Matusow - The Unraveling of America

Matusow, Allen J. The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.

Argument
JFK and LBJ brought liberalism and the welfare state into broad new areas, where FDR didn't go because WWII intervened and where Ike was indifferent to approach. They succeeded in educational desegregation - despite "white flight" education improved for black children. The North managed to resist desegregation. But the War on Poverty ground to an end without reaching a solution to the problems of equal opportunity, amidst liberal divisions over affirmative action. The economy stumbled because of the unbalanced budgets and inflation caused by LBJ's attempts to have both guns and butter - to fund the war and the social programs. Vietnam revealed the generation gap. The counterculture led to the unraveling of America, peaking at the 68 DNC, and collapsing under the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. The backdrop of the period is one of continued economic prosperity, part of the period from 1950-70, ending in the failure of liberalism.

Review
Kirkendall - AHR
"...to blame the war is to embrace a liberal explanation for liberalism's failure to transform American life, and that is niot tlis author's point of view. For Matusow, the chief obstacle in the way of lar-ge-scale change was liberalism itself. Here the crucial defect was not a tendency to promise too much but weaknesses in perception that rendered the liberals unable to deliver on promises, such as the assurances that liberal measures would create an orderly society. The liberals, according to the author's interpretation, were too soft. They as- sumed that significant changes come easily. They did not understand the problerns they faced, includ- ing poverty, or the solutions to them, including the redistribution of income. Also, they did not think hard enough about the distribution of power and the need to change it. They were too willing to compromise with the corporations, the political bosses, and other power groups."

JAH - Heath
"The book's basic thesis is well summarized on page 127: "By his heroic poses, his urgent rhetoric, his appeal to idealism and the nation's great traditions, Kennedy inadvertently helped to arouse among millions a dormant desire to perfect America.... Only later, during Lyndon Johnson's term as president, would the limits of liberal good will become apparent and the flaws of liberal reform be exposed. "

Goodwin - Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Argument
Like Dallek, Goodwin aims at an amateur psychological evaluation of what went wrong with the LBJ presidency.

Review
Andrew Rolle - Pacific Historical Review
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3637544

"What does the Kearns volume tell us about Johnson intrapsychically
that would help to explain his later conduct during America's
greatest recent tragedy, the violent war in Vietnam? Filled with
powerful emotions, including a vague and ill-defined rage, Johnson
also revealed a deep-seated need to be loved. Ambivalence resulting
from deprivation lay at the heart of his "life-style." At times Johnson
was alternatively cold, distant, sober, energy-bound, humble, earnest,
and desensitized (lacking in affect) to the point of dullness and
boorishness...Kearns creates a portrait of a flawed yet gifted manipulator."

Schlesinger - The Imperial Presidency

Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Argument
The Constitution granted the President extraordinary power and authority in leading America in foreign affairs. As a consequence, the modern President has been able to expand his powers to enormous levels out of times of foreign crises. The Cold War, in particular, led the executive branch to increase its power in making war without a declaration by Congress, to expand its secrecy protections, and to expand the use of Executive privilege.

Schlesinger also provides another concept: The Revolutionary Presidency, which seeks to stretch the power acquired through the Imperial Presidency into domestic affairs.

Nitty Gritty
The founders granted the President extraordinary leeway in foreign policy because it was expected that neither Congress nor the public would be experts in foreign affairs. Indeed this has more or less proven to be the case.

Schlesinger uses Lincoln as a model for how Presidents might reasonably exceed their explicit constitutional powers in an emergency; critically, Lincoln insisted that his broad claims of power were specific to the setting, and thus should not be taken as a permanent expansion of the office.

Schlesinger also notes the tendency of Congress to move to reclaim its power after periods of strong executive power. (After the Civil War, after WWI, and momentarily after WWII).

The Cold War looms over the Imperial Presidency. WWII led to a resurgence of the Presendancy, with Korea pushing it to a new level. But Vietnam is the key war. Both LBJ and especially Nixon expanded the powers of the President immensely, particularly in its secrecy system (which Schlesinger intriguingly suggests is based on the false assumption of national security, but actually exists largely to protect the government from embarassment).

Nixon's creation of a large professional army also gives the Presidency extraordinary leeway in sending an army on peacekeeping missions and other foreign ventures quickly with limited oversight.

After Watergate, Schlesinger wondered if the Imperial Presidency was in jeopardy. But Reagan and, more so, Bush II led to a resurgence. Bush II relied on the secrecy system to an even greater extant than even Nixon.

Review
JAH - Sydney Warren
"Richard M. Nixon, the author says, "for all his conventionality of utter- ance and mind was a genuine revolutionary." By his style and actions he defied tradition and made unprecedented assaults on the Constitution: his usurpation of the war-making power, his interpretation of the appointing power, his unilateral termination of statutory programs, his enlargement of executive privilege, his theory of impoundment, his deliberate disparage- ment of his cabinet, his discrediting of the press." [Warren points out that it is unclear whether Nixon's personality caused this or the national security state inevitably led to this.]

