 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States. It's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program about Lady Bird Johnson, featuring Julius Swagg, author of the new biography, Lady Bird Johnson, Hiding in Plain Sight. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs that you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, March 16th, at 1 p.m., Heather Cox Richardson will be here to tell us about her new book, How the South Won the Civil War. While the North prevailed in the Civil War ending slavery and giving the country a new birth of freedom, Richardson argues that democracy's victory was ephemeral, as the system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and established a foothold there. And on March 30th, at noon, author Dorothy Wiccenden will discuss the agitators, which uses the intertwined lives of Harriet Tubman, Martha Wright, and Frances Seward, to tell the stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, and the early women's rights movement. This program is presented in partnership with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, and we thank them for their support. You may order the book Lady Bird Johnson, Hiding in Plain Sight, through the library's website. Julia Swag tells the story of this remarkable first lady through Lady Bird's own words. We're fortunate to have Mrs. Johnson's audio daily diary recorded on 123 hours of tapes preserved at the LBJ Library, which is one of the 14 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. These recordings, which the library has made publicly available on its website, allows us to hear firsthand how Lady Bird was the president's most trusted advisor. She took an active interest in politics and was a tireless first lady. The audio diary is truly a remarkable historical source. Listening to Mrs. Johnson's soft, calm voice, you can imagine yourself in the room with her. It is rare to have such a detailed record of history created on the spot. This new book, as well as Swag's podcast, deservedly brings Lady Bird's story to a larger audience. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our panel. The moderator is author, historian, and former White House speechwriter, Jeff Scheschel, author of Mutual Contempt, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the feud that defined a decade. Joining him is Julia Swag, author of Lady Bird Johnson, Hiding in Plain Sight. She did extensive research at the Lyndon Mains Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, where our final panelist, Claudie Anderson, was once the supervisory archivist and is very knowledgeable about the library's archival holdings. Thank you for joining us today. Julia is a longtime senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She's been a leader at the Aspen Institute, and she is today a senior research fellow appropriately enough at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. And I'll just add that Julia is a friend. She's a neighbor here in Washington. And as the author, as mentioned, of a book about LBJ myself, I've been eager for this book to come out for years, ever since Julia first told me a little bit about what she was uncovering at the Johnson Library. And now we have the fruits of that in this fantastic book. I'm thrilled that the book is here. I'm thrilled that it's already getting the reception that it deserves. And I'm thrilled, as we'll discuss, that people really seem to understand the point at the very center of this book, which is that Lady Bird and by extension her husband Lyndon Vance Johnson have been underestimated for a long time. So we'll be talking about that. And a little bit later, we'll also tell you about the podcast that Julia is hosting called Simply in Plain Sight. I'm on episode three, not to get ahead of the run of show here, but the podcast is beautifully produced and absolutely gripping. Just to hear Lady Bird speaking for herself, which of course is the whole notion of this book. I'm also here to introduce Claudia Anderson, speaking of the University of Texas. Claudia is a graduate of that university and has been one of the people most responsible for one of the jewels in the crown of UT, and that is the L.E.J. Presidential Library. Claudia, as was mentioned, is the former supervisory archivist at the library, which, if anything, understates her role. She joined the staff actually just two months, I think, after the end of the Johnson administration, and has shaped the library and the incredible work it does in countless ways over the years. In 2016, Claudia began something I'm told that's called phased retirement. And what that seems to mean to me, given how busy she is, is non-retirement. I got to know Claudia and myself back in the mid-90s when I was working on my book. And I remember sitting Claudia in your office, and I was awed then. I am awed still by your incredible knowledge of the Johnson presidency, right down to every last tape, every last document. So we'll be talking about all of this. So thank you both. So, Julia, let's jump right in. Again, congratulations on the coverage and on the rave reviews already for the book. I'd love for you to begin by talking to us about this phrase we heard earlier that you've called Lady Bird Lyndon Johnson's most trusted advisor, most trusted political advisor, which really is not how most of us, and I'll cop to this myself, it's not how most of us have thought of Lady Bird. How did we all miss that? And can you tell us a little bit about how you came to that surprising view, which is so well documented in your book? Well, thank