 Good afternoon, and welcome to this week's program of the American President, our six-week series of conversations with historians, scholars, and journalists about the most important elected office in the world. Our program is brought to you by the Lyndon B. Joplin Presidential Library, the University of Texas Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Humanities Texas. I'm Phil Barnes, and it is my privilege to chair the UT Ollie Sage Enrichment Committee. As we said often in this series, this year, 2024, we will hold our 60th presidential election since the first in 1788. And in this series, we look back at six pivotal elections, elections that were of great consequence in American history, those of 1960, 1896, 1948, 64, 68, and 1980, from Lincoln to Reagan. Mark Lawrence, my good friend and the director of the LBJ Presidential Library, and himself, a widely respected historian, is the host of our conversations. As a member of the audience, you may participate in the Q&A segment of our program by using the chat function to write and submit questions, and I encourage you to do so. Our Q&A host today is Mark's colleague and our friend, Sarah McCracken of the LBJ Library. Today is special because we welcome our guest historian, Nancy Beck Young, professor of history at the University of Houston, and she is one of our own. Dr. Young received her BA from Baylor University and her MA and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been recognized and has had residential fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and served as a Columbus Fellow in Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. And she is a political author of numerous publications, and her most recent book of interest to us today is Two Sons of the Southwest. The presidential election of 1964 may be seen as a generational shift, a defining moment in recent American history. The 1964 election was a contest between two men of the Southwest, each with a very different idea of what America should be. The Republican senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, has been said to represent a nostalgic idealized past, a preservation of traditional order. While the incumbent Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, wanted an expansive, liberal future of increased opportunity for everyone. So it was a showdown, as it's been characterized I think quite correctly, between liberalism and conservatism, an election about individual rights versus legislative equality as priorities of the federal government. One whose outcome would echo throughout the rest of this century, and indeed into the next. So to discuss the pivotal election of 1964, welcome for today's interview, Nancy Beck Young, author of Two Sons of the Southwest, Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the battle between liberalism and conservatism. And now, to Mark Lawrence. Well, thank you so much, Phil. I really appreciate that kind introduction and welcome everyone. It's wonderful to have you back for this fourth installment of our 2024 version of the American presidency. And welcome most especially to Nancy Beck Young. It's wonderful to have you. Thank you, Mark. And thank you to everyone at the LBJ Library for making this very important series available to the over 300 listeners out there if I can read the participant tick. It's an impressive turnout and we're so grateful to everyone who's here with us today. Nancy, it's great to have you on any number of subjects where you are truly an expert, but especially to talk about the election of 1964, which it seems to me is a really fascinating, even unique moment in American political history. At one level, it was a landslide. And so you might not think, well, how could this be pivotal if it turned into such a gigantic landslide? But I think we can see now with the benefit of hindsight that the 1964 election, as Phil just mentioned, was one of those moments that kind of crystallized different political currents. And we can see that the issues that were in play in 1964 would continue to ripple through American politics in the decades thereafter and indeed down to the present. Nancy, let me just start with the title of your book, Two Sons of the Southwest. You put the Southwestern origins of Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson right there up front. Why did you make that choice? And what are you trying to convey with that title? That's an excellent question, Mark. So what I want readers to get is that there were different versions of the Sun Belt, if you will, encapsulated in Lyndon Johnson and in Barry Goldwater. And maybe I'll explain what I mean starting out in a non-serious manner, and then I'll get more serious. One journalist during the campaign decided that wouldn't be interesting to publish side by side Lyndon Johnson's recipe for chili and Barry Goldwater's recipe for chili. I've had Lyndon Johnson's chili served at the Texas White House. That's another story. I have not, I've read Barry Goldwater's chili recipe. I've not had it. And with no disrespect to Barry Goldwater or his family or his partisans, I think I will take a pass on Goldwater's chili. It called for canned mushrooms. Yeah, yeah. So two men from the Southwest, but two men with very different ideas of what the Southwest meant. If they're dueling chili recipes, tell us anything. So let me get a little bit more serious with that. We're at a moment by 1964 in American history where the Southwest is becoming more politically important in the United States. In part, that is the result of two, three plus decades of federal spending in the region going at least as far back as the New Deal with federal government projects that made the uninhabitable habitable through the building of dams and reservoirs and the like, but also during the World War II years with the location of untold millions, billions of dollars in defense plants throughout the Southwest. So these things made the Southwestern region habitable and desirable. And that is happening at the same time that the Rust Belt is becoming less of an economic driver in the United States. And people who had been employed in factories in the Midwest are moving Southwest better economic opportunities. So these macro developments are coming to a head during the 1960s and you see them working out in these different visions of the Sun Belt and different visions of the United States writ large during this time period. So that's why I decided to play with the concept of the SUN and the SON and Johnson versus Goldwater in the campaign for the White House. It's also worth noting that this is the first time two