in office and highlights of his administration. Here is NBC News correspondent Edwin Newman.
Good evening. President Johnson tonight delivered to a joint session of Congress his last message
on the State of the Union. Mr. Johnson will send other messages to the Congress during his remaining
five and a half days in office. One of them will deal with the budget for the next fiscal year,
but they will not be delivered in person and in any case it is with tonight's speech that Mr.
Johnson hopes to go on influencing the American people and the Congress when his presidency is
over and hopes also I think to shape the popular attitude to his administration. For most purposes
then we have come to the end of the Johnson years, or to be precise the five years and two months in
which he served as the 36th president of the United States. We're going to look in the next
hour or so at those 62 months, review them briefly, appraise them in detail. To do that we've gathered
in New York and Washington a considerable variety of people, among them members of Congress, members
of President Johnson's White House staff, past and present, and NBC News correspondents. But first
to the speech tonight, one American we may be sure watched the president with particular interest,
that was Richard Nixon. For a report on Mr. Nixon's reaction here's NBC News correspondent
Herbert Caplo at television station WCKT in Miami. The president and the president-elect spoke to
each other by phone two days ago and it was then that Mr. Nixon learned at least some of what was
to be in the Johnson State of the Union message, certainly learned about the surcharge. Because a
printed Nixon statement on the surcharge was given us a few hours ago with the understanding
that we would hold it until the speech began. Well actually now Mr. Johnson has reported the
substance of the Nixon statement, but the statement said that both Mr. Nixon and President Johnson
feel that the surcharge should be dropped as soon as conditions allow. The conditions being the war
or the budget, just how much the federal government spends and how much it takes in and the economy
generally. Mr. Nixon says he supports Mr. Johnson's recommendation to continue the tax at the 10%
level, but the president-elect reserves the right to recommend differently later on. So what we have
is both men seeming to say that as of now such a recommendation is proper. Now the situation could
change, Nixon economists say that a final decision on the matter could be made in the spring as late
as April or May, and it is clear that Mr. Nixon means to take all the time he can before making
his final recommendation on the surcharge. Otherwise the State of the Union message tonight
does not appear at first glance to have drawn an outline that Mr. Nixon will depart from very much.
A few differences are likely to turn up, but nothing Mr. Nixon has said suggests that he will
make a radical departure from the broad policies his predecessor renunciated tonight. Herbert
Kaplow, NBC News with the President-elect in Miami. Now we're going to have an analysis of the
president's speech tonight by five NBC News correspondents, Sandra Van Oaker, Douglas
Kiker, John Chancellor, Ray Scherer, and I'm the fifth one and I'll go first. It did seem to me
it was rather a quiet speech the president made tonight, not combative at all. It was noticeable
that Vietnam was mentioned only briefly and played down. The president was anxious obviously to have
it understood that while the problems he faced had been with us for a long time, his period in
office was different from most of what had gone before. It was different, he argued in this respect,
that a watershed was reached during his administration, that many of the old hopes were
realized and the country stepped forth, he said, to seek new goals. So in effect, Mr. Johnson put
forward tonight a claim to have presided over a difficult period of great change. He put forward
the reasons he has to be proud of what he thought he had accomplished. He did it quietly and he seemed
to me entirely at ease in doing so. It's probably the case that the president hoped that he would
be thought to be speaking, to be making his recommendations without partisanship, and it did
seem from what from the applause and the general tenor in the house chamber tonight that that was
the case so far as the congress was concerned. Now here's Santa Van Oaken. It struck one in watching
Mr. Johnson make his speech that he did what we expected him to, and there's no mark of disrespect
to say that it was simply I have looked upon my works and I have found them good, but what struck
one very forcibly in watching the reaction of congress to the speech was that they seemed to
be saying by almost the over enthusiasm of the applause that they were saying in an effect with
the title of a book Robert Graves wrote after World War I in England, goodbye to all that,
because I think they knew they were saying when they rose to applaud the president and when they
rose to applaud vice president Humphrey, they were saying goodbye to the end of the new deal
because Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, but President Johnson more than any other man was
both the child in a sense the captive of the new deal. It was the politics if you will of the full
lunch pail of things for the folks, but to the extent now that both Mr. Nixon by temperament and
by the times will move into another era of either conservative politics or qualitative politics,
they were saying goodbye to all that the liberal hour was ended and everyone in that room seemed
to be saying by their applause that we know we've come to the end of an era. Now to Douglas Teicher.