you very much to the National Archives and to Claudia for joining us here tonight. I share Jeff's delight in being able to share this discussion with you. And Jeff, thank you very much for agreeing to, of course, read the book, which is a heavy lift when you have your own work to do. But also to think with me as I was writing it about its approach and to, of course, lead the way with your own work. I'm very happy to be here with all of you tonight and for those of you that are joining us. I came upon the idea of Lady Bird Johnson as LBJ's closest advisor. By taking such a deep dive into listening to her diaries, reading the transcripts, and also doing all of the kind of contextual research and reading that one has to do to be able to understand the LBJ presidency on the one hand, but also to take her material and her account of her own experience of that presidency and put her in the center of the room in a sense. And since she is telling us through her diaries, and also through the other material in the archives in the library and in other archives, about her participation in discussions about civil rights, about her campaigning, of course, all over the country and elections in the South for civil rights, about their numerous and very difficult extensive discussions about Vietnam throughout the presidency, about her orchestration of the transition after the JFK assassination into the White House. Here campaigning with him and separately for the Great Society programs. I mean the whole arc of the presidency and then of course her orchestration of his exit from the presidency showed me that especially once the Johnson's lost Walter Jenkins that she really was of all of the people in the West Wing and all of the people in his administration, the person that he most trusted whose judgment. He went to repeatedly over and over again so that's why I concluded that that she was closest and most trusted advisor, longest lasting certainly. I'm now not to get ahead in the narrative here but you talked about Lady Bird helping to orchestrate his exit from the presidency and the reason I'm willing to jump ahead in the narrative is because you describe this as something that was actually set in motion, surprisingly early on by Lady Bird to talk about them. Sure. So, in May of 1964. There. There's a moment and this is now only five months after they've come into the White House after the JFK assassination. And then Johnson is facing pressure to escalate in Vietnam. Civil rights is stuck in the Congress the legislation hasn't really picked up yet, May of 1964 and, and he despite having very, very high approval ratings is looking ahead to the November election and asking himself whether he's going to be able to sustain the narrative and the actual material achievements to keep the country unified and if he does win election to keep it unified after that and he asks Lady Bird to lay out a memo for him a pro and con analysis about the merits of stepping out versus running again in 19 in November. And she does that in May of 64 and it's a document that's in the library, and that very explicitly says, here's the pros here's the cons of course I'm going to summarize here and we're going to talk about that document a little bit later, but she says explicitly, you know, you ought to run. You'll probably win and then in February or March of 1968. You can announce that you won't run again for an additional term. And of course on my on may on March 31 1968. We're almost at that anniversary. He announces that he won't he will do precisely that that I will not be standing again. And I thought that that was against the background of her entire diary and especially starting in 1967 where she revs up her campaign with him and her work to get this issue front and center on the front burner. You can see very clearly the thread going back all the way to the beginning months of 1964. It's a fascinating memo and I urge everyone to read the book, which replicates it, essentially in full. It is amazing to see Lady Bird with love, but also with the shrewdness of any political advisor laying out the case the pros and the cons and and then you know putting putting a thumb on the scales for the outcome that that she believes is in his best interest and is the country's best interest, which which raises another question that I have for you and that is. I mean, here was a case where where Lyndon Johnson was clearly taking her advice both in 1964 and then subsequently in 1968 and you know I thought a lot and reading your book about Eleanor Roosevelt. You know clearly the model for an influential first lady. Eleanor Roosevelt tended to play out her influence very much in public. She was such a public figure, taking stands on issues as well as behind the scenes and now FDR as we know didn't always think that Eleanor Roosevelt gave him the best political advice she often did. Sometimes he thought she didn't sometimes he was right sometimes he was wrong. I admire her perspective enormously, and he understood it was different from his own. I guess my question for you after having surveyed the whole of the Johnson presidency and and gotten so deep into the relationship and her advice. Did she give good political advice, and did Johnson thinks so on the whole. There, you know, despite having waited through so much material. One can't know the full, the full picture, because we are also talking not only about a political partnership but about a marriage. So as far as all of the advice she may have given him. Of course I don't know whether it was all good. But in the areas related