candidates from the Sun Belt, the South, the West went head to head against each other for the presidency. And until 2012, there was at least one Southerner or Southwestern or Westerner on the general election ballot, 2012 being the first time that did not happen when Barack Obama stood for reelection against Mitt Romney. So no. And we've not had a Southerner or Southwestern person on the ballot since 2012 either with 2016 being Secretary Clinton versus Donald Trump in 2020. And yes. Right. Right. Sticking with your title for just a moment. You identified 1964 as the battle between liberalism and conservatism. Conservatism, of course, I want to get there in a minute and unpack the variations that ran within the Republican Party and the struggle really to determine what the Republican Party stood for. But let's start with that all important word whenever we're talking about the 1960s liberalism. What do you mean by that and help us understand that term so that we can have a conversation using that term in confidence that we're all on the same page? Sure, sure. And that's a really important point to make because there's not a static definition of liberalism, nor is there a static definition of conservatism. So let me talk first about the liberalism that Johnson grew up with and what it had morphed into by the 1960s. So Johnson grew up in a hill country that looks nothing like the territory just to the west of where you sit. People who lived in the hill country when Johnson was a child and a young man were not wealthy. People who lived in the hill country when Johnson was a child and a young man really had to work hard to keep body and soul together. And so they gravitated in the late 19th and the early 20th century to the ideas of the populists and then in the very early 20th century to the ideas of the progressives and they were committed new dealers by the 1930s and by the 1930s Johnson is a young man on the move in state and national politics and he makes Franklin Roosevelt into one of his many political daddies. Johnson worshipped at the altar of the New Deal which was all about using the resources and the power of the federal government to ameliorate against the poverty of the Great Depression. So think things like social security, think things like banking regulation and reform and think about all of the various work relief programs that were more temporary parts of the New Deal. This was a liberalism that was about economics and historians have argued a lot about which version of liberalism the 1930s liberalism that was about economics or the liberalism that comes into vogue in the 1960s with and because of Johnson that was also rights based about first bringing civil rights to African Americans but then expands from the 60s into the 1970s to bring rights to women and to bring rights to Chicanas and Chicanas and to American Indians as the movement was termed then and then also to the environment etc etc etc. So on Johnson's presidential watch liberalism widens to be about rights based requests as much as about economics. There's another piece that is changing in the landscape of American liberalism that I think I have to put on the table and so it's not like the economic liberalism necessarily goes away but it's sharing space with right space liberalism but there is a shift if you will in the economic liberalism from the 30s versus the economic liberalism of the 60s so economic liberalism in the 30s was maybe more about opportunity whereas economic liberalism in the 60s was maybe more about entitlement and that distinction between equal opportunity versus entitlement is where lots of conflict and disagreement boiled over and I'm sure we're going to get into some of that as the conversation continues but does that work as a real quick comprehensive exams explanation of the evolution of liberalism? A plus I think that's fantastic it gives us a lot to work with as we move forward before we get into those you know the development of liberalism and conservatism let's talk about the star of the show Lyndon Johnson and of course you know I want to talk with you about how he positioned himself during the race but you know him not only as a historian but also through some firsthand experience with Lyndon Johnson describe that and tell us what kind of a person you experienced when you when you encountered LBJ? Sure well so anybody who's listening has probably figured out I am a native of Texas my accent is obvious I grew up in east Texas about an hour south of Dallas and my father was the stereotypical yellow dog democrat he had grown up in a stereotypically yellow dog democratic household my grandfather had been democratic county chair for 20 years and my dad was democratic county chair for 16 years starting in I think 1960 and finishing out in 76 are thereabouts my father wrote to you know any democrat who was anybody from the time he became active in politics in the late 40s so I have his correspondence with Sam Rayburn and I have his correspondence with Jim Wright and I have his correspondence with Lyndon Johnson to whom he started writing in the 50s and wrote more and politicians then wrote back Sam Rayburn once said he would much rather have a letter written on a big chief tablet from a real person than a mass-generated form letter and I think that that sentiment carried over to Lyndon Johnson as well and so my father and uh senator Johnson had a correspondence that went back and forth that increased during the vice presidency and increased more during the presidency at some point during the presidency Johnson wrote to my father watched the newspapers and when you see that I'm going to be at the Texas White House bring your family down for a visit so we went for the first time in December of 1968 and went back for about 12 to 15 more trips until the president's death he put us up in the same trailer house where Lucy and Linda would stay when they came to the ranch to visit their parents on one trip he loaned us one of the Lincoln's to drive to see the Easter fires pageant in Fredericksburg and it was just this grand amazing journey that I took for granted and the adult version of me realizes just how rare and how special it was for someone who was not important I mean my father was very important to me but he was not an important person uh to have a friendship with a former president of the United States so yes I was we were served chili I'm not sure that I actually ate it I was a bit of a picky eater at least there were no mushrooms there were no mushrooms uh I have since made the president's chili recipe and I really the six seven-year-old version of me didn't