The Fierce Urgency of Now

by Julian E. Zelizer

  On November 17, 1967, a visibly furious Lyndon Johnson reprimands Congress for tying up his proposed tax surcharge at the risk of destabilizing the global financial system. Johnson warned that Wilbur Mills and Gerald Ford would “rue the day” they had blocked his surcharge.

  The House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Wilbur Mills, was unmoved by President Johnson’s personal attacks on him. As a result of the midterms, congressional conservatives once again held the balance of power in Congress, and Mills was in a position to insist that Johnson choose between guns and butter.

  President Johnson (back to the camera) meets with the Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy—the leader of the antiwar bloc in Congress—on June 11, 1968. In March, McCarthy’s strong second-place finish in the New Hampshire Democratic primary had stunned the White House and was a factor in Johnson’s decision to withdraw from the race.

  Vice President Hubert Humphrey (far left) seemed helpless as Vietnam dragged down his candidacy. The antiwar movement condemned the vice president for supporting Johnson’s failed war policies.

  Richard Nixon in a motorcade during the 1968 presidential campaign. His campaign avoided much specific discussion of the Great Society.

  The incoming president, Richard Nixon, meets with Johnson in the White House on January 20, 1969. Nixon retained most of the Great Society, expanded some of its programs, and even added new domestic initiatives.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank all the institutions and people who made the writing of this book possible. Princeton University has continued to provide a wonderful intellectual home. The Russell Sage Foundation offered me an enriching year to devote my time to this project and to engage with a fascinating community of social scientists, all of whom asked tough questions about the analytical framework of the book. Galo Falchettore and Claire Gabriel at the Russell Sage Foundation provided useful polling data from the period and tracked down important material.

  Many individuals have also helped me in the process of writing this book. Joseph Parrott at the University of Texas offered essential assistance helping to gather archival material that I needed at the LBJ Presidential Library. At the same time that he was working on his doctoral dissertation, he has helped me check key material when I needed clarification on what was contained in certain documents. At Princeton University, Steven Server found some detail and color that made it into the book.

  The staff at the LBJ Presidential Library were outstanding, as they have been for every project that has involved their collections. Tina Houston, Claudia Anderson, Margaret Harman, and Allen Fisher never tired of my e-mails and offered all the assistance I needed.

  A number of scholars read earlier versions of the manuscript, or chapters of the manuscript, and provided helpful commentary. They include Ed Berkowitz, Margot Canaday, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Gareth Davies, Michael Katz, Kevin Kruse, Don Ritchie, Dan Rodgers, and Bruce Schulman. In addition, Daniel Zitin offered unbelievable editorial commentary that helped me refine the narrative and improve the writing. Jake Blumgart provided his excellent fact-checking skills at the final stages of the editing process. Participants at the seminars of the Russell Sage Foundation, Princeton University’s Davis Center, Columbia’s Congress and History Conference, and Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies gave me critical feedback to the arguments.

  My editor at Penguin, and former agent, Scott Moyers, has been superb. He has been confident and enthusiastic about this project from the start. He constantly pushed me to write the book that he believed I was capable of writing. Throughout, he had a strong vision of the contribution that this work could make to the national dialogue about Washington and American history. Mally Anderson has been very helpful in the final stages of the project. My agent, Andrew Wylie, has also offered shrewd advice and great representation at every stage of the project. He is a rare person who can combine the intellect of an academic with the acumen of the best businessperson.

  My whole family has been great throughout the process of writing this book, and I would like to offer my thanks. My parents, Viviana and Jerry, were great as always and constantly enthusiastic about what I was doing. My mother-in-law, Ellie, has been wonderful and loving, and I’ve enjoyed our many conversations.

  Back on the home front, my wife, Meg, offered phenomenal support and unending love. Her readings were invaluable. Because of her, I was able to bring out the story line of a complex and tumultuous period. She helped me to see what this book could become. More important, she’s built a warm, loving, and lively home that is magical each time I step through the door. Our walks in the streets of New York City provide a permanent oasis that reenergizes and inspires. Each step of building our life together has been a treasure. Our friendship and our marriage is the ultimate collaboration, one that comes from the heart. Abigail, Sophia, Nathan, and Claire are the best children that a man could hope for. Each a star in his or her own right, they make each day superb, fun, and filled with the kind of noise that brings the world alive. Although they primarily know Lyndon as our four-pound Maltese dog, named after the former president, I hope that one day they can enjoy the findings in this book.