to this, you know, the entry and the exit. I think most certainly she did. I think as far as his perspective, you know, you can look in his memoir and he writes about her here and there and often a great deal and he refers to her quite admiringly all the time he never really comes out and says, you know, I don't know what the next issue. I disagreed with her entirely. I think the area in which she was very strong with him, which you can see in terms of his, what his administration did is with the environment. I think the air in a very positive sense and of course she was promoting in a public way I mean that her environmental ambitions and agenda were very extensive and amplified very much what his administration's agenda was. But as far as Vietnam goes, I mean one would have to say, looking backwards and not being in their shoes that the advice that she appears to have given him on Vietnam was to reinforce his decision making. And she did that from what I can tell until about the end of 1967 when he himself was already beginning to to have a shift. And I think there's two reasons for that but generally I think she shared his blinders when it came to Vietnam she shared his sense of being stuck of not having options of feeling a lot of domestic political pressure to escalate and was oriented around the experience of World War Two as he was in which, you know, the idea of a Munich or if somehow, you know, a betrayal really haunted them and that's how they talked. One of the things that I thought was fascinating in the book was Lady Bird's estimate that in I think it was 1966, the two thirds of the conversations between the two of them between Lady Bird and LBJ concern Vietnam, which on on the one hand isn't all that surprising that it was an issue that was dominating, you know, the discussion in the country but but this is within a marriage and the fact that they spent by her again by her estimate two thirds of the time talking about Vietnam I think speaks to the fact that this was a not just a loving relationship but this was a very substantive relationship and the Johnson was turning to her for for reviews on on substantive issues without question and just and just Jeff if I just to go back to that may 64 memo there Vietnam is very much part of the context to for her she writes explicitly about the pain that she anticipates and she will feel but especially he will feel when and if he has to start sending young American boys off to war. So it's, it's, it's a huge part of of their life and their consciousness and the substance of what they discuss, and she's involved, tangentially and in the room often when he's discussing it with his staff and with his war council. The environment and I think no discussion of Lady Bird would be complete if we didn't talk about the beautification campaign. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and your suggestion I think in the book that the beautification maybe was was a label that I mean I don't want to, I don't want to go too far in suggesting this but did they regret the label beautification for any reason. I don't think it's a problem for you to go too far in suggesting it I, I mean I don't know about regret per se but you know there's this wonderful quote from her when she was in her 80s where she says, I'll never forgive Lyndon's boys for making me use that word but I did it anyway, because I understood sort of as a political statement that at that time, it was, it was about as far as they could go it was a kind of feminized way of, and demeaning but she did it anyway because she said she understood that if people liked flowers they would care about the land that grew which isn't to diminish wildflowers in any way but she by the end of again sort of you see an evolution for her the beautification program itself by 1966 begins to take on real substance beyond planting flowers in public Washington and touristy Washington and monumental Washington. She begins to try to find ways to bring together civil rights and social justice and environmentalism what we would call environmental justice in Washington DC and more broadly in American cities with the idea of bringing democratic access to nature for the most underserved people living in American cities were frequently people of color. But she herself start her staff at 1967 starts sending out notes across her communications that says please stop using the word beautification. Mrs Johnson doesn't want to use that word anymore she wants to talk about conservation and the environment and by 1968 she talks about it as that rather inadequate word that has much more substance behind it. I wonder if if we can, if we can turn back for a moment to the Eleanor Roosevelt example and one of the things that I find so interesting about Lady Bird is that she doesn't hue to a particular model of the first lady I mean she seems to have found or created her own model which was different than Eleanor Roosevelt for some of the reason reasons that I mentioned earlier and it was certainly different than the woman. She succeeded Jacqueline Kennedy and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about Lady Bird's understanding of the public role of the first lady and you know where she saw herself kind of on this continuum of remaining wholly in the background, you know maybe eyes and how or for example or best Truman or or being more public and more engaged on the issues like somebody like Eleanor Roosevelt where did she see yourself kind of fitting in. I'm not a historian of all of the first ladies of the United States but I know that Lady Bird saw