know what she was missing out on because it was good uh but yes lots of trips to the ranch and on those occasions I saw I saw what made him a political genius if I can just tell one story that I have in the opening book so Lyndon Johnson was a giver of gifts and every time we went to the ranch we left with gifts and I have at home 18 karat gold jewelry with Lyndon Johnson's head on it and I have uh that you know I keep very close care of and I have a a pony and a doll not an actual pony a plastic pony and a doll that shows the abuse that a six seven eight-year-old child can give to a toy and everything in between on one trip the president gave my little brother one of those super bouncy balls and my brother at the time was still in diapers so small person really super small person Johnson was giving us a tour of the ranch in one of the Lincoln's and he drove close to the fence at which tourists could gather and he noticed that there were some tourists at the fence and there was a small child with the tourists and Johnson says to my father John I want to give that ball to the little boy across the fence don't worry I've got plenty of them back at the house I'll I'll get your son another one and Johnson proceeds to get out of the car and throw the ball to the boy across the fence I'm sure it's antics like this that drove the secret service no doubt but it was Lyndon Johnson so what are you going to do Johnson's arm wasn't quite what he had hoped it would be and he did not make his throw and so he directed my father to go get the ball and my father goes and gets the ball and proceeds to walk it to the fence to give it to the boy and Johnson yells it my father no John bring it back here and so my father brings the ball back to the president who really winds it up good and makes the throw up now that stuck with me as a child but the adult historian version of me sees that as Lyndon Johnson's need to be all things to all peoples and the direct font of the beneficence that he had hoped that he had provided to the American people no intermediaries if at all possible that I completely agree that's a really illuminating story from just a moment that I'm sure passed very very quickly okay so putting back your historian hat let's return to the campaign of 1964 so as we all know Lyndon Johnson was propelled into the presidency under tragic circumstances in November 1963 he's keenly aware at that point that he has one year right before the election of 1964 and it's clear that he wants to run in his own right for the presidency talk if you would about what he believed in that all important year between November and November how he believed he needed to position himself to win the presidency which was clearly vital to his own perception of himself as a man who could appeal to the American people well he starts when he lands on that really sad end of that really sad day at Andrews with his brief remarks just asking for prayers and then follows up briefly well follows up in more detail with his address to the joint session of congress his let us continue speech and I've always held that that let us continue speech is his moment of making the presidency his own but also beginning the process of creating Camelot which we think of as more of a Jacqueline Kennedy operation but Johnson in his own way plays a role of making Kennedy perhaps more in death than he was in life because a refrain that runs throughout Johnson's legislating in that year that he has between rising to the presidency in the election of do it in the memory of Jack Kennedy do it for the dead president and it can be everything from the tax cut to what becomes the 1964 civil rights act so Johnson claims this very wide middle of the road posture with let us continue in an effort to wrap his arms around the American people and state his ambition to fulfill the Kennedy agenda so I think that's I think that's the most important step that he takes right and it seems to me it was a complicated balancing act in LBJ's mind between capitalizing on the Kennedy legacy and yet defining himself as his own man right who had his own priorities and that had to be a tricky balance to strike across that year yes and made all that much trickier by Lyndon Johnson's shall we say fragile ego and insecurities which were apparent to anyone who who knew him yeah but I think the most important thing that he is able to accomplish is showing off his legislative prowess mark you and I have talked separately about Johnson as the country's best legislative president and we've compared him to Biden who also has more than a few legislative chops from his many many years in the U.S. Senate Johnson's scorecard is maybe longer but Johnson had a much better Congress with which to deal than Joe Biden has had for his not even four years in the White House yet so Johnson shows his legislative skills by getting civil rights enacted he had been senate majority leader when congress enacted the first civil rights bill since reconstruction in 1957 the most significant thing about the 1957 civil rights act was that it carried the word act after and a presidential signature that made it law because other than that it didn't do anything in the words of Illinois senator Paul Douglas the 1957 civil rights act was like soup made from the shadow of a crow that had been starved to death there was nothing there and Johnson knew that but he also understood the importance of precedent and making something seem possible so 57 made passing civil rights possible and 64 was the opportunity to do it with teeth and so that's what he did his ability to work across the aisle was very important to the success of 64 civil rights Johnson regularly had senate minority leader Everett Dirksen to the White House in the evening to trade glasses of scotch and tales of politics they were from opposite parties but they shared a love of country and a desire to move some civil rights legislation forward there's a wonderful well you have many phone tapes in your custody but there's an especially wonderful phone tape from June of 1964 when Johnson is talking to House House minority leader Charlie Halleck about getting a rule on the civil rights bill that had just passed the senate filibuster that was coming back to the house to reconcile the differences between the two bills and Johnson wants to sign the bill on July 4th and Halleck doesn't want that Halleck realizes that the bill is going to give the democrats a lot of political ammunition for the fall and Halleck wants to minimize that as much as possible and the back and forth between these two is a masterclass in political manipulation the