Some people may think that the state of the union addressed by an outgoing president is
meaningless after all Richard Nixon will be president in less than a week, but the fact is
Mr. Johnson's influence will continue in the federal government for months to come. His new
budget will go up in a few days, that's something that takes months to prepare and no incoming
president has yet to devise a way to very much change an outgoing president's spending program.
No doubt Mr. Nixon will try and I think we can expect to see a stream of budget amendments going
to the hill in the next few months, but the overall effect will be at most marginal. It will remain
essentially a Johnson administration spending plan and it must be remembered that this new budget
covers a period from July of this year until July of 1970. So President Johnson may be going home
to Texas, but his influence will help shape the programs of the United States government for the
next year and a half. Now here is NBC News correspondent John Chancellor on Capitol Hill.
It seems to me that tonight's speech by the president was not so much an assessment of the
state of the union as an appeal to several groups to carry out the uncompleted great society, to
bring the great society to its completion. Parts of the president's speech it seemed to me read
like a litany of the great society. He was telling Mr. Nixon and other people that we needed more
money for model cities, new housing starts, an urban development bank, an increase in social
security benefits, a reorganization of the anti-poverty program, more money for job training.
And he said if this is carried out it will give us our best chance to achieve the kind of society
we want. Well it's the kind of society the president wants, but the president must now wait on Mr.
Nixon, on the conservative coalition in Congress, and on the people in the 1970 congressional
elections to see if the great society can be brought to completion. Now here's Ray Sherr.
Well it was the atmosphere, the occasion tonight that impressed me. President Johnson broke
precedent of course to do this. He was the first president since I guess John Adams to deliver his
farewell, his state of the union address in person, and it was worth it. It was a great occasion. It
was a remarkable last hurrah marked by goodwill all around. There was something for everyone to
applaud. I think the president received more applause than any time since his initial appearance
as president in 1963. He was gracious to Mr. Nixon. He asked Congress to give Nixon,
Mr. Nixon his understanding, but the president also challenged Mr. Nixon and I think all succeeding
administrations to make good on America's commitments, his own administration promises
for the betterment of American life. He said not to carry those commitments out would be a tragedy.
He was able to point with pride to something, a balanced budget. It seemed to me that in this
political last will and testament tonight, Mr. Johnson regained much of the spirit of his first
appearance before Congress as president in 1963. Ed? Thank you Ray so much for the moment,
for tonight's speech and interpretations of it. As we said, we would like tonight to take a look
at the five years of the Johnson presidency, what Mr. Johnson tried to do, what he achieved,
where he failed. Shed Huntley talks now about the quality of Mr. Johnson's leadership.
Not since Andrew Jackson has this country known a president quite like him, this earthy rough-edged
frontierman Lyndon Baines Johnson. He saw cities, industries, incredible wealth and himself rise out
of the unlikely soil of Texas and his goals for this nation were audaciously Texas size.
Pursuing the populist creed, this 36th president set out to recruit all the people. He reserved
no enemies. He wanted a universal mandate and for a while he had it, leaving a permanent mark on
this nation. Three times, Congress responding to the lead of the president affirmed and reaffirmed
equal rights and equal justice for Negroes. Medicare and Medicaid, financial assistance to
all levels of education, consumer protection, control of firearms, indirect assistance to
parochial schools, conservation programs, war on poverty, government reorganization, and more
were written into law. Many of these programs will be restructured but few, if any, are expected to
disappear. Then there was the war in Vietnam, Johnson's war, some called it. It and violence
in the streets, according to the instant historians, drove him out of office. But the more leisurely
historian will hesitate to call it Johnson's folly. He will have to take into account what we the
people might be saying to this president in this farewell week had he not acted and if communism
were now pushing at the frontiers of Malaya and Thailand and Burma. Violence? How should we have
started redressing 300-year-old grievances and wrongs without an inflation of expectation and
bitter impatience with the inequalities that remained? Could it be that the flames of Watts
and 14th Street in Detroit were not signal fires for the future but funeral fires for the past?
We and the president learned some things about poverty in America, that it was overwhelmingly
black, for example. The war against it has gone far from well but we're committed and there's no
turning back. It's said that this president had no style, that he lost us in awkward phrases,
yet reread that speech to a joint session of Congress, March 15th, 1965. This cause must be
our cause too, he said, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must
overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice and we shall overcome. No president
had ever said words like that. Andy Jackson, have we forgotten and so outgrown our frontier past?
