Lady Bird Johnson’s cultured life is inextricably entwined with LBJ’s legacy
If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, this book about Lady Bird and Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) would not have been written. Author Betty Boyd Caroli is known for her study of the women who have accompanied their spouses to the White House. LBJ’s ascension to the Oval Office was swift and sudden.
Prior to Kennedy’s death, news media were investigating LBJ’s dicey involvements with his slick protégé Bobby Baker. JFK’s personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln wrote of a conversation with Kennedy shortly before his fatal trip to Texas. Regarding the upcoming 1964 presidential race, she asked: “Who is your choice of running mate?” He responded: “At this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.” The carnage in Dallas changed everything.
Caroli’s intent is to draw out Lady Bird Johnson from under the shadow of her formidable husband. The picture that emerges is that of an intelligent and even-tempered woman whose congeniality and considerable talents were up to dealing with an impetuous and emotionally unstable husband. Despite her public persona as an accommodating wife, Lady Bird was indispensable to LBJ’s political career.
Born Claudia Alta Taylor in 1912 in rural Karnack, Texas, her birthplace was known as the Brick House, which had been built by slaves. Contrary to the story that a nursemaid bestowed the nickname, she would be dubbed Lady Bird by two black playmates. Caroli writes that the nursemaid story was promulgated to “avoid any mention of interracial socializing.”
Her mother Minnie was a cultured woman from Alabama who felt out of place in the Texas countryside. Her father T.J. Taylor was a big man known as “Mr. Boss.” Interested in the acquisition of land and money, he had little time for his wife’s books or taste for opera. An incorrigible womanizer, T.J. did not take marital fidelity seriously. It was an unhappy marriage.
Lady Bird’s two older brothers were sent to distant boarding schools. Minnie wanted them exposed to a world beyond vapid local environs. Lady Bird too would desire a life outside parochial confines. “Local residents saw [Minnie] as a dreamer at heart, a woman who yearned for life on a bigger stage than Karnack could offer,” Caroli writes. “It was that deep, overpowering yearning that she passed on to her only daughter.”
Lady Bird’s opportunity came in 1934 when she met LBJ. At the time, he was employed by Texas Congressman Richard Kleberg, whose family’s ranch was “the largest privately held tract of land in the United States” into which Rhode Island could fit twice. After a four-month courtship they married. Until his death, Lady Bird would be a steadfast presence, encouraging LBJ in the midst of his darkest despondencies, acting as an able business partner and confidant.
Often she would serve as a mediator who soothed the hurt feelings and mitigated the anger of those slighted or insulted by her imperious and splenetic
spouse.
Like Lady Bird’s father, LBJ habitually pursued extramarital relationships. Aware of her father’s libidinous exploits, she was apparently prepared to tolerate such behavior. Still, LBJ’s openness regarding his affairs is shocking. Unlike today, such exploits were not then grist for the media mill. LBJ told an aide that “he paid close attention to constituents’ opinions on all matters but two — the car he drove and the women he slept with.” Caroli states that stalwart Lady Bird ignored her husband’s philandering knowing that in the end she would ever be his mainstay.
LBJ relinquished the power he wielded as Democratic majority leader in the United States Senate when he became vice president. He was not happy in his new role. However, Lady Bird found exhilaration as the VP’s wife. She was in demand as a speaker and gladly accompanied her husband to exotic places around the world. Said one of LBJ’s aides: “If ever a woman transformed herself — deliberately, knowingly, painstakingly — it was she.”
LBJ’s legacy is best epitomized by his advocacy of civil rights, the implementation of Medicare and effort to address domestic poverty. But Caroli betrays her ignorance of recent scholarship showing that LBJ’s tenure was definitely not a continuation of JFK’s perspective on Vietnam. Kennedy wanted to terminate the U.S. presence there by the end of 1965. In this regard, he was supported by General Douglas McArthur who advised that a land war in Asia was madness. Unfortunately, LBJ accommodated the advocates of war. Lady Bird would recall the Vietnam years as “pure hell.”
The Johnsons’ story is one in which the intimate needs of family were sacrificed to high ambition. Their daughters were secondary to the pursuit of political power. Lady Bird would later try to make up for this by doting on her grandchildren. For a time — 1963 to 1967 — Bill Moyers served as LBJ’s special assistant. At Lady Bird’s funeral he extolled: “Like her beloved flowers in the field, she was a woman of many hues. A strong manager, a canny investor, a shrewd judge of people, friend and foe — she never confused the two. Deliberate in coming to judgment, she was sure in conclusion.”
This book is in the category of human interest. Lady Bird is portrayed as strong and capable but she can never be excised from the triumphs and ultimate tragedy of Lyndon Baines Johnson.