so-called Johnson treatment as Halleck just realizes there's no way he's going to win and Johnson you know Johnson's saying I want to come hug you I want to love on you I want to patch you and Halleck is you can just hear him sinking with inside himself because he's not going to win and he didn't Johnson signed 64 civil rights in the law and it was a tremendous boon to his campaign that fall so on the on the democratic side clearly Lyndon Johnson was dominant let's turn for a moment and talk about the other side the republican side where the situation was of course much more complicated the GOP at that time was a very big tent with lots of different political tendencies within it in fact you you call it a kind of civil war that was raging within the party through the the 1960s talk if you would a little bit about the the nature of the republican party and how it had evolved to the point where Barry Goldwater would become the standard bearer in 1964 sure okay so I'll move through about 30 years worth of history as quickly as I possible yeah so Herbert Hoover elected in 1928 and had the great misfortune of the depression happening on his watch the republicans did not have another presidential victory until Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 in 36 in 40 in 44 and 48 the republicans nominated a series of moderate establishment oriented republicans who never took on the new deal never challenged the new deal and never won and so that produces schisms within the republican party between that moderate east coast establishment wing and the more conservative party as it existed within congress and those tensions become more exaggerated not less after Dwight Eisenhower's presidency because Dwight Eisenhower was another moderate who argued for modern republicanism that did not provide a lot of space or love for those conservatives in congress so the conservatives decide and and the party nominated Richard Nixon who had moderate bona fide days by virtue of being Eisenhower's vice president even though Nixon is a more complicated figure liberals had not forgiven him for his red baiting campaign for the senate in the 1950s but still Nixon was viewed as establishment not conservative in his 60 run for the white house the conservatives are bound and determined by 64 to name their candidate okay so that gets us to 64 now let's get to goldwater presidential nominations in the 60s did not look anything like presidential nominations in the last i don't know 20 30 40 years even there were only three competitive primaries on the republican side not every candidate had their name on the ballot in every state those three competitive primaries were new hampshire won by a right end candidate Henry Cabot Lodge who was serving as ambassador and so not actively politicking but he still won in new hampshire as a right end candidate so think about that for a minute uh and the strangeness of that to our modern years Nelson Rockefeller another moderate establishment republican wins the Oregon primary the last remaining competitive primary is california and it's a two-man race between Rockefeller and goldwater Rockefeller's biggest disadvantage in the california race perhaps was the ill-timed birth of his child with happy Rockefeller Rockefeller was a fairly recent divorced man who remarried the woman who perhaps he had become acquainted while still married shall we say so a difficult marital history in a moment in time where americans were expecting monogamy from presidents or at least not investigating presidential behavior in that way or at least the image of monogamy uh and so the birth of Rockefeller's child at the same time as the primary just draws out into the open Rockefeller's uh personal messy personal life uh from a 1960s perspective it seems pretty normal in 2024 uh but um so that's one thing and then the other thing is that goldwater had the advantage of a very hungry and very organized right wing in california and so much so that unsavory organizations like the john birch society were really out there working hard on goldwater's behalf and so goldwater pulls off the win in california and that is enough to position him to get the nomination when the republicans meet in their convention later that uh summer in california at the infamous affair at the cow palace where those very loud goldwater partisans take over the show they boo nelson rockefeller off the stage even police who were on duty to keep things under control joined in the booing of rockefeller during uh during his his speaking and then when its gold waters uh turned to speak well his his walk on music was um oh i'm blanking here for a second glory glory hallelujah uh which ironically given gold waters tortured history of race began as a black spiritual and then became uh became a union oriented song during the civil war but then goldwater gives his his speech with the infamous line extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue which caused one journalist to quit my god he's going to run is barry goldwater and he did um so a lot of historians have observed over the years and i think i think you do as well in your book that gold waters lack of broad popularity across the american public helped to make the 64 race into the landslide that that it became to what extent you think gold waters candidacy the the extremism as as many americans came to see it of goldwater accounts for why it was that lbj won by such an enormous margin i think that's a huge part of lbj's victory although i would not count lbj out in any contest against any person lbj was so single-minded of purpose and had such strong ambition for a win bigger than roosevelt's biggest that he would have gone equally hard against a rockefeller or a lodge but we can't know certainly gold waters gold waters extremism is not uh not in his favor john connelly uh the governor of texas and a political protege of johnson's told johnson in february of 1964 i don't see that they got anybody though that's appealing to people much goldwater has gone crazy he wants to go into cuba with the marines and he's just nutty as a fruit cake and in fact goldwater had talked about lobbing one meaning a nuclear bomb into the men's room of the kremlin he had also talked about sawing off the east coast of the united states and separating it from the country he had talked about abolishing social security among other things so he did appear to be beyond the pale and johnson took advantage of that in so many ways perhaps one of the most important and most well-known aspects of the johnson campaign is the infamous daisy commercial that shows the little girl sitting and