Dallex - Flawed Giant

Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Argument
Dallek proposes that the best explanation for both the remarkable successes and devastating defeats of the LBJ presidency lie in his personality. He believed he was and strove to be the greatest President ever. At the same time, he suffered a constant crisis of confidence that led him to paranoia and indecision.

Domestic
How did he get so much done? p.236
1. The Johnson treatment - unparalleled relationship with a Congress that was, until 1966 midterm, incredibly favorable. 2/3 of both houses is a rarity
2. The legacy of Kennedy's death
3. The "national receptivity to righting historic wrongs and using federal power to improve people's lives." p.236

"Johnson had at least one indisputable triumph in domestic affairs for which he deserves credit. He played a large part in bringing the South into the mainstream of the country's economic and political life." p.625

"One observer of the mourners...overheard one black woman say to her little girl: 'People don't know it, but he did more for us than anybody, and President, ever did.'" p.623

Civil Rights Act 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965
Medicare for the elderly
Medicaid for the impoverished
War on Poverty
Environmental Protection
Education - teachers, high school, college
Tranportation
Urban development - response to urban riots

Vietnam
Dallek portrays LBJ as constantly searching and hoping for an avenue to negotiate with Hanoi, a sign that part of him knew he had not quite grasped a winning strategy for Vietnam. By 1966, he felt he had to see the episode through though he knew his previous estimate of reaching an end to the conflict by 1967 would not come to pass.

Given America's aerial supremacy, LBJ long believed that bombing North Vietnam would tip the tide. But it didn't.

Dallek also frequently notes public opinion polls that show the American public generally agreed with LBJ's assessment of how the war should be fought, up until Tet.

The mounting American death toll led LBJ to personalize the war, drawing the conclusion that he had better not lose the war (not that he had better end the war).


Connection
While Halberstam blames the Vietnam quagmire largely on the flow of information created by a willful desire by those close to the action to deceive those in Washington into continuing a hopeless situation, Dallek presents Vietnam as a problem caused by LBJ's personality and political maneuverings. Following the Gulf of Tonkein incident, LBJ wanted to hide the growing scope of Vietnam as long as possible to thus avoid diminishing the momentum of the Great Society. By the time the public and Congress began to pay closer attention to Vietnam in 1966, it was too late to reverse course (at least in LBJ's mind and the mind of most of his advisors). Once it became apparent to other experts that Vietnam had reached a stalemate, LBJ still refused to seek a way out. For example, he saw McNamara's proposal to declare victory and leave as a personal betrayal, and banished McNamara to the World Bank.

Connection to Broad Political Themes
The irony of LBJ is that he tried more than any President to create programs for the benefit of just about every American, conceivably bringing them all into the Democratic camp. Yet his Presidency marks the end of the New Deal coalition.

Reviews
Gil Troy - JAH
Both the Great Society and Vietnam were rooted in LBJ's emotional emptiness, which fed his grandiosity. "Fearing rejection, Johnson minimized the commitment to achieve both goals." Ultimately, then, he never felt he fully achieved his Great Society goals.

Parmet - The Democrats

Parmet, Herbert S. The Democrats: The Years After FDR. New York: Macmillan, 1976.

Argument
The book begins with the funeral of LBJ. Though it was published in 76, Parmet is fully aware that LBJ's demise represented the decline of the New Deal coalition. This book tells how that coalition changed and maintained after FDR.

Truman - Moved right in foreign affairs (Cold War), and never able to put his Fair Deal into practice because of foreign distractions. Parmet also argues that the splintering of the Democratic party in 1948 actually helped Truman. Wallace's Progressive party actually placated moderates, making Truman look moderate. Thurmond's Dixiecrats made Truman look good in Civil Rights.

Eisenhower years - Adlai appealed to intellectuals and liberals, and while the Democrats managed to retake the House and Senate, the public showed a preference for the apparently non-politician President who was willing to work with the Democrats and didn't take on the New Deal.

JFK - Upon election, seen as the Democratic version of Nixon: the product of a slick political package, rather than a true Liberal. Style over substance. Even his inaugural address was mostly style with very little specifics

New Frontier - education, Civil Rights, housing

LBJ - Thought to be conservative but turned out to be quite Liberal, in Civil Rights and Great Society.


Review:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2208037
Doenecke - Journal of Southern History

