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“JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH ADDRESS AT THE LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S12-S14 on Jan. 24, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH ADDRESS AT THE LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, last spring I joined my colleagues in honoring President Lyndon Baines Johnson when we hung a portrait of our former president on the one blank wall left in the President's Room in our nation's capitol. As I noted at that time, I could think of no other president or American who was as deserving of this honor as LBJ.
As the Senate Majority Leader and President, LBJ was a man of immense skill, dedication and compassion. He is remembered by most Americans as a great leader whose strength of personality helped him preside over an extremely productive Senate that expanded Social Security, created the Interstate Highway system, and passed one of the most important civil rights laws of the 20th Century. Less well known, however, is LBJ's tremendous ability to compromise. He truly believed in the message of his favorite Bible verse: ``Come, let us reason together.'' Our nation and our government needs more men and women who share this powerful belief.
Today, I want to bring to the attention of my colleagues and all Americans another aspect of LBJ's legacy that too often has been overlooked--his work to bring justice to disen-
franchised ethnic minorities and to improve the lot of the large number of Americans suffering in unimaginable poverty. John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted economist and former presidential aide, recently highlighted LBJ's accomplishments in this area in an important speech at the LBJ library in Austin, Texas.
As Professor Galbraith noted, historians often view LBJ's administration in terms of its involvement in the Vietnam War. While we should never underestimate the impact that war had on our country, historians are remiss to view LBJ through this narrow prism. Those who do fail to acknowledge his meaningful and lasting accomplishments in expanding civil rights, protecting voting rights, and fighting poverty. These victories have forever changed the face of America for the better.
Professor Galbraith's speech is based on his personal and professional relationship with LBJ. It is a testament to LBJ's leadership and a tribute to the sometimes overlooked legacy of the Great Society. This speech is an important step towards setting the historical record straight and establishing a legacy of LBJ's Administration that is historically accurate as well as comprehensive.
I ask unanimous consent that Professor Galbraith's speech be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Lyndon Johnson: History Reconsidered
(By John Kenneth Galbraith)
The task of the historian is never finished. As first written, history responds to the dramatic, tragic or otherwise seemingly dominant events of the time. Only in later, more careful, more detached and, one trusts, professionally more competent view does the deeper truth emerge. Were it otherwise, historians would not be needed; history would not have to be reconsidered and rewritten. It is with such reconsideration I am here concerned--with an historical view in need of substantial modification. I am seeking the needed historical reappraisal of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a revision and correction of a history with which I was myself associated, had a modest role, and one to which I have contributed. I here offer a more thoughtful, I trust more informed, view of Lyndon Johnson, and notably as President of the United States. First, a word of personal history.
Lyndon Johnson was my age, or I his--he was born August 27, 1908, I a month and a half later. We were both of an amply celebrated rural origin, and both had our early education in country schools, rural-oriented colleges. Johnson arrived in Washington as a congressional aide in 1931, I for a markedly less impressive sojourn in 1934. We were both interested in agriculture; I had a minor role with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration--the Triple A--which continued as I went on that year to Harvard. Johnson a year later became the Texas director of the National Youth Administration. Two years after that he was elected to the House of Representatives.
At some time during these years we became acquainted; we were brought more closely together by the two great human rights advocates from Alabama, Virginia and Clifford Durr, to whom we were both devoted, Johnson and I were proudly New Dealers, fully committed to FDR who had our unstinting support. Our friendship, if not close, lasted for nearly a lifetime, to be ended by an unforgiving event central in the appraisal of Lyndon Johnson and the correction of which I here seek. That correction places him next only to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a force for a civilized and civilizing social policy essential for human well-being and for the peaceful co-existence between the economically favored (or financially fortunate) and the poor. History has settled on the great contribution of the New Deal. Much needs yet to be said of the achievements of the Johnson years, still sadly blotted from memory by foreign and military policy and action. Next only to Roosevelt, and in some respects more so, Lyndon Johnson was the most effective advocate of human social change in the United States in this century.
This was not a matter on which he left one in any doubt. On the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination, I was in Washington at the White House working on the sudden and compelling array of funeral tasks. I was called by L.B.J. to his vice-presidential, now his presidential, offices in the Old State Department building. (I offer this revision of the history on the 36th anniversary of L.B.J.'s first full day in office.) We discussed a range of domestic problems and the needed action. He spoke in Johnson language and emphasis of his strong commitment. Knowing perhaps that nothing would more assure my belief, he asked me to do a draft of the speech he would shortly make to the Congress. The eventual speech, which relied rather more heavily on Theodore Sorensen and on L.B.J. himself, made clear his intention.