it's not a daisy it's a sunflower but sitting with the flower picking off the petals uh as the mushroom cloud explodes behind her the commercial was only shown once on broadcast television as an advertisement we like to say that line a lot but it wasn't the only ad that suggested goldwater was a nuclear warmonger there was also advertisements that talked about the risk of nuclear material showing up in the milk that children drank and another ad that suggested a cute little girl eating an ice cream cone was soon to die in nuclear holocaust if very goldwater was elected president so the the the politicking on that issue was fast and furious on johnson's behalf he also had a group called the five o'clock club uh that was full of uh really smart government lawyers and lawyers outside of government but in washington dc loyal to johnson and they were called the five o'clock club because they met every day at five o'clock uh and what they were doing was uh following everything that goldwater said and feeding to the press response lines so the press was fairly partisan in favor of johnson uh there was no fox news for example in 1964 and journalists tended to favor johnson fairly heavily over goldwater and so the five o'clock club would provide goldwaters traveling press corps with critical questions to ask and uh did lots of other things like that to get under goldwater's skin and make sure the american people were properly educated about the risks of a goldwater presidency right right um and it seems to have worked right given the enormous um uh landslide i mean and the landslide of course um had to have been tremendously gratifying to lbj himself who wanted to win his political battles by by huge margins he also had very long and impressive coattails in the 64 election talk if you would for a moment about how congress changed as a consequence of the 64 race and of course this would be really important to what lbj was able to accomplish during the famous 89th congress that sat between 1965 and 1967 yeah the great 89th as it was termed yeah so johnson had margins in the house in the senate that democratic and republican presidents since can only dream about these are new deal these are early new deal level margins uh the democrats picked up 38 new seats in the house of representatives giving democrats a 295 to 140 majority in the house and the democrats picked up two new seats in the us senate for a 68 to 32 majority now you might be wondering let's just two seats in the senate why does that matter well think about the complexities of the democratic party in 1964 there were multiple democratic parties we've already talked about the republicans as undergoing a civil war well there's the southern democrats and there's everyone else and so even with 66 to 34 if i did the math right while on a zoom call talking to 330 people that was not safe enough for johnson's legislative ambitions given the conservatism of southern democrats and conservatism that has only intensified in the aftermath of linden johnson's quote unquote betrayal of the south by signing civil rights legislation into law if you will so these majorities give johnson a very liberal congress with which to work that is ready to enact elementary and secondary education act higher education act medicare medicaid which at the time was really not intended to be a big deal it was a housekeeping measure but it became a big deal after the voting rights act environmental legislation consumer protection legislation legislation for the arts and the humanities uh legislation for urban renewal and the list goes on and on and on and on grab your copy of the vantage point from your local library and look at the front piece and the back piece which just lists every bill signed into law during the johnson presidency and the overwhelming number in that 65 to 67 period i would argue though that every gift comes with an unintended consequence and i think one unintended consequence of the grade 89th was that johnson perhaps took his congressional majority a little bit too much for granted it didn't work hard enough in 66 to retain his strength now the republicans don't gain control in 66 but the margins narrow considerably and it's much harder for johnson to legislate in the second half of his presidency than in the first of course that's exacerbated by vietnam which is becoming more deadly and less popular with each new uh uh accounting of the dead and uh the deepening of what appeared to be nothing more than a stalemate so much so that college kids were outside the white house chanting hey hey lbj how many kids did you kill today by the end of johnson's presidency so one of the fascinating things to me about talking about elections is that they very readily suggest counterfactuals what might have happened if something different had played out and i think in connection with the 64 race the counterfactual is not so much what what would have happened at barry goldwater one because that was pretty far-fetched and the margin was huge but what if lbj had defeated a more moderate republican um who would have performed better and have uh perhaps um you know the congress it's the makeup of congress might have been somewhat different as well what would a johnson presidency have looked like if it had to work harder for the things that it most wanted maybe more time would have been taken to craft bills i think about some of the war on poverty legislation that once it was passed it was yesterday's news and there wasn't a lot of attention or care given to making sure that the legislation worked as intended so perhaps there might have been more care to bring all voices into the drafting of the bills and into the implementation of the legislation i don't think johnson would have been any less ambitious uh his ambition was uh as tall as he and uh as as wide as the perdanalis after a heavy rain uh right uh johnson johnson did not shy from what he wanted to accomplish but he also would have understood that with narrower margins and maybe more republicans a different path would have to have been taken republicans though wouldn't have bothered johnson that much that's the thing about coming out of texas a one party texas well it's still a one party texas it's just a different party uh uh but johnson's schooling in one party texas politics in the teens in the 20s taught him how to work with different factions and didn't fully give him an appreciation of the two party system so he was good at working across factional lines and i think that's something that would have helped him in working uh with uh with with republicans had they been more potent in