Are we all form and little substance? But he tried to do too much, it said. Perhaps. How many
projects, Texas-sized, could we manage all at once? But he goes home convinced we could have done it,
you and I. Proud, vain, cantankerous and difficult, egocentric and egotistic, unpredictable,
contradictory, complicated to the point that evasiveness was more fun than directness. It was
his stud poker and it belied his simple tastes. Mr. President, the nation's interest will follow
you. We want to comprehend you more precisely and we must determine where it is in our history
you have taken us. We have followed other presidents home to Mount Vernon, Monticello,
the Hermitage, Oyster Bay, Independence and Gettysburg. Now we follow you to Johnson City on the Pedernales.
Mother. Can't you sleep again? I keep telling you about night talk. How do I know he'll work?
Would you believe good housekeeping? Look, night talk has the good housekeeping seal. Really? So
you know it's safe. Just follow direction and not have it for me. It's different from other sleeping
tablets too. Different? It dissolves faster so it helps you get to sleep fast and you wake up feeling
good. Well, if it has that good housekeeping seal. Do you soak your dentures clean? You can brush them
cleaner with denture cream. Look, we soaked that heavy lipstick stain, soaked it all night in the
leading tablet cleanser. Even with soaking and vigorous brushing, that denture material is still
stained. Now try denture cream, the powerful denture toothpaste. In no time denture cream scrubs,
brushes, polishes dentures clean. Leaves your mouth toothpaste fresh. See the difference?
Denture cream out cleans your soak. Lyndon Johnson became president at a time of national shock
and grief. For three and a half days the people of the United States had lived with little but the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the fears and bizarre events in its wake, and the sad
stately day of the funeral. Five days after the assassination, the new president addressed a joint
session of the Congress and a nation that was waiting to be reassured. Mr. Speaker, the President
of the United States. An assassin's bullet has thrust upon me the awesome burden of the presidency.
I am here today to say I need your help. I cannot bear this burden alone. I need the help
of all Americans in all America. All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here
today. The greatest leader of our time has been struck down by the foulest deed of our time.
Today John Fitzgerald Kennedy lives on in the immortal words and works that he left behind.
On the 20th day of January in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national
work would not be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration,
nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.
But he said, let us begin. Today in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans,
let us continue. It was as important for the country as it was for the people of the United
States. It was as important for the country as it was for Lyndon Johnson that he take
firm hold of the presidency in that time of distress. He did and it may be remembered as his
finest hour. He had not been the favorite vice presidential choice of a good many of those who
had voted for John F. Kennedy, but really few vice presidents have been better qualified in terms of
political experience for the succession. As Senate Majority Leader, he had held one of the most
powerful jobs in the country and he had won bipartisan respect and it must be said in some
places fear for the skill that he had exercised in that job. Few presidents have matched his
knowledge of the workings of the Congress and Mr. Johnson lost no time in going after a record
of solid legislative achievement. Ed?
Thank you, Sandy. I'd like to introduce now some of our guests in the studio with Sandra
Van Oaker and me, Richard Goodwin, who served in the White House and the State Department
in the administration of President Kennedy, Floyd McKissick, the former head of the Congress of
Racial Equality, and Jack Newfield, who's the assistant editor of the New York newspaper,
The Village Voice, and who's a well-known analyst and reporter of the American political scene.
For the moment, if Mr. Newfield and Mr. McKissick will allow me to, I'd like
to talk to Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin, you were with President Kennedy. You then went on to serve with
President Johnson. Was that period of transition of takeover, as Sandra Van Oaker suggested,
Mr. Johnson's finest hour, did he ever rise to those heights again or was it impossible for him
to do so?
Well, I think that it was clear, I think, that President Johnson was one of his great moments
when he assumed the leadership of this country with as little disruption and with as much sense
of continuity as he managed to do in the wake of what was a great disruptive event in American
history. But I think there were many great moments, especially in the first couple of years before
the war in Vietnam began to divide the country and broke myself, broke me, and others off from the
administration. I think his whole onrush to try to not only complete the work of the New Deal,
but to outline a new agenda to improve the quality of American life, his understanding of the
black civil rights revolution in this country that he showed in those first two years, I think, were
high spots. It's hard to isolate, I think, a single important moment, and I think those in sense are
probably the most substantial.
Mr. Goodwin, some people think that President Johnson never quite got out from under the shadow of
President Kennedy or out from under the difficulty that the President Kennedy's reputation and aura
provided for him, that people somehow found him inadequate, and that he felt that. Did he feel...
