06-11-2015, 02:22 AM
I had this argument with Orson Welles when I met him in 1970.
When I criticized Johnson for the Vietnam War, he became
outraged. Welles was an old New Deal liberal, a friend of FDR. Welles claimed
Johnson was a great president. I disagreed, and Welles cited the civil rights
and voting rights acts. I said yes, those were important achievements,
but you couldn't ignore the war. Welles was not happy with
me arguing over this. His lifelong progressive concern with
African American rights made Johnson's legislative achievements
so impressive (as they were) that they trumped any concern he might have
had about the war. I could have added that the
tragedy of Johnson's presidency was that the war, which he knew
was unwinnable, ultimately destroyed his Great Society programs. Dr. King's controversial
speeches toward the end of his life pointed out this severe conflict. And the
tapes of Johnson talking with his mentor, Senator Richard
Russell, in mid-1964 show that Johnson already knew by that early date that the war was
unwinnable but that he felt powerless not to fight it. The
real reason (unspoken) was that the people who put him in office
did so to expand the war, and he was beholden to them. Russell
predicted the dire consequences of the war quite precisely. And
then Johnson was turned out by the Wise Men in 1968 when
they realized belatedly, after Tet, that the war was being lost, and because of
its effect on the gold crisis that was threatening the U.S. economy.
As I note in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, "Henry Brandon, the chief American correspondent of the Sunday Times of London, reports in his autobiography, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent's Memoirs from Roosevelt to Reagan (1988), about a conversation he had with President Johnson in 1968, after that decision was made: 'LBJ, aware by then of his public repudiation, seemed to drag a burden of anguish in his wake when he spoke his own epitaph during a flight to visit President Truman in Independence, Missouri, aboard Air Force One: "The only difference between Kennedy's assassination and mine is that mine was a live one, which makes it all a little more torturing."' (Johnson visited Truman in Independence on May 3 and October 11 of that year.) Former Secretary of State [Dean] Acheson summed up the March decision by the Wise Men by saying that 'we can no longer do the job we set out to do [in Vietnam] in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.' Carl Oglesby in The Yankee and CowboyWar interprets what he calls Johnson's forced 'abdication' as a Yankee power play by the Wise Men to 'break off [from the Cowboys] a war believed to be unwinnable except through an internal police state, both sides fighting for control of the levers of military and state-police power through control of the presidency. Johnson's Ides of March was a less bloody Dallas, but it was a Dallas just the same: it came of a concerted effort of conspirators to install a new national policy by clandestine means. Its main difference from Dallas is that it finally did not succeed.'"
A true movie about Johnson would go into all this, but they wouldn't dare. And I am sure
Reiner and the writer have no clue anyway. An odd footnote: after I gave Oliver Stone's
NIXON a rave review for Boxoffice, I suggested he should follow it up with a movie
about LBJ, to make it a trilogy. He sent me a note saying he wasn't that interested in LBJ.
I found that surprising in light of the JFK and NIXON films and their focus on Vietnam and the
assassination.
When I criticized Johnson for the Vietnam War, he became
outraged. Welles was an old New Deal liberal, a friend of FDR. Welles claimed
Johnson was a great president. I disagreed, and Welles cited the civil rights
and voting rights acts. I said yes, those were important achievements,
but you couldn't ignore the war. Welles was not happy with
me arguing over this. His lifelong progressive concern with
African American rights made Johnson's legislative achievements
so impressive (as they were) that they trumped any concern he might have
had about the war. I could have added that the
tragedy of Johnson's presidency was that the war, which he knew
was unwinnable, ultimately destroyed his Great Society programs. Dr. King's controversial
speeches toward the end of his life pointed out this severe conflict. And the
tapes of Johnson talking with his mentor, Senator Richard
Russell, in mid-1964 show that Johnson already knew by that early date that the war was
unwinnable but that he felt powerless not to fight it. The
real reason (unspoken) was that the people who put him in office
did so to expand the war, and he was beholden to them. Russell
predicted the dire consequences of the war quite precisely. And
then Johnson was turned out by the Wise Men in 1968 when
they realized belatedly, after Tet, that the war was being lost, and because of
its effect on the gold crisis that was threatening the U.S. economy.
As I note in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, "Henry Brandon, the chief American correspondent of the Sunday Times of London, reports in his autobiography, Special Relationships: A Foreign Correspondent's Memoirs from Roosevelt to Reagan (1988), about a conversation he had with President Johnson in 1968, after that decision was made: 'LBJ, aware by then of his public repudiation, seemed to drag a burden of anguish in his wake when he spoke his own epitaph during a flight to visit President Truman in Independence, Missouri, aboard Air Force One: "The only difference between Kennedy's assassination and mine is that mine was a live one, which makes it all a little more torturing."' (Johnson visited Truman in Independence on May 3 and October 11 of that year.) Former Secretary of State [Dean] Acheson summed up the March decision by the Wise Men by saying that 'we can no longer do the job we set out to do [in Vietnam] in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.' Carl Oglesby in The Yankee and CowboyWar interprets what he calls Johnson's forced 'abdication' as a Yankee power play by the Wise Men to 'break off [from the Cowboys] a war believed to be unwinnable except through an internal police state, both sides fighting for control of the levers of military and state-police power through control of the presidency. Johnson's Ides of March was a less bloody Dallas, but it was a Dallas just the same: it came of a concerted effort of conspirators to install a new national policy by clandestine means. Its main difference from Dallas is that it finally did not succeed.'"
A true movie about Johnson would go into all this, but they wouldn't dare. And I am sure
Reiner and the writer have no clue anyway. An odd footnote: after I gave Oliver Stone's
NIXON a rave review for Boxoffice, I suggested he should follow it up with a movie
about LBJ, to make it a trilogy. He sent me a note saying he wasn't that interested in LBJ.
I found that surprising in light of the JFK and NIXON films and their focus on Vietnam and the
assassination.