congress in 1965 yeah thank you for that and by the way let me pause just for a moment to remind our audience that uh there's an opportunity here to put questions into the q and a feature at the bottom of your screen and i hope that uh many of you will do that the next couple of minutes before i turn things over to the q and a part of our of our program nancy i want to wrap up though by just asking you a couple of very broad questions about the general significance of the 1964 election and and the first thing i'd like to ask you about is the the trajectory of american conservatism so going back a little bit to the goldwater side of the equation you know there's this joke about the 1964 election that barry goldwater actually won it just took 16 years to recognize it right with ronald reagan's victory in in 1980 is is that right is that how we should think about the 1964 elections it's kind of foretaste this early taste of where american politics actually would go uh in the next decade and a half that's not wrong but that's just one story of the legacy of 1964 the democrats and liberal democrats have yet to recover to their 1964 level um of uh political potency with johnson and liberals never really embraced johnson either uh johnson used to tell the joke how do you tell the difference between a cannibal and a liberal and uh he would say uh cannibals don't eat their own uh implying that the liberals were yes uh and that some of his insecurity uh coming into play uh so but what do i mean by uh the legacy of liberalism after johnson uh so i regularly teach the us history survey class that is required of all degree seeking students in public institutions in this state and when i'm getting to the end of the semester i put a picture up on my power point of the transition period from george w bush to barack obama george w bush still in the white house but barack obama as president elect uh george w bush invited all of the living former presidents to come to the white house to meet with obama to essentially school him on being president not in a negative way but in a you're in the fraternity now kind of way and i'm sure that this was the accident of the camera lens and the accident of tie selection that morning but jimmy carter is kind of off by himself and obama is in the center of the photo with the two presidents bush and clinton the two presidents bush and clinton and obama all have on blue ties and carter has on a red tie in the photo and again that's an accident of what tie do you pull off the rack in the morning or what tie perhaps more appropriately did rosalind and uh laura and barbara and michelle and i'm not sure hillary was picking out bill's ties but uh you know what ties did wives say go best with this suit i i think it's all an accident but it also shows the the linking together of two of the three democratic presidents leaving biden out because biden's not a thing yet at this point in time as president uh since since johnson and the point that i try to make to my classes is i'll ask them who was the last liberal president and depending upon at what point am i teaching i get either obama or clinton as an answer i haven't taught the survey since biden has been president so i would probably get biden if i was teaching it now i realized that but i tell them that's not that's probably not the correct answer and then i say uh summing up all the internal courage i can muster that the answer is richard nixon that would be my answer and uh and they're shock and horror and i explained that it has less to do with richard nixon and more to do with the fact that democrats still controlled congress the house in the senate and they passed more legislation that was of a piece with what they had been passing for johnson in the 60s so in that way johnson's legacy continues into the nixon presidency and policies associated with johnson i would argue have forever remade how we live our lives right so would i be sitting here today as a history department chair routinely fielding queries will i apply for this or that deanship and the answer is a resounding no uh but that's not because i'm not qualified it's because i don't want to do that job uh would people of color hold the positions that they hold so much of that goes back to johnson the 64 civil rights act and title seven within the 64 civil rights act and just how fundamentally 64 civil rights and title seven and the social movements that come out of that remake america maybe goldwater and the republicans won presidential politics but in other ways the legacy of johnson's liberalism remains with us wonderful answer i i i think you've captured it so so neatly it's complicated right the the dominant political mood turns against liberalism against what linden johnson worked for and stood for in so many ways and yet so many of the achievements of linden johnson's presidency endure and really structure life in 21st century america in profound ways nancy thank you so much for being with me i have dozens more questions i wish i had time for me to to lob at you but i'm going to turn that privilege over to folks in our wonderful audience this afternoon and to my colleague sarah mccracken who will sort through those questions and pose a few more to you nancy thank you again congratulations on two sons of the southwest linden johnson berry goldwater in the 1964 battle between liberalism and conservatism i really appreciate your time thank you mark it was great fun hello nancy um i'm honored to offer some questions from our audience um the first question is from cliff how did goldwater the extremist later become the elder statesman of the gop sure so yes goldwater was an extremist but goldwater was also a politician who understood how politics worked and when he goes back into the united states senate he has several moments that allow him to show his statesmanship perhaps the most important one is associated with the downfall of richard nixon's presidency goldwater was one of several republicans who went to nixon and told him the jig is up you need to leave you need to resign and you need to resign now you're not going to prevail in an impeachment inquiry your president will or your presidency will end in an inglorious way if you fight to hang on and you need to go and so goldwater's taking of that stance is really important to showing him as a statesman in his elder years i think in other ways goldwater looks statesman like today by virtue of what was and was not a part of goldwater's conservatism right so i talked about liberalism moving into rights based issues in the 1960s while goldwater opposed the 1964 civil rights act it was not