as a major support mechanism for both the library and the school. It does ask for reports from the faculty as to what they are doing and the students are encouraged to send any sort of information or word encouraged in the direction of the foundation that might keep the correct ties between a funder and the fundee, if there is such a word as a fundee, is there? Well, I don't know, there is now. Okay. The school probably was profited by their support and their genealogy in the beginning when the student body was small it was possible to have events at the ranch. They could all go out in the beginning and I think one large wagon, but that isn't possible now. We are facing bumper crop next year. It is going to stress all of us out because we normally take in about a hundred and we have 154 acceptances at the moment. But scale has worked against the kind of intimate ties that existed in the beginning. But the many ways in which the judge Johnson family, including Lucy, and although she is at a distance, Linda, is illustrated by so many occasions. We now have something called a Barbara Jordan forum at which Lucy has been a key figure regularly. And we are beginning of course to involve the grandchildren. I don't think we have gotten to the great grandchildren yet, but that will happen. So it is a wholesome relationship. It is not a relationship of dominance on the one side and subservience on the other, quite the contrary. And when there is honest disagreement, as I imagine there has been as to policies, they are not destructive or corrosive. So the school itself, it has had problems with funding when the first Republican governor since Reconstruction days, Bill Clements came in, the LBJ budget vanished. Clements anxious to cut costs, found irresistible the direct line item that funded the LBJ school and simply docked it. There was headlines in the local paper saying LBJ school to close, question mark, which I, this was just at the time when I was becoming dean. It was not the jolliest way to start, but the university took over. And the relationship between the state and the school has been, well, it has been very good in one sense in that we have turned a very large number of our graduates into state employees and good ones. And also we have produced very useful civil servants in Washington. And we are now embarked on a doctoral program as well and we are going to have, I think, some very real academic successes. So the school after Rocky times seems to me on stable footing and in very large part the Johnson Foundation and the Johnson family. And the president, Mrs. Johnson, have played a key role in that story. Elspeth, one of the flaws in this series of recollections and reminiscences and is a very serious one, is that we did not get to walk. And clearly he is one of the giants of the time that we are trying to get a portrait of and one of the giants whose work is recorded here in this library. But it is too late to talk to him, but I would like to talk about him. And let's do it by something about this new book of his that is just coming out now. Well, this is Walt's last book. Someday when I have time I am going to count books. I think it is his 36. It could be 37th, but it is in that area. And it is the closest thing he would ever write to a memoir or an autobiography. He was not introspective. He did not enjoy talking about himself. And he had a great desire not to do the sort of thing that editors would not tell nasty stories about the people that he is known and worked with. All of this would have led to a rather dull autobiography if he had gotten around to doing it. In this book, can you do anything with this? Concept and controversy. And it is a subtitle, 60 years of taking ideas to market. I gave him a list of titles. He had a black thumb with titles. He simply was too academic and there was no way I could persuade him to get a good sexy title. I would make suggestions and they would fall into a black hole. But at this point, he did have a career that extended over 60 years. And he had had many ideas that he hoped to put into action. Some of them worked. Some of them didn't. Some of them came through in a modified or dilute fashion. But ultimately, he had a first chapter. He does talk a bit about himself and how he became interested in public policy as well as in his academic subjects, which were economics and history and economic history. Three, as it were, different areas. All of them in order to affect any kind of change required something in the field of public policy. So in this book, he dedicates it to a large number of people with whom he had worked, ranging from presidents Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, General Goodpastor, John Kennedy, Ambassador B. K. Nehru, General Westmoreland and academics. It's a long dedication. But the book is divided into fourteen chapters and it really is. He borrowed only part of something I called to his attention. He was named by his parents, his father, a Russian immigrant, his mother, U.S. born, but both from Russian Jewish stock. He was named after Walt Whitman as his elder brother had been named after the socialist Eugene Debs, except that, again, you never get correct, but his older brother was Eugene Victor Rostow, not Eugene Victor Debs Rostow. But Walt was Walt Whitman. This is a roundabout way of saying that one of Whitman's essays was entitled A Backward Glance or Travel Roads. I liked that and I tried to persuade Walt to structure this book as a backward glance. I only got one chapter, as I wanted it, and that's the first, which is entitled A Backward Glance. But then the others talk about how he worked in World War II, the things that he did in the period when we were in Geneva working with the Economic Commission for Europe, a UN regional body after the war, and going down, and of course Vietnam, but also since his life, like LBJ's, had a coherence people don't always realize the fact that he started a project comprehensive investment program in Austin, Texas. That's the next to last chapter. But the theme that ties it all together is the importance of decisions. He talked about the fact that economists divide the long and the short period, and he thought that was a mistake, that the long period is always with us, that what you do today will have an impact on what will happen fifteen years from now, or what you don't do today. So he talked about the importance of decisions. He talks about the fusion of the long and the short period, and how important it is to try to work on the minority populations in Texas at the moment when we in this state are turning into a majority minority state. And if you don't educate your minorities well, this state is going to pay for it in the future. It's just one illustration of the relationship between the long and the short period. But he saw this in terms of the many other subjects that animate the chapters between a backward glance and the last one, which is final recollections about the importance of what's about to occur to us with a population problem that people are trying to avoid thinking about as throughout the world we are aging and most of our policies have depended on an abundance of young people, a resource that we could count