herself as a descendant of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was an FDR Democrat as LBJ was in terms of the vision that the two of them had and felt that they inherited from the Eleanor Roosevelt's regarding deploying the services and resources of the federal government to help the body politic and to build a social contract and to bring bring up and to level the playing field for those most most vulnerable. And I think she saw that from their perspective and when she was a young congressional spouse in the 1930s, she was going into Washington alleys with Eleanor Roosevelt and going to the White House and attending activities with Eleanor Roosevelt. So I see very much a direct line between the two of them and I think she saw it too. It's true that she wasn't as public as Eleanor Roosevelt she didn't have a column she she wasn't traveling around the world I mean she wasn't in the White House for as long as Eleanor Roosevelt was either. But I think she she had and now I'm going to jump to Jackie precisely because she understood that there was no way she could fill Jackie's shoes you know she didn't have the glamour or the youth or the beauty or the kind of you know, the glitz and the that Camelot and the Kennedy is brought to the White House and that in some ways I think really freed her to figure out how to use this platform she talks about, you know, understanding that she has a platform and needs to figure out how to use it So in the first year until LBJ was elected at the end of 64, she dabbled a little bit more and didn't take the deep dive into the environmental agenda as as comprehensively until afterwards. She was the maybe arguably the first modern first lady she had a professional staff she had policy aids she had a chief of staff she had a very active press operation. She had to fight to get a budget, which she didn't originally have so that her staff could travel around she had a political operation that reinforced and backstopped and worked hands and glove often with the West wings political operation. So what she didn't do however was publicize that right there was a screen where what we saw in in the first lady and Lady Bird Johnson was the beautification stuff and a lot of ceremonial and campaigning stuff. So what we really see and this is what's the beauty of these among the beauty of these tapes is is how interconnected the East Wing and West Wing were I mean you could call it Lady Bird land right Allah Hillary land. It was a political operation and the person that ran that with Lady Bird was of course Liz Carpenter. I was going to say who Liz Carpenter was who was her chief of staff and her chief press aid and had been a journalist in Washington for many decades and was a had started out on Lyndon staff and was a Texan and a very powerful and and intelligent and brilliant woman who was one of the only people from what I can tell who had the ability to go back and forth between East Wing and West Wing and between the two Johnson's and really gets things done between the two of them. I think that's absolutely right she was a force and she was so well respected by by both Johnson's and so valued by both of them. And you mentioned the tapes and a minute ago maybe this is a good time to hear a little bit about the podcast. I think we've got a trailer or a teaser of the podcast that we can that we can run here. I'll just tell you just before we play it to understand what they're listening to is that this is something that I produced with my production partners at best case studios that ABC News has been releasing over the last few weeks and this week we're in episode four it's eight episodes it's I think of it as a eight episode audio documentary it's really a deep dive very immersive into the period and into the Johnson presidency told with my narration and Lady Bird Johnson's tapes and a bunch of other contemporary contemporaneous archival material what we're going to play because we couldn't decide what snippet to play for you and hope that you'll go ahead and listen to the trailer so you'll get a teaser and an overview of the story from this trailer. It all began so beautifully we were going into Dallas. Inside a dimly lit room at the LBJ library in Austin Texas a motion sensor triggers a recording and a soft deliberate voice fills the room. In the lead car, President and Mrs. Kennedy and then a secret service car and then our car, Vendon and me. It's the voice of Lady Bird Johnson the wife of Lyndon Johnson. We were rounding the curve. Suddenly there was a sharp loud report. I was so struck by that voice and the detail she managed to capture I needed to know more about what I was hearing. I cast one last look back over my shoulder so Mrs. Kennedy lying over the president's body. So I decided to dig deeper. I'm Julia Swig. I've lived in Washington DC for a while working in policy and writing about history. DC is a town that's focused mostly on power and influence. Now there have certainly been some powerful influential women in the White House. Eleanor and Jackie, Hillary, Michelle, but Lady Bird Johnson is history has it. She's just a president's wife best known for a program called beautification. But turns out Lady Bird recorded her entire experience in the White House hours and hours of tape that almost no one has ever heard. And those tapes, they end up rewriting history. Of course the 1960s have been poured over and dissected. But what I found in these diaries is surprising. It's new. Give me Mrs. Johnson right quick. I wrote out for Lyndon about a nine page analysis. This is a story about the