Well, I think it's... I hate to be an amateur analyst. I don't think much of that, especially
in two-minute summaries on television, but I think he may have felt it. However, I think
it may seem strange to say that one of the great difficulties is that President Johnson was always
a bigger man than he himself thought, and that he really, of course, had emerged by 65, and was his
own man, and was viewed independently across the country. And he had, I think, much greater
capacities even to, in the case of Vietnam, than his own self-confidence would allow him to try to
exercise. I think that was... I think he did feel this, and I think it was a restraint to some extent
as was his sense that Easterners were, to some extent, contemptuous of him. But I think his own
powers were much greater than that. Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. Let's go now to Washington and Ray
Scherer, who also has some guests from the studio there. Ray? As I'm happy to introduce Elizabeth
Carpenter, the blithe spirit of the White House, the resident wit, the chronicler of Mrs. Johnson's
myriad activities, and Horace Busby, who has worked on and off for President Johnson for 20 years,
historian, philosopher, explainer, other things, and my colleague Douglas Kiker. Ms. Carpenter,
you were up in the gallery that night, as I recall, with Mrs. Johnson when the President made that
Let Us Continue speech. What do you remember about it? Yes, I remember very well, and as a matter of
fact, standing up there tonight, those thoughts came back to me from five years ago. And I
remembered so well when Mrs. Johnson walked out of the gallery, and newspaper reporters asked her
what was her feeling, and she said, this is the time of great anguish, but I have faith. And I
think to summarize what happened was that faith did see us through, that faith and the experience
of the President, who had been for 27 years at that time, the Hill had been his home. And so he
came to the White House, the number one alumni of that great body. He knew people there,
they were pulling for him and with him. And while it was the time of great anguish, and the President
entered the presidency at a time of tears, I think he's come out with his head high and his shoulders
back, and great accomplishments on the record. Ms. Carpenter, you were also with the Johnsons when
they came home from Dallas. I'm sure that the appearance of sureness and confidence that
President Johnson gave us at that time will always be remembered. Can you tell us what happened after
he went home that night, after he could be in private with his friends? Could you remember
some of that for us? Well, I think particularly of the plane ride back, and where Mrs. Johnson said,
this has all been a dreadful nightmare, but somehow we must have the strength to go on,
words that have followed us, and they did find the strength to go on. There was a great deal of
thinking, of soul searching, of trying to lay out what was best for the country.
He's a good man to have in an emergency, and immediately he got hold of the leaders on the Hill
to see that no one in the world would feel that the reins of this nation had been dropped, that
we were moving forward, and that continued through the next few days. And I think after the despair
that everyone felt, there was a lifting of hearts that night that the President was on
on television and on giving the State of the Union message. One of the lines that comes back to me
comes back to me is, and certainly at that time, was, I remember the President tells the story,
and others tell the story, that the time he went to Marshall, Texas to propose to Mrs. Johnson,
she went in to see her father, who was quite a man himself, not unlike the President. You knew
who was boss, and she went in to him after he had met the President, and he said, well, what did you
think of him, that, and he said, well, daughter, you've brought home many boys, but today you
brought home a man. I think everyone felt a man was in charge. Thank you, Miss Carpenter. We want to
get to you next, Mr. Busby, but at the moment we're going to John Chancellor on Capitol Hill.
With me here in a little room off the House chamber is the Majority Leader of the House of
Representatives, Carl Albert. Sir, we're glad to have you here, flanked by Edmund Muskie and
George McGovern, and on the other side of the table, Senator Jacob Javits and Congressman
Jack Brooks. It's impossible, I guess, up here to look back on Lyndon Johnson, having seen him so
recently here in this corridor out here tonight. So I'd like to ask each one of you, beginning with
you, Mr. Albert, to tell us how, what changes you saw on Lyndon Johnson from the man we saw on that
film a few minutes ago, so frightened, so new, to the President you saw tonight. And I would like to
ask each of you briefly, if you could just go into that, what do you think, sir? Well, I think the
President went into the office, of course, a very strong man with all the potential that a man needed
to be President. I think he gained in confidence, even though he had many frustrations. I believe he
worked harder at the job, probably than anybody that I knew anything about. I believe he accomplished
almost the impossible in a legislative way. I think he leaves, and should leave, at least, with a
feeling that he has done his best, and his best has been very good. Senator Javits, we've surrounded
you with Democrats. Have you a brief comment on the changes in Lyndon Johnson? Yes, I think he's
much more of the President than he was, and much less the Parliamentary General. He adheres to the
fundamental concepts which characterized, basically, the New Deal and the great society in which he was
raised. These are not necessarily right. No one agrees more with the objectives than I, as is well
known from the way I've acted in the Senate, and I always will. But there are many other ways to do
the things that he's done, and he's been late in making basic decisions in Vietnam and on inflation,
et cetera. But all that is wiped away in the one phrase he himself used. He's tried. He certainly
has tried. And you take the key from John F. Kennedy with Let Us Begin, the great sporting
activist youth movement in the world, really, and with Lyndon Johnson, the tried and true statesman
and worker who has tried and has been, in many cases, successful, but not successful enough to
have justified him in running again. But the country's grateful to him. I'm grateful to him,
and I think he showed up very well with distinction and character and the quality of a President and
the nostalgia of a man who served there most of his life. Congressman Brooks, a quick remark?