on. And when this abundant population shrinks to the point that if you can imagine, let's say, a mushroom you have the top of the mushroom, the old population, and a slim stem trying to support it. What this will do to pensions, what this will do to education policy, what it will do when we have to build more nursing homes than nurseries. All of this was his last great illustration of the long and the short period and how you have to think about what you do today in terms of what it will mean in the future. I think of this as we talk at the moment about what's going on in Iraq. And I see things that I won't talk about now. But his impact was to realize in the end, and the reason he liked the picture that is on the cover here is that it was his view that no problem that was really serious failed to get in time to the Oval Office. But to reverse it, if a problem had been easy to solve it wouldn't have gotten to the President. And the reason he likes this picture is that it shows three men with one of those decisions. I don't know which one it was. But there standing in the window is LBJ. There is the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. Here's the National Security Advisor. And they're grappling with a problem, which whatever it was, had it been easily solved, it would have been solved somewhere down in the bureaucracy. But the real tough ones get to the President's office. And that's why I think the achievements of LBJ are important to stress, that none of these problems was easy. Civil rights was no, as we discovered, took so long. Easy to achieve. Education reform, we haven't solved it yet by any means, but at least significant efforts were made. A concern with the arts, a concern with humanities, these are problems that are going to be particularly important as budget shrink and as the population ages. Well, Walden, all of this, was, he was a loyal man. We have a letter that Bob Kennedy wrote the day that Kennedy left the Department of Justice thanking Walt for his loyalty and his support. Well, he was a friend of Jack Kennedy's and loyal. But this didn't mean that he couldn't be loyal to LBJ. He was not one of those people who had tunnel vision and so only one administration. And Walt also was, he was a Democrat, large D, small D as well, but he worked with Eisenhower. Charlie Kindleberger, a colleague at MIT, came up to me once in a full set of whisper saying, they're saying nasty things about Rostow. This was in the 50s and I said, you better tell me about it. He said, they're saying he's putting nation above party. Well, he did. He did put nation above party, but he realized that you get things done through parties. So he was able to work with C.D. Jackson in the Eisenhower White House with Nelson Rockefeller, with Jack Kennedy, and above all with Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rosk. And with other people in the administration, one morning in the 60s, I saw an article in the New York Times, I think it was The Times, not The Post, where it said that there was a feud going on between Dick Helms, the CIA, and the National Security Advisor, Walt. Walt for once was still having breakfast and he called up Dick and said, Dick, are we having a feud? The effort to emphasize divisiveness, of course, it makes headlines. Maybe he even sells papers, I don't know about that. But he was a consensus builder, if he could. And he was also, he had this quality of loyalty to people who were in a position to assist the policies that he liked. In the Eisenhower period, he introduced the concept of overflight, so-called open skies policy. Eisenhower took it to Geneva, Khrushchev, and then turned it down. And only very much later, the overflight concept, open skies, became a reality, but much later than Walt had hoped. So I see a consistency in his academic work, in his life, and in the fact that he was devoted to what he thought were better public policies. Not all of them achieved, of course, and not all of them without considerable costs in human terms. We had domestic picketing at our house in Cleveland Park in Washington. Death threats came over the telephone, and the only time Walt got really angry was when my mother picked up the phone, and we came home and found her shattered by someone who called to say that he was going to kill Walt. So it was not a life without a certain amount of tension, but he slept at night, and he didn't bring work home. He worked long hours, once when we were barely in Washington. Our children were small, and came home from school. She went to Beauvoir, where many of the children had parents in government. She said, Mummy, Mummy, I have to tell Daddy something. And I said, Well, he'll be here shortly. She said, Yes, but it's important. And when Walt came home, he said, Daddy, I found out you don't have to work on Sundays. But it was a hard life in eight years in Washington, but a good life at the same time. And it had many perks. I brought in this. The state visits were so numerous that it was very educational for me in some ways to get to see heads of state of places like, say, Mali, where I normally wouldn't have had any knowledge of the individuals. And I just, for example, here, this is 1968, visit of President Habib Buergeba of the United States. Here, this still, amazingly, in 2003, is still shiny and visible. And the weather is still good. I use it simply to say that there were very many fringe benefits as far as I was concerned. In the eight years we were in Washington. Probably the oddest one came not in the Johnson years, but in the Kennedy years, when I was the interpreter, or supposed to be the interpreter, between Mrs. Kennedy and Arthur Miller at a dinner when it happened that, well, Mrs. Kennedy, and I put in Andre Malraux who brought over the Mona Lisa to be shown in the National Gallery. And in the blue room, Mrs. Johnson had, yes, she had Andre Malraux on her right. I was between Malraux and Arthur Miller. And it turned out that my French was only slightly better than Arthur Miller's, but Malraux was programmed not to listen to Arthur Miller, but just to listen to me. And Mrs. Kennedy was there with her school, very fluent schoolgirl French, as a part of this. And one difficulty was that Andre Malraux, according to David Schoenberg, who claimed he knew Andre Malraux, had done some damage to his face by drugs at an earlier stage. And his entire face moved like a working lake. And to try to interpret for a man whose face was changing before your very eyes, and Miller, ready to answer. And I would turn to Miller and say, did you understand that? And he would say, Christ yes. And Mrs. Kennedy looked amazed at this encounter. Well, there was more to that evening. But the state visits themselves were stylized, of course, but lots of fun. At the time when Princess Margaret came, I sat next to her husband, her then husband, at Mrs. Johnson's table. And Princess Margaret was, of course, on President Johnson's right. The husband and I got along, Earl Snowden, got along very well, until it came time to stand up. And I stood up, and I was a head taller than he. And somehow our relationship didn't thrive after that. But in the interval, the strolling strings had come in with their violins. And...