For Roosevelt it was the New Deal. Kennedy had given currency to the phrase the New Frontier. For Johnson it would be the Great Society--possibly a less compelling title. Nonetheless, the action so taken has become part of our everyday life and acceptance. But not in the history. The New Deal is large in public memory; so, if somewhat less, is the New Frontier. Much less is made of the Good Society and the years of Lyndon Johnson. What was then greatly needed, even urgent and wonderfully accomplished, lies in the historical backwater. That we must recognize and retrieve.
The first and most important step taken by Lyndon Johnson was simply to make all Americans full citizens and full participants in the democratic process. This, in the Kennedy years, had become an issue of major importance. In June of 1963, a few months before his death, Kennedy had called for enabling legislation. His position, and especially that of his immediate and strongly committed subordinates, was not in doubt. But the decisive civil rights legislative action remained for Lyndon Johnson. A further and major step was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this at the beginning of Johnson's own new term and more than one hundred years after emancipation.
In the New Deal years ethnic equality was only on the public conscience; in the Kennedy presidency it was strongly urged by Martin Luther King and many others. From buses to lunch counters to restrooms to public accommodations, agitation had focused attention on the issue and brought some action. It was with Lyndon Johnson, however, that citizenship for all Americans in all its aspects became a reality. Not only were black citizens (as I choose to say) rewarded; distracting agitation and conflict came largely to an end. Not alone civil rights but civility in behavior to the peace and benefit of all. All were rewarded by the new peace. This we owe to the Johnson presidency. There was much more.
Related to ethnic difference but going far beyond was the continued existence of a mass poverty--of life at or below the margin of survival. This also, a neglected point, means denial not alone of the basic enjoyments of life but also the denial of liberty. Nothing so limits the freedom of the individual as the total absence of money. This, as too often with the commonplace, we take for granted, ignore. This too Lyndon Johnson recognized and addressed.
The problem of massive urban poverty and the more diverse affliction in rural America, especially in the mountain valleys down from New England to the Deep South, was a continuing fact. There were (as there are still) two lines of thought on how this should be addressed. One was to insure everyone a basic income by public action. This a rich country could afford; to this all the industrially advanced countries are in some measure committed. The other course is to counter poverty by specific remedial action designed to minimize its more specific adverse effects and, most importantly, to provide the mental and physical means for escape. The main effort of the Johnson years was of the second order; the basic steps in this effort continue to this day--money for deprived educational communities, for education in general. Head Start, food for needful children at the beginning of the school day, food stamps for the old and hungry, the Jobs Corps and major initiatives in education . . . including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act sending funds to local school districts along with support to higher education and those pursuing it. And major help for those previously denied health care and life itself from lack of money. This list of humane accomplishments could be extended. The emphasis was not alone on what the Federal government should do but also on helping individuals and communities to help themselves.
The New Deal initiatives were more centralized, more visible and more dramatic; those of the Johnson years were less visible but not less important for aiding human survival. What Johnson initiated is now accepted even by the wonderfully adverse orators of our present age.
The work for civilized well-being is not complete. I have long believed that we should accept, as we do only reluctantly and partially now, a minimum income for all Americans. This, to repeat, a rich country can afford. It requires that we eliminate the welfare stigma and other adverse attitudes. Some who are favored by a basic income will not work; so with many who are now favored by a higher income. Leisure is an evil thing for the poor; it is rewarding for the affluent, sometimes even for professors. Accordingly, our social effort must continue. But let there be no doubt; in the years of Lyndon Johnson both ethnic minorities and the poor became citizens of the republic, the first by legal action, the second by still imperfect but highly relevant remedial legislation.
Nor did this happen because of newly recognized need. It happened because Lyndon Johnson was the most effective political activist of our time. It is easy to advocate the right action; it is something else and much more to obtain it. Lyndon Johnson was not content with citing the need, recommending the legislation. He was content only as he obtained (and on occasion forced) the requisite action. No President in our time has had such a commanding role as regards the Congress, the result of both solid experience and strong personality. Johnson's authority was based on knowledge--he had a clear and comprehensive view of what he urged. But there was more. Individuals at all levels in Congress and in the Executive knew him. He was a good friend, had an engaging personality and a compelling range of speech. No one went to see him without returning to tell of some prescient observation by Lyndon Johnson, some amusing or slightly off-color metaphor.