  NOTES

  I do not include endnotes for public presidential statements (made at press conferences, speeches, etc.) because they are easily available at the University of California, Santa Barbara, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index _docs.php.

  CHAPTER 1: THE CHALLENGES OF A LIBERAL PRESIDENCY

  1.Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol. 4, The Passage of Power (New York: Knopf, 2012), 179–80.

  2.Jack Valenti, “Lyndon Johnson: An Awesome Engine of a Man,” in Lyndon Johnson Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of a Presidency, ed. Thomas W. Cowger and Sherwin J. Markman (Oxford, U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 37.

  3.Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Norton, 2013).

  4.For a recent book emphasizing and praising the functional nature of Congress in this period, see Todd S. Purdum, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (New York: Henry Holt, 2014).

  5.Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford, 2007), 3. See also Caro, Passage of Power, xiv. For an alternative view, focusing on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).

  6.Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966), 104.

  7.Ronald Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (New York: Harper, 2011), 370.

  8.Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Political Bubbles: Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013), 8.

  9.Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 341.

  CHAPTER 2: DEADLOCKED DEMOCRACY

  1.“The Torch Has Been Passed,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 1961.

  2.Susan Dunn, Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012).

  3.A. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (New York: Free Press, 1992), 279.

  4.There is a voluminous literature in political science about the committee system and southern politics. For a review of the findings, see Julian E. Zelizer, On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences, 1948–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 14–32.

  5.Judd Choate, Torn and Frayed: Congressional Norms and Party Switching in an Era of Reform (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 2003), 54.

  6.Timothy Thurber, “The Second Reconstruction,” in The American Congress: The Building of Democracy, ed. Julian E. Zelizer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 531.

  7.“Southern Democrats-GOP Won 71% of Test Votes,” 1959 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 141–46; “‘Conservative Coalition’ Appeared in 22% of Roll Calls,” 1960 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 117–25; “‘Conservative Coalition’ Appeared on 28% of Roll Calls,” 1961 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 642–52.

  8.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill, 31.

  9.Martin B. Gold and Dimple Gupta, “The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: A Majoritarian Means to Overcome the Filibuster,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 28, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 216.

  10.Neil MacNeil and Richard A. Baker, The American Senate: An Insider’s History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 302–34.

  11.David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 343.

  12.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill, 33–62.

  13.Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984), 76.

  14.Timothy N. Thurber, The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1945–1978 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 62.

  15.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill, 38.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 389; Taylor E. Dark, The Unions and the Democrats, updated ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 51–56; J. David Greenstone, Labor in American Politics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).

  18.Alan Draper, A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Education, 1955–1967 (New York: Praeger, 1988).

  19.Eric Pace, “Clarence M. Mitchell Is Dead; N.A.A.C.P. Lobbyist Till ’78,” New York Times, March 20, 1984.

  20.Mary Dudziak, Cold War, Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  21.Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  22.Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 384.

  23.Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol. 3, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002).

  24.Ibid., 895–909.

  25.Ibid., 1003.

  26.Zelizer, On Capitol Hill, 51.

  27.Irving Bernstein, Promises Kept: John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 48.

  28.Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 132.

  29.Dallek, Unfinished Life, 381.

  30.Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, 2nd ed. (New York: First Mariner, 2002), 317.

  31.Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 518.

  32.Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 98.

  33.“Kennedy Scored on Civil Rights,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 13, 1963; Peter J. Kumpa, “House Gets Rights Bill,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 1, 1963.

  34.“GOP in National Drive to Regain Colored Vote,” Chicago Daily Defender, Feb. 9, 1963.

  35.Risen, Bill of the Century, 63–64, 72.

  36.Rodney Crowther, “GOP Assails Rights Views,” Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1963.

  37.“Kennedy’s Civil Rights Plan Hit by Rockefeller,” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1963.

  38.Robert Albright, “GOP Challenges Administration, Offers Broad ‘Rights’ Program,” Washington Post, March 29, 1963.