because he opposed a quality for african americans he just opposed that particular methodology for achieving it goldwater was a member of civil rights organizations like the nwacp and others he just didn't like the federal government's role in it he preferred a different strategy goldwater was also a strong supporter of women's bodily autonomy read as abortion rights and the like so goldwater would not be a perfect fit or a fit at all in today's republican party given given the difference in the strong difference in some of his positions and those of today's g.o.p. the willingness to stand up to the sitting president is is is pretty significant and the unwillingness to jump on jump fully on the train of um campaigning against uh campaigning against personal choice personal identity that sort of thing uh would not would not situate himself well in today's republican party he would probably if goldwater were around today he would probably be more in line with say a lisa murkowski or a susan collins than the dominant dominant voices in the g.o.p. interesting thank you uh beddy asks what is the lesson for the upcoming presidential election comparing it to the 64 election and your opinion seeing the great divide we have currently in the u.s. okay you asked so i'll i'll i'll give it to you uh in uh a way uh that linden johnson would have appreciated with the bark off uh meaning the the the my my my truth and my whole truth and i could be wrong don't elect a deranged and delusional demagogue especially when you've had experience with that deranged and delusional demagogue and do elect a congress that will give a majority leader chuck schumer and a speaker hakeem jefferies the numbers they need to enact the policies of the democratic president who would be elected which would be joe biden because he's the only democrat running uh like him uh have luke warm feelings toward him or whatever uh it works better if there is uh uh if congress and the presidency can speak with the same voice and get something done um thank you this question is from jim he asks was goldwater really is crazy in his approach to governing as he was as he was portrayed by the democrats and much of the media so goldwater was a shoot from the hip kind of guy and he did talk about the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons he did talk about eliminating social security while campaigning for the votes of senior citizens he did talk about things that would would have seemed and did seem nutty to americans at the time one of goldwater slogans was in your heart you know he's right playing on that right as conservative and right as correct uh the two different meanings of the word right democratic wags added a line to the in your heart you know he's right line with in your guts you know he's nuts and so was he as crazy as the democrats said no probably not uh he was a normal politician but he did hold extreme views there was not a consensus about getting rid of social security there was not a consensus that nuclear war with the soviet union was a good idea which would be the result of lobbying one into the men's room of the kremlin uh so he did have some some ideas that were were far to the right and that's how come he was painted as such but he was still a normal politician who understood negotiation and give and take and and all such as that thank you um you talked about governor rocker feller uh who were some of the other moderate republicans who sought the nomination in 64 and why did they fall short sure uh probably the other most prominent uh republican and seeking is the wrong word here probably the other most prominent republican who garnered sufficient votes to be a contender was Henry Cabot Lodge the second but he was not in any way that we would understand it seeking the nomination he had an ambassador an appointment as an ambassador and so he was doing his ambassadorial work he was never out on the hustings he didn't seek to raise money he didn't go give speeches at rubber chicken dinners he didn't do any of that sort of stuff that we associate with politicking but nevertheless people voted for him because they saw him as a standard bearer of the eastern moderate establishment and uh they had liked what he had said uh when he had been nixon's uh vice presidential candidate in in 60 so he he had a following in that regard um and then how uh where was george wallish in the in the 64 race and what role did we play yeah uh so george wallis makes in a a a boarded attempt to challenge johnson that doesn't go anywhere uh at one point george wallis actually sent in the run up to the republican uh convention george wallis sent an emissary to the goldwater team to suggest that goldwater select wallis as his running bait uh for the presidency goldwater was non-plussed uh he's a democrat why would i do that uh so that's that's george wallis in uh 1964 that and his uh third party run that uh gains him uh gains him votes in in in the south but he's he's a non-factor in 1964 uh we'll see more of wallis and wallis will be more of a factor once we get to 1968 another question from our audience how do you explain the vice presidential choices of the two candidates sure so let me uh talk about uh william miller first goldwater wanted someone that he thought would get under lbj's skin so that's why he chose miller so that miller could be an attack dog on on the johnson team uh johnson and humphrey uh were were close in the senate uh johnson had mentored humphrey ever since humphrey's election to the senate in the 1940s uh johnson saw humphrey as a liberal who with whom he could work uh a liberal with pragmatism and so johnson had had been grooming humphrey for uh rising politically for uh for some time and uh even though johnson could make humphrey's life a living nightmare uh think about the drawn out process by which johnson finally decides on humphrey as his vp pick all of this is happening quietly and behind the scenes johnson's not doing this publicly to publicly embarrass humphrey he's just doing it to maximize his his role as the president on on the ticket so he chose humphrey because he had genuine respect for humphrey even though there were more than a few occasions and more than a few examples of johnson talking down to humphrey but these were things that were well known to hubert humphrey before he said yes to linden johnson and things that were part of their partnership if you will sandy asks for having been trounced the republicans seem to leave 1964 with some strength the south begins to vote always with the republicans there's new strength and the southwest and the border states the