Liking Johnson, politicians and other leaders aligned with him. All wanted the association preserved, so they did as Johnson commanded. We speak much of the power of personality; in Lyndon Johnson it was evident, effective and had its own distinctive style. Long before he became President, this was well recognized in the Congress. Asked after the 1960 Convention why he had chosen Lyndon Johnson as Vice-President, John F. Kennedy gave several reasons. The last and perhaps the decisive reason: ``It wouldn't be worthwhile being President if Lyndon were Majority Leader.'' When President, Lyndon Johnson was effectively both. Kennedy, as I've said on other occasions, used less power than he had as President; Johnson used more.
I summarize: on civil rights and on poverty, the two truly urgent issues of the time, we had with Johnson one of the greatest changes of our time. I turn now to the historical correction which, along with others of my political faith, I need to make.
My association, even friendship, with Lyndon Johnson came to an end with the Vietnam war. We had intensely discussed it: Johnson's case was not unpersuasive. ``Ken, you have no idea what the generals would be doing were I not here.'' And this, I must add, I did not know. Next year the Harvard University Press will publish ``American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War'' by David Kaiser. It makes full, intelligent, even exhaustive use of newly declassified documents--all are now available except for some continuing and perhaps well-considered reticence by the CIA. Kaiser tells in extensive and, to this day, alarming detail of the military pressure on Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The generals and their civilian acolytes took over, were even eager for a war. Nuclear weapons were freely proposed. One reads with relief and gratitude of the Presidential resistance, that of Kennedy in particular but also that of L.B.J. The widening military intervention was relentlessly pressed. And so the war and the deaths.
Knowing that part of the world from presence and experience, I knew that Communism was irrelevant in a primitive village and jungle economy--as Marx would have been the first to agree. There was also the irrelevance of our military establishment in the densely covered countryside that characterized much of Vietnam. The military forces of the Viet Cong would have been swept aside in a few days in Normandy. Here they could retreat conveniently and safely to the jungle, or even to the water-laden reaches of the Delta. Accordingly, I joined with others in opposition to this cruel and hopeless effort and to sending our youth, still under draft, to serve and die. In the political campaign of 1968, I was accorded a measure of leadership. I do not regret my effort against this error. One must, however, regret the way in which we allowed the Vietnam war to become the totally defining event of those years and likewise of the history. In the Johnson years it was the Vietnam war and nothing else. And so in the history it remains. Those of us who were involved allowed that response; at the time, perhaps it was inevitable. But certainly we have done far too little to correct the history since.
The needed correction is clear. In the Johnson years two major flaws in the American community and its polity were addressed. What was called the American democracy became in reality a democracy. All Americans became citizens. There was a long step toward peaceful coexistence between ethnic groups. And for the first time we had a clear recognition of the presence of deep, unforgiving poverty in this generally affluent land. The danger to domestic peace and harmony was recognized. Poverty, economic deprivation, is still with us. Income inequality is great and still growing. But recognition of this together with the belief that something can and must be done--that there can be remedial action--goes back to the Johnson years. And so does the range of action for the young, the poor, the ill and the old without which all would be much worse.
Three Presidents in our lifetime have seen the social need of their citizenry from their particular position in life. Franklin D. Roosevelt, as I've elsewhere said, saw the people of the United States as a tenantry stretching out from Hyde Park. For them and their depression hardship he had a landlord's responsibility. From Irish Boston, John F. Kennedy saw a great minority still seeking to escape--and his family had escaped--the trials and oppressions of a once beleaguered community. (It helped that it had become a political force.) Johnson's identification was with a larger, less easily identified, politically less powerful community--the widely distributed urban and rural poor. What Kennedy and his family had escaped, Johnson had experienced at first hand. (His personal encounter with rural privation was never understated.) The basic motivation of all three Presidents was the same: the sense of responsibility for a larger, less fortunate community within the range of actual observation and experience.
There is a final, greatly needed revision. We must accord much more emphasis to the dangerous, even insane military pressures to which Kennedy and Johnson were subject. We should note that these were especially strong in 1965, the time when Johnson's mind and effort were sharply focused on poverty and civil rights and the requisite legislation.
When we think of Vietnam, we must think much more of the generals (and associated civilians) who pressed powerfully for the war, for the risks of a greater war and for an opening for nuclear weapons. That, in the full light of history, there were presidential errors here cannot be doubted. We must, however, be grateful for what was resisted.
Thus the historical revision I seek, we must all seek. The initiatives of Lyndon Johnson on civil rights, voting rights and on economic and social deprivation and the responding role of the state must no longer be enshrouded by that war. Those of us who helped make the war central to the public attitude and politics of the time have a special responsibility here. That responsibility I would like to think I have partly assumed on this favored evening.
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