  39.“Republicans Propose Civil Rights Bills,” Atlanta Daily World, March 29, 1963.

  40.“Kennedy Administration Missing Boat on Rights: CORE Chiefs,” Chicago Daily Defender, April 22, 1963.

  41.Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 468.

  42.James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 478.

  43.Robert J. Donovan and Ray Scherer, Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948–1991 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 3–22.

  44.Branch, Parting the Waters, 709–10.

  45.Ibid., 744–45.

  46.Reeves, President Kennedy, 488.

  47.Byron C. Hulsey, Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 174.

  48.Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 151.

  49.Ibid., 151–52.

  50.Jonathan Rosenberg and Zachary Karabell, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes (New York: Norton, 2003), 128.

  51.Ibid., 136–39; Reeves, President Kennedy, 585; Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Cabin John, Md.: Seven Locks, 1984), 27.

  52.Richard L. Lyons, “Mr. Civil Rights Recalls ‘Hard, Grueling Fight,’” Washington Post, Oct. 26, 1972; Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, 99.

  53.Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, 99.

  54.Whalen and Whalen, Longest Debate, 13–14.

  55.Ibid., 35.

  56.Reeves, President Kennedy, 629.

  57.Whalen and Whalen, Longest Debate, 39–40.

  58.Caro, Passage of Power, 266–67.

  59.Whalen and Whalen, Longest Debate, 46.

  60.Rosenberg and Karabell, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice, 187.

  61.Reeves, President Kennedy, 630.

  62.“House Unit Votes Bipartisan Plan for Civil Rights,” New York Times, Oct. 30, 1963.

  63.Rosenberg and Karabell, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice, 178.

  CHAPTER 3: NEW PRESIDENT, SAME OLD CONGRESS

  1.This account of the assassination and transfer comes from Steven M. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination—24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson’s Pivotal First Day as President (New York: Basic Books, 2009).

  2.Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 561.

  3.Gillon, Kennedy Assassination, 183.

  4.Ibid., 188; Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  5.Larry L. King, “Bringing Up Lyndon,” Texas Monthly, Jan. 1976, 83.

  6.Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 30.

  7.Charles Peters, Lyndon Johnson (New York: Times Books, 2010), 7.

  8.Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism, 17.

  9.Ibid., 24.

  10.Caro, Master of the Senate, 720.

  11.Ibid., 685–1040.

  12.Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 31.

  13.Johnson, Moyers, and Sorensen, telephone conversation, Nov. 25, 1963, White House presidential tapes, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Tex. (hereafter cited as LBJL).

  14.Caro, Passage of Power, 422.

  15.Dallek, Flawed Giant, 72.

  16.Bernstein
, Guns or Butter, 32.

  17.Nicholas Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 37; “Congress: The Full Treatment,” Time, Dec. 13, 1963, 31; Caro, Passage of Power, 475.

  18.Walter Heller, interview by David McComb, Dec. 21, 1971, White House Oral History Collection, 19–21, LBJL.

  19.Johnson and Albert, telephone conversation, Jan. 9, 1964, White House presidential tapes, LBJL.

  20.Reeves, President Kennedy, 434.

  21.Frank C. Porter, “Tax Bill Unfair, Union Leader Says,” Washington Post, Feb. 24, 1964.

  22.Alan L. Otten, “President Sets Budget at $97.9 Billion, Tips His Election Strategy,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 9, 1964.

  23.Caro, Passage of Power, 553.

  24.John D. Morris, “Byrd Steps Aside in Tax Bill Fight,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 1964.

  25.Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson, 191.

  CHAPTER 4: LEGISLATING CIVIL RIGHTS

  1.Risen, Bill of the Century, 168.

  2.Keith M. Finley, Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 266–67. For a comprehensive look at the legislative battle behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that also pays close attention to the role of Congress, see Purdum, Idea Whose Time Has Come; Risen, Bill of the Century; and Robert Mann, The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996).

  3.Mann, Walls of Jericho, 402.

  4.Roscoe Drummond, “Can Power of Senate Filibuster Be Broken? It’s Up to Democrats,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 1964.

  5.G. Calvin MacKenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (New York: Penguin, 2008), 55–56.