Parmet portrays Stevenson as a conservative, a man whose "stature
impressed just about everybody but a majority of the electorate" (p. 102).
The Illinois governor had a probusiness bias, endorsed FEPC with obvious
reluctance, refused to take a militant pro-Israel stance, and stressed education
as the primary solution to racial tensions. During the Eisenhower
years the party leadership-concentrated in the Congress-shied away
from attacking McCarthyism, presented few alternatives to the President's
programs, and avoided the liberal Democratic Advisory Council.
The Kennedy leadership, so the author continues, was personal, not
partisan, as the party machine had little to do with policy making. Unlike
historians who stress the inertia in America during the early 1960s, Parmet
sees the new administration as remarkably successful, and he cites as
evidence congressional acceptance of a series of proposals ranging from
liberalized trade to the Peace Corps. Problems lay rather in JFK's overreacting
to such international crises as Cuba and Berlin and in a political
style that stressed rhetoric over reality.
In his coverage of the Johnson years Parmet stresses that the executive
department assumed patronage and fund-raising activities, thereby virtually
dismantling the Democratic National Committee. Turning to the
party defeats of 1968 and 1972, he calls Robert F. Kennedy's bid to power
"one of the most . .. clumsy moves in American political history" (p. 249)
but notes that Eugene McCarthy was "regarded as a moderate liberal at
best . . ." (p. 265) and that George McGovern was "certainly not a
radical" (p. 297). After Nixon's second presidential victory the party
hardly possessed anything resembling a program.
The book is particularly strong in its coverage of the South. Like V. 0.
Key, Parmet finds that the South was never monolithic. He shows that
poll-tax proponents were afraid of "undesirable" whites as well as of
blacks and that regional fears of racial equality emerged from a desire to
preserve the economic status quo. He notes how many prominent southern
politicians helped keep most of the South for Truman in 1948, how
Stevenson's detente with the South secured his nomination in 1956, and
how Kennedy depended upon the South to get important bills through
Congress.

Halberstam - Best and the Brightest

Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972.

Argument
Halberstam uses his reporters' eye and writing skill to set the personalities of the JFK and LBJ Presidencies over the written evidence (particularly from the Pentagon Papers, which emerged a year before this was published) to answer the question: How and why did such intelligent, thoughtful men get involved in the quagmire (as Halberstam's '65 book title called it) of Vietnam?

More specifically, their faith in bombing's chances of success was misplaced and could have been anticipated, and they never fully grasped why France had lost so they were doomed to repeat those mistakes.

The How - From as early as 1950 through JFK Presidency, intelligence and diplomatic correspondence from Vietnam, as well as from policy experts state-side (George Kennan, for example) was filtered before it reached the White House to paint a positive and optimistic picture and support the vision of a winnable intervention in Vietnam. At the same time, various military officers were presenting truthfully pessimistic reports from the field, but they too were filtered out to give the White House what commanders thought they wanted to hear.

The Why - Halberstam suggests that had the post-WWII anxiety about communism not been so thick in the U.S., America would have supported Vietnamese nationalism. Set against Korea (a relatively traditional geopolitical war rather than the nationalist war of Vietnam) and the fall of China, however, the U.S. opted to support France, and eventually step into France's place. Culturally at that moment in time, most U.S. leadership could not see Vietnam for what it truly was: a nationalist war, not a Cold War war.

Culpability of Individuals
JFK - JFK may have erred in putting Dean Rusk in Sec State; he wanted a weak Sec State and got that, but a stronger Sec State might have pushed more policy recommendations in front of JFK instead of telling him what he wanted to hear. When the few honest, pessimistic reports reached him, he was furious. Halberstam implies JFK might not have proceeded with the war escalation LBJ did.

LBJ - Persevered in Vietnam partly because he felt he owed it to JFK's legacy, partly out of his personality.

McNamara - "even if he was brilliant, [McNamara] was not wise." Mac's success in reorganizing the defense budget came from collecting data and making a thorough analysis on his own, outside of the recommendations of military. In Vietnam, he took the reports of others at face values from the beginning.

Westmoreland - Intentionally lowered estimates of troops needed. "Lyndon Johnson was a great salami slicer, and no one was smarter than Westmoreland at knowing how much salami to order at a given time, how much he would be allowed to carry home."

Useful link
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/15/home/halberstam-best.html
Critique: assumption implied by Halberstam, that the history might have been different if the people who understood Vietnam, as well as the people who understood LBJ, had been in the positions of power. This seems to undermine the thesis: the best and the brightest weren't good enough, and were victims of history, bureaucracy, and the Cold War.

Deception of the elite military and bureaucrats: the American public, each other, and themselves

"What shortly becomes clear is that no single military turning point, no single or two or three arch villains explains anything. "Dean Acheson was the architect of our commitment to Vietnam." The Europeanists got us in there to support the French. The Kennedys got us in there because "it gave them opportunities for grace under pressure." The Bay of Pigs really did it because ironically, its aftermath saw "the strengthening of State's tough-minded realists," and the weakening of those less inclined to use force, like Bowles. Maxwell Taylor and the military mind are really responsible because as late as 1961 he mistakenly saw Korea as the parallel war, whereas as Halberstam points out, "The former was a conventional war with a traditional border crossing by a uniformed enemy massing his troops; the latter was a political war conducted by guerrillas and feeding on subversion." Walt Rostow...is the culprit because of his infectious enthusiasm, as a member of the L.B.J. White House, for air war. Machismo, says Halberstam, "was no small part of it." [particularly for LBJ] ...Westmoreland and McNamara are guilty because of their misplaced confidence in ground troops. L.B.J. was the real war criminal when he deceived the American people in July, 1965... Dean Rusk ("color him neutral or color him hardline. Which side was he on? . . .") ought to take the rap because he never spoke up; he never fought; he let McNamara take over State. Take your pick the list is endless. What's interesting, though, are not any key decisions or decision-makers, but the pattern that emerges, a phenomenon we might call The Fallacy of the Misplaced Center. " - From NYT review