power of a political partnership. One that somehow doesn't show up in the many, many accounts of LBJ's presidency. During this statement, there was too much looking down and I think it was a little too fast. I'd say it was a good B plus. How do you feel about it? I thought it was much better than last week. A partnership she recorded as she and Lyndon tried to navigate the turmoil of the 1960s. From political upheaval. Most of them carried signs that said Lady Bird, beautify Vietnam. To race riots. Cargo's west side is the patchwork of violence. The views of Dr. King's assassination. To her complicated relationships with other key people from the time. What I said to Mrs. Johnson upset her. I don't know why it should have said her. I was telling her the truth. I found myself in front of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy. I felt extreme hostility. Was it because I was alive? I just don't believe that I have the physical and mental strength to carry the responsibility. There was much talk of the big question. He wants to get out. There is no way out. As for that thing she's best remembered for, that program they called beautification? I think you also know what lies beneath that rather inadequate word. It goes a whole lot deeper than we ever knew. From Best Case Studios and ABC Audio, this is in plain sight. This season I'm looking at the untold story of Lady Bird Johnson. A canny political operator, an activist. One of the most influential members of the Johnson administration. Even if we never saw it. Subscribe to In Plain Sight Lady Bird Johnson wherever you listen to podcasts. And look out for our first two episodes on March 1st. And you got little snippets there. Not only of Lady Bird recording her diary entries, but also some conversation between Lady Bird and the president, which I want to talk about in a second. Claudia, I wondered if you can mention the extent of the volume of material, both the transcripts and the hours of recording. And if you could walk us a little bit about what it is like to try to process materials like that and how long it takes. Well, I think we estimate about 123 hours of recording. And Mrs. Johnson recorded the diary on three inch reels. She used pretty inexpensive tape. And she didn't always record at a very good speed. She used the slowest speed often. We don't know if that was to save money or exactly why. It didn't make the best sound reproduction. When the tapes first came to the library, they were reproduced, but actually that preservation copy turned out to not hold up as well as the original tapes did. So we then did new preservation copies in about 2008. And that was sort of the start of processing this material to make it available to the public. And then we began a review of the transcripts. And my memory is that the transcripts fill about 12 boxes, manuscript boxes, and that it took us several years to go through the material, describe it, and eventually make it available. And as I mentioned, what we made available was a transcript that Mrs. Johnson had edited. The original tapes were transcribed in the White House by White House personnel. The people who transcribed them were not familiar with foreign names. They didn't know Mrs. Johnson's friends and sometimes didn't understand her East Texas accent. So there were a lot of transcription errors in the original transcript. In the 70s and 80s, Mrs. Johnson actually went through most of the transcripts and with an eye toward editing them. And when I say edit, I don't mean taking out material. What she did was to add punctuation, correct a lot of spelling errors, and in some case add clarifying remarks to the diary. And it's those edited transcripts that we make available on our website today. And so this is in addition to what we know of as the Johnson tapes is recordings of telephone conversations and some meetings in the Oval Office and so forth. And I think that we've got, you heard a tiny little bit of it in the podcast trailer, and we're going to hear a little more of it now. I wonder, Claudia, can you tell us what we have here, what we're about to hear? This is a conversation that was recorded by the President's staff. And it's the President and Mrs. Johnson, she's critiquing a press conference that he had earlier in the day. It's March 7th, 1964. This is only three and a half months after he assumed office. And while the tape is playing, the notes that she took while she listened to the press conference are appearing on the screen. And you'll notice it's so soon after he assumes office, they're still using Office of the Vice President stationary. The notes have that letterhead. And up in the corner is the B plus, which is the grade that she gives the President. So if you want to go ahead and play. You want to listen for about one minute to my critique or would you rather wait till the night? Yes, ma'am. I'm well enough. I thought that you looked strong, firm, and like a reliable guy. You looked splendid. The close-ups were much better than the distance ones. Well, you can't get them to do it this time. Well, I would say this, there were more close-ups than there were distance ones. During the statement, you were a little breathless. And there was too much looking down, and I think it was a little too fast. Not enough change of pace. A drop in voice at the end of sentence. There was a considerable pickup in drama and interest when the questioning began. Your voice was noticeably better, and your facial expression was noticeably better. I think the outstanding things was that the close-ups were excellent. You need