conservative position on many issues is solidified do you think this race was in some ways a help to conservatives in the future definitely definitely so there's the conversation that linden johnson and jake pickle uh who represented uh represented austin in congress for so many years had after the house of representatives past the 1964 civil rights act johnson made a point of calling those few members of congress who cast very difficult votes now in 2024 or even uh in the austin of the 80s in the 90s when i was a student there it's hard to imagine why voting for civil rights would have been difficult with the austin electorate of the late 20th or the early 21st century but the austin electorate of 1964 wasn't what austin is now and pickle was very afraid that by voting for 64 civil rights he was signing his political uh death certificate so he uh went out and got drunk really really really drunk after casting that vote and linden johnson had been calling the hotel where pickle had an apartment all night to talk to pickle to thank him for his vote and when pickle finally made his way in the desk clerk receptionist said congressman pickle the white house has been calling you need to call linden johnson pickle said he's the last person on earth i want to talk to right now and the person at the desk uh said i'm i'm sorry mr pickle but i can't lie to the white house he's gonna call again and i'm gonna put the call through so you better talk to him yourself so pickle and johnson talked and they agreed that the passage of the 1964 civil rights act would give the south to the republican party for a generation they were right and they were wrong it did give the south to the republican party but we're several generations in by now with few signs of that letting up with the exception of maybe the two democratic senators from georgia and the like the south seems still to be solidly republican uh so yes in that way uh the goldwater candidacy does help shape the future direction of the republican party thank you um this will be our last question uh what did you find most interesting or what new information did you discover as you prepared to write this book oh that is a good question and all right i know which direction i'll go one thing that i had wanted to talk about but we just didn't have time so this is my opportunity the role of lady bird johnson in all of this lady bird johnson does something in 1964 that had never been done before by a first lady and that is she went out on the political hustings by herself to campaign for her husband as president she does this in a variety of settings but most importantly on the whistle stop tour that she takes departing from alexandria virginia and arriving several days later in new Orleans louisiana and this is all part of the johnson's sense that as president johnson is president not just of those americans that voted for him but president of every american and as somebody seeking to hold the presidency it's important to ask for the vote of every american not just those who are going to vote for you anyway so that meant campaigning in the south and campaigning in the deep south that was not something that would have been terribly wise for linden johnson to do in the immediate aftermath of signing the 1964 civil rights act and lady bird made the case that she was the better johnson to make that trip and so she dons her own uh she she goes into the south with her own southernness on full display whereas johnson had his uh johnson treatment i would argue that there was a lady bird treatment as well and it was on full display on this whistle stop tour she held court in her own train car with southern governors and southern mayors and southern lawmakers trying to win them over to supporting the ticket they knew that not every state in the south was going to vote for johnson mississippi was a lost cause you know that's just obvious but there is also coming into view on the whistle stop another change that happens in southern politics and it would be wrong for us to look at the changes in southern politics to just be about the rise of the republican party we need to also consider the rise of the black democrat in the south and the role of black southern democrats maybe not as southern governors but as mayors of southern cities and as uh holders of congressional seats from the south none of this would have been possible without civil rights 64 or voting rights 65 and you see some of that in the lady bird special she speaks to mixed race audiences all along the way there are african americans who are train side greeters when her train pulls into town because of the importance of what she's what what she and her husband have done you also see the vitriol against the johnson's for civil rights coming out in some of the signage critical of lady bird at one stop there was a sign held up and i quote black bird go home and that is layered with all kinds of racial uh racial and racist uh meanings and criticisms of 64 civil rights top that off with the speech that linden johnson gave half prepared half extemporaneous in new orleans when he flew down to greet lady bird at the end of the whistle stop so the first half of his speech was his standard campaign stem speech speaking to a mixed race audience in new orleans louisiana in the fall of 1964 johnson then begins to tell stories that he grew up on of how the race card had been used to keep poor whites and poor blacks disenfranchised throughout the 20th century and gives gives a speech that i wish i could quote from but the language is cringe worthy now in 2024 it was revolutionary in 1964 because of the way he turned racism and the use of the n-word on its head to make a political point about the continued importance of economic liberalism to lift up poor blacks and poor whites in a region of the country that remained left behind well thank you this was a really interesting conversation and i'm going to turn it over to phil barns to wrap us up thank you nancy thank you well thank you nasa young and mark laurence and sarah mcracken for another really special afternoon that was a terrific conversation and we will be back next thursday february 8 at 4 p.m for a conversation with none other than carl rove perhaps best known as one of the nation's premier political consultants and advisors to many republican candidates including most notably president george w bush carl rove is also an accomplished writer he has a weekly op-ed column in the wall street journal as well as the author of the triumph of william mccannelly while the election of 1896 still matters we hope to see you next time thank you and goodbye