A book I was reading claimed that Lyndon Johnson had an erratic personality and that he had to be kept under close wraps by his protectors. One of the things he liked to do was show other dignitaries his penis. Is this true? Has anyone read any LBJ biographies that confirm any of this strange behaviour? If it is true, how did he get to be president?
I donb’t know about other dignitaries, but LBJ used to enjoy dealing with subordinates while he was sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door open, probably for the purposes of establishing how busy he was and how he felt comfortable treating them like his personal body servants. I don’t know if this was erratic as much as just (figuratively) rubbing people’s noses in his shit to show off how powerful he was.
In other words,
He was good 'ole boy from Texas.
A shout out here for Robert Caro 's monumental biography of LBJ - three huge volumes thus far: The Path to Power, Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate, taking the story up to 1960.
All the man is present in them, a man capable of the crudest vulgarities, ruthless and monomaniacal in his ambition, yet probably the most astute political operator of the 20th century and, without doubt, a great American President (far greater, in my opinion, than JFK).
I’d say that LBJ’s handling of Vietnam qualifies him as being close to mentally ill. On the one hand, the guy was sending more and more troops into this disaster, all the while realizing that the whole mess was unwinnable. He had a giant model of khe San in the White House basement-and seemed obsessed with the minutae of this recreation of Dien Bien Phu-supposedly htis place (Khe Sanh) was the “linchpin of our strategy”-then a few months later, it was inconsequential. He was a mean, vindictive, and amoral man. Yet, his conscience got to him in the end-I guess reading all those obituaries finally made him realize something. From what i understand, Johnson retired to his ranch and drank himself to death.
ralph124c. I’m not even giving you the benefit of the doubt.
[Moderator hat ON]
This is General Questions. No one cares what your opinion is. No one cares how you characterize LBJ vis-a-vis the War.
Do this again in my forum and you’ll be on double secret probation*
*While that’s a joke, my THREAT is NOT.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
[Moderator hat OFF]
From what I gathered from scannning several books on LBJ, it was he who fulfilled many of the promises put forth by JFK. Desegregation(the desegregation of hospitals, etc) and the War on Poverty began with him.
During the 60’s I had a gig at the LBJ ranch (I was a musician) and he very politely came over to us and thanked us for being there, etc. He certanly didn’t have to do this.
My first impression? He was BIG. His appearance in person was overpowering.
But polite and considerate to us lowly musicans!
Never forget it.
LBJ was the only president that I met in person. He was on his way to a campaign rally in 1964 when his motorcade stopped in the middle of the street in front of me. The top of the limo opened and he popped out. Boy, was he a big guy! He also had a very ruddy complexion, and when he spoke, it sure seemed to me like he had been drinking. Or maybe that’s the way a Texas drawl sounded to a young kid. I don’t think he was a nut at all, just a very earthy individual. He was at least rational enough to not run again in 1968.
Well, the main proponent of the “LBJ Was Insane” theory was Richard Goodwin, a longtime advisor and speechwriter of the Kennedy family, and one of the Kennedy insiders that LBJ kept in his administration. He made his famous assertion in the book “Remembering America.”
Goodwin is, to put it mildly, neither an honest nor a credible observer. Nonetheless, his anecdotes (combined with those of people much more sympathetic to Johnson) indicate that LBJ was a guy with all kinds of odd quirks and mood swings. LBJ’s friend Jack Valenti responded to Goodwin’s book by saying, “If I didn’t know Lyndon, and you read me a list of some of the things he did, I WOULD say he was nuts. But I did know him, and he was the sanest man I ever knew.”
Johnson was a master manipulator, and he could play many roles depending on what the scenario called for. As Majority Leader in the Senate, if he needed your vote, he’d find a way to get it- whether by charming you, flattering you, bribing you, threatening you or intimidating you. He could do any and all of those things. But my sense is, LBJ was a lot like Andy Kaufmann: he did all kinds of outrageous, seemingly crazy things, but almost everything he did was calculated.
Two interesting ironies about the Goodwin bnook:
-
Conveniently, as far as Goodwin was concerned, LBJ was only insane when it came to Viet Nam. When LBJ was proposing to spending billions in fighting poverty, or putting liberal Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, or advancing civil rights legislation, Johnson was as sound as a dollar!
-
To “prove” LBJ’s insanity, Goodwin kept pointing to his alleged paranoia about Robert Kennedy. LBJ would roar constantly that “That damn Bobby Kennedy has spies all around me! He knows everything I’m saying and doing! I’m surrounded by backstabbing Kennedy loyalists.”
A page or so later, Goodwin would say something like, “When I told Boby Kennedy about all of this later, Bobby agreed with me that Lyndon was going mad…”
For Pete’s sake, Goodwin isn’t proving here that LBJ was paranoid- he’s proving that LBJ was 100% correct! He was surrounded by people who were spying on him and reporting his actions to Bobby Kennedy. Dick Goodwin was ONE of those spies!
But somehow, Goodwin never quite grasped that.
If you want to know what LBJ was really like, look at the transcripts now available of his taped, private conversations. When LBJ talked to people he trusted, like Senator Richard Russell, he said what he really believed, without any bluster or nonsense.hat you’ll see is that LBJ was NOT gung ho on the Viet Nam war. He could see it was a deepening fiasco, but didn’t know what to do about it. When he wasn’t putting on a show, LBJ was more sad than mad.
I don’t know about showing off his “assets”, but LBJ did like to show people his gall bladder scar.
LBJ had an interesting way of ordering custom-made pants.
When LBJ signed the civil rights legislation he said something like, “We just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the next 30 years.” (He underestimated.)
Alienating a core constituency of your party is politically insane. Doing it because it is right, just and in the long term best interests of the country is quite the opposite of “insane”. There are all kinds of question about LBJ’s ethics, methods and antics. Underlying it all was some sense of conscience and justice that had a moral compass. He came to realize that the Vietnam war was fiasco. During the same speech when he announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection he also announced that he was stopping the bombing of North Vienam and was initiating peace talks. After Nixon won he resumed the bombing and ramped up the war again. Which one was more sane?
LBJ may be one of the most complex characters in American history as Caro has shown. No matter how you care to judge him he has to be given his due for making a priority and forcing the passage of the civil rights legislation. If that was the work of a madman then think what you will.
I was reading the wiki entry on the TV show “King of the Hill” and apparently, the character of Buck Strickland is loosely patterned after LBJ. Makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
ralph124c. I want to apologize to you for what must have seemed an abrupt comment on my part.
What I meant was that you have been around the boards for quite a while. You’re pretty savvy. And I saw your post as a political comment that had little to do with answering the OP. You probably saw it as being totally responsive to the OP. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
Sometimes I just get a little short with people who I think should know better. And that was you today.
Since the OP seems to seek opinions, could it perhaps be moved to IMHO?
They say he called his penis “Jumbo”
Spartydog answered better than I could have.
LBJ had a maddeningly contradictory and erratic personality, with a deep and abiding love of power and a determination to use it as he thought best - but I don’t think he was a nut. By 1967-68, though, he certainly seemed to be wrestling with depression as he saw his Presidency unraveled by Vietnam and domestic problems.
The Caro books are, as noted above, excellent. Well worth a read, with some great insights on LBJ and how he came to be that way. The passages on his 1948 Senate race are nothing less than epic.
No, he wasn’t. He was a thief, a major league asshole, and he made Texans look bad because everybody thought he was just a good old boy from Texas.
The worst day of his life was when they left the front gate of the LBJ ranch open and all the cows went back home.