to learn, when you're going to have a prepared text, you need to have the opportunity to study it a little bit more and to read it with a little more conviction and interest and change of pace. Well, the trouble is that they criticize you for taking so much time. They want to use it all for questions. Then their questions don't produce any news. If they don't give them news, they catch hell. So my problem was trying to get through before 10 minutes, and I still ran 10 minutes a day. And I took a third of it, which was the questions. And I could have taken if I'd have read it like I wanted to, 15 minutes. But I didn't know what to cut out. Maybe I ought to cut out Mary's heart name. But I thought that every place one of those names dropped, they'd call up the fellow and ask him and write it, and he'd get his name in the paper, and it'd publicize it good, and it'd help the committee. I believe if I'd had that choice, I would have said, use 13 minutes or 14 for the statement. In general, I'd say it was a good B-plus. How do you feel about it? I thought it was much better than last week. Well, I heard last week, see and didn't see it and didn't hear all of it. And at any rate, I felt sort of on safe ground. I mean, like you had sort of gotten over a hump psychologically and in other ways, it'll be interesting to hear everybody else's reaction. Read it with a little more conviction and interest. Yes. There weren't too many people who got to speak to LBJ that way and let alone get a yes, ma'am in response. It's pretty incredible recording. Well, and one of the really interesting things about audio records that you don't get in a paper record is that there's this intangible relationship between the speakers that you hear, and you can certainly hear Mrs. Johnson's affection and support for the president in that telephone conversation. And Claudia, you've got, I think, one more image that you wanted to share with us and tell us a little bit about it. Can we get that one on the screen? This is Mrs. Johnson recording her diary. She would actually record several days at one time. And you can see the envelopes that are propped up against the back of the couch. She would save agenda, menus, invitations, notes, and file them in these envelopes by day. And she would often record several days at one time using the material from the envelopes to jog her memory and to kind of flesh out her diary. She would sit in her office. This is off of her bedroom. It's the room that Mrs. Kennedy used as a dressing room. And she said it was one of her favorite places in the White House. She said she liked to work about sunset because her staff would have gone home and the president was still busy in the Oval Office. So you can see her here. I think it's interesting that she took steps to have a photographer document that she did this. It is fascinating. I mean, she's documenting the presidency and then she's documenting the documentation of it. And yet, at the same time, so much of this, to use Julia, your phrase, we'd love to get you to jump back in here, so much of this was hiding in plain sight. Yes, some of this was closed. And yet there was enough out there, wasn't there, that we should have known at least more of what you've revealed to us here in this book. Can you talk a little bit, Julia, about why did we miss this for so long? Just to bring it back to something that we raised earlier in the conversation. Right. Thank you. I loved listening to that tape just now. And also, it doesn't just show. I will ask you to answer your question, but I just want to add that it doesn't just show her affection and trust for him. And it shows his reliance on her. You can hear that this is something they've been talking about for a long time, that he's working on, that they're working on together. This feedback is about the two of them kind of building their muscles as public figures in the presidency. And so, and this is early days. He's going to her. I don't know if he went to anybody else who would give him that sort of feedback as you heard. Why was all of this material missed? You know, it's a question about the field of presidential historians and how presidencies are written about. They're written about with a focus on the individual president primarily. And after that, perhaps his national security staff and the U.S. I think it's, of course, the case that the American presidency has been occupied by a male president. And so the, the gender bias is just baked into the way we have been telling the story of the American presidency. It's very focused on the president. Lady Bird's case of why we missed this is a little harder for me. I mean, it's true that the material, the full unredacted released audio and transcripts hasn't been out there fully until the process was completed. I think in 2016 or 17, but it's been coming out. And as I wrote a piece that was published today in the Atlantic, which says also that LBJ himself is an enormous topic, right? He has a very long political career that precedes the presidency. He and Lady Bird were devoted to stuffing the LBJ library with as much material as possible. You know, their, their, their bias is toward access and documentation. You talked about her documenting her presidency, her involvement in the presidency, and also documenting herself doing that. The two LBJs were, were copious collectors of documentation, one secretly the other one openly in terms of the tapes. There's a lot of material to get through for anybody that wants to take on any aspect of Johnson and LBJ presidency. But I also think it has to do with, you know, just kind of a baked in assumption that that careful controlled public image that Lady Bird, Bird put out and constructed for herself, because it was careful and it was controlled was all that met the eye. And that I think is a matter of socialization and biases and sort of a kind of gendered world view that we need to get over. And it will start overcoming it as we see more women in positions of power. She worked hard to document the power she had, but she also concealed it with, with, with clarity about wanting us to know it at the same time. So she covered all of those bases. It's, it's a really fascinating paradox. And I wonder if, if both of you and, and please, you know, both of you weigh in on these questions. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about why, I mean, what was behind the, the documentary, the documentary impulse, we can call it that. I mean, clearly, Julia's, as you've described, Lady Bird had been playing this role with her husband. This didn't start when he became president. She had, you know, been advising him clearly on political questions going back, probably to the, to the beginning, I mean, even before he first won that special election in the house in 1937. And so, and yet, as far as we know, and Claudia, tell us if, if, if you have any indication otherwise, she didn't begin to write these kinds of diaries or make these sorts of recordings until right after Dallas 1963, isn't that right? Why, why then? Well, I, I think it was because they assumed the presidency and she knew how important it was going to be. And you've got to remember her education was as a historian and a journalist. And I think that she immediately saw the importance of this record when they assumed the presidency and that that's why she started. And I think it was just part of her nature. She, she knew this needed to be done. I want to jump in and ask Claudia because I haven't asked the library officially for a while, but you know, she, she, I came across something actually sort of late in my process of writing the book and doing the podcast. As a trained journalist, she always had with her these small little spiral notebooks that she took notes into. And we hear in episode one, but generally in the interviews that Jackie Kennedy did with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. She talks about being sort of taken aback that Lady Bird could sort of carry on a conversation with whomever was sitting next to her. But across the room she's listening to Lyndon's conversation and taking notes in one of these little small notebooks. She had those notebooks with her. And as I understand it, there are notebooks that precede the presidency that haven't yet been processed. And how far do they go back? And am I accurate about that, Claudia? We do have notebooks. I don't know how far they go back. And I can't tell you offhand what the volume is. I do know that a lot of the information in them is in shorthand. Right. Making it even more difficult. And there are not very many people around anymore that can actually read. Greg shorthand, which is what she used. So. There will be a problem. For historians to use those. But just to bring it home to this matter of her conscientiousness around documenting. She had those notebooks with her in her purse. On Air Force one flying back from Dallas to Washington. And had the presence of mind and ability to sit there and take notes. About what she had just experienced. So when we hear that first entry, which. Was about November 22nd, she recorded it eight days after the assassination. As Claudia said, she's pulling together. I haven't seen what's in the envelope for that first entry, but. She's pulling together. Primary source material that she herself has created. Along with all this other secondary material. It's a kind of a stunning capacity. To have the clarity of mind. To have the clarity of mind. To have the clarity of mind. To have the first draft from disparate sources. On the fly. Well, it's what they, it's that cliche about journalism, right? That it's the first draft of history. I mean, she was a really. In a sense, literally writing the first draft of history right there. You know, as it was happening in that moment. And I wonder. No, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And for example, the notes that I put on the screen, we found that in the envelope for March 4th. I mean, I'm sorry for March 7th, 1964. And so. Some of those, you might talk about notebooks, but I think a lot of the pages were torn out and actually ended up in envelopes or other places. So, I think that's what I'm talking about. So, that's why I'm talking about these. Cabbits. Claudia, this makes me want to ask you. Sorry, Jeff. No, no, this is. Because I think. One of the people in the audience tonight is Barbara Klein, who was at the library working very much with Claudia and helping me a great deal when I was doing my research. know, could I see them the primary source material that created and I think the answer was those aren't processed either are those envelopes for anybody that wants to keep going I mean that's a that would be a great deal of fun to dive into are they now processed they are not processed they are still at the library unprocessed and I'm glad you mentioned Barbara Klein the library owes her a great deal of gratitude for processing material and and helping researchers to to use it here here well and I I want to come back to something that both of you have touched on last several minutes and that is that clearly Lady Bird was thinking about history when she was taking these notes and making these recordings and and I wonder if you can both speak to this question of Lady Bird's work in advancing the the Johnson legacy I mean clearly she was and there even some comments that she makes a long way in terms of how history will perceive her husband and his work on the work of the administration she ended up as as we know she ended up outliving LBJ by more than 40 years was she very involved and in the work of the library and the archives and and also just more generally in working to shape as these diaries do the way that that we all understand LBJ and his and his time in office I would say yes and no I don't think she was really involved in the day-to-day operations of the library so much as encouraging people to do things like give oral histories to the library or give their papers to the library and she also did a large number of oral histories herself which we have at the library and they are great her oral histories largely document the pre-presidential period because we had her diaries for the presidential period I do think she was interested in his legacy obviously she was but I think she also I would not want people to have the impression that she interfered with the processing of papers or anything like that at the library she was always very supportive of making things available for example the telephone conversations that Johnson recorded well Julia I have one closing question for you here looks like we're almost at the end of our hour and maybe to bring it all together for us you made a really compelling case in the book that this changes as you put it it changes our understanding of Lyndon Johnson and what they call their presidency and I wonder if you could if you could give us your sense of I mean how did it change your understanding let's let's start with that your understanding of Johnson's presidency whatever you thought about it as you went into this project and and where you ended up that's an excellent question thank you you know I think from my days working in and writing about foreign policy and being a student of American diplomatic history my own training was a little bit what I described before which is you know we focus on the president we focus on the national security staff or broadening it out if you think about the lbj president and see you took one thinks about his two major components on the one hand civil civil rights and and great society on the other hand Vietnam and kind of his overarching personality and around personality the the historiography has focused very much on lbj and his exercise of power that word power is very much associated with with that particular president so my own pre-existing notions were to think about the presidency as this kind of uh I don't want to sound cliche at all here but just kind of you know a boys club and a boys club with a big boy at the center um but re taking lady bird's story of the presidency and placing it into that context and placing her very much in the room she talks about being in the room all the time um the photos and the images show it just makes me think of it as a much more of a shared project and um and of course I think a problem with the american presidency and we see this even in real time with american presidents in the white house is that you know the single individual american president often complains once they're in there that they don't have that much power that you know this is necessarily a collaboration between three powers certainly across cabinets and interagency as we heard obama talk all the time about feeling a little bit limited in his powers so so I think it's caused me to to broaden out the definition of power where we where a president derives his or her power and where where resources a president draws upon for that power and that's where this particular first lady lady bird johnson comes in and I I think we'll see this in the future and I think we can go back and revisit more recent presidencies through that lens of power more broadly defined well and clearly there was a center of power in that johnson white house that that we didn't know enough about um so I we're grateful to lady bird for keeping a record of that which not every subsequent first lady will have done and we're grateful to you julia for bringing all this to light and really changing again on the part speaking on behalf of a lot of us who spent a lot of time working on thinking about the the johnson presidency this this really casts a lot of things in in a different light a richer light and it's a fantastic book and thank you for talking with us about it here today thank you claudia for adding your perspective being at the the center of operations there in austin and I just want to say before we wrap up that for all of you who out there who are interested in buying this book and I hope many of you do there are some signed copies available that you can that you can order at the johnson library I think if I've got the the website right it's lbjstore.com I think there's a discount right now and the discount code is claudia appropriately enough so you've been honored with the discount code which is not something that many of us can claim so I want to thank both of you again and congratulations again Julia on this tremendous book and thank you very much it's getting it's wonderful to be here with both of you and just thanks so much for moderating a great evening and claudia again wonderful to have you here with us and thanks for everything you've done thank you thanks very much all right good night everybody good night good night