I think the President, since he has come in office, and I knew him and was there when he was sworn in,
John, as you recall, has aged a little bit. He's got a few more lines, a little more gray hair.
He has just as much hair. He's become a doting grandfather, and I think he came in office with
rare capacity, and he delivered as a professional for this country and its people with dedication.
We have two highly articulate senators whom I'm going to ask to wait just for a few moments while
we get some more people on this program, not Edwin Newman. Thank you, John. To look a bit now at
Mr. Johnson's record in office, 1964 was a year of extraordinary success for him in putting through
the legislative proposals of President Kennedy. But he was not satisfied to be simply a steward
of the Kennedy program. He looked for a slogan that would characterize the goals of his own
administration, and at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 22, 1964, five months after taking office,
Mr. Johnson spoke of the great society.
It is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.
It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom
and restlessness. But most of all, the great society is not a safe harbor, a resting place,
a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward
a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. A great deal
more was to be heard about the great society, but in the meantime, the Kennedy programs were what
Mr. Johnson had to work with. Among these were the Civil Rights Bill, which became law in July 1964,
dealt with voting rights and the desegregation of public accommodations. Mr. Johnson pushed through
the Housing and Urban Mass Transportation Acts that had been proposed by President Kennedy.
He pursued the Kennedy conservation programs, and here he had a good deal of help from Mrs.
Johnson. Congress was persuaded to set up a land conservation fund and to pass a wilderness act,
preserving some federally owned lands in a wild state. Also in 1964, Mr. Johnson won approval of
the Kennedy tax cut. Still, there was probably no Kennedy program that attracted Mr. Johnson so much
as the program to end poverty. Mr. Johnson turned it into a war on poverty. Many Americans live on
the outskirts of hope, some because of their poverty and some because of their color, and all
too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity, and this
administration today, here, and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
Our American answer to poverty is not to make the poor more secure in their poverty,
but to reach down and to help them lift themselves out of the ruts of poverty
and move with the large majority along the high road of hope and prosperity.
And Mr. Johnson found that it was impossible to deal with poverty without also dealing,
dealing particularly with the inequalities visited upon Negroes. As a congressman and a senator,
he had spoken and voted as a southerner on issues of race, but as president, he was a champion of
civil rights. On March 15, 1965, he proposed to Congress a bill to put federal registrars into
southern states to register Negro voters. It must be our cause too, because it's not just Negroes,
but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice,
and we shall overcome.
Five months later, Congress passed the new voting rights bill into law.
In this early period of his presidency, Mr. Johnson was enormously effective in winning
the passage of domestic legislation. Indeed, he seemed to be something of a Superman in his
dealings with Congress.
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Well, here we are again in the House of Representatives with people leaving now,
the President having finished his address some 40 minutes ago. But we've been talking about
looking at film about the Great Society, Senator McGovern. I suppose one way of opening this little
discussion on it is, do you suppose that the Great Society will survive beyond Lyndon Johnson's
presidency? Well, I have the feeling tonight that Lyndon Johnson was talking about the rough
outline of the Great Society and his contributions to it and commending those programs to the next
administration with a kind of a loving care. He spoke with deep affection and considerable
pride about the achievements that have been scored in the last few years. As I see it,
they come largely in four areas, in the field of education, health, conservation, and civil rights.
And I think when historians look back at the achievements of this administration,
those may be the areas that come in for the most favorable treatment. The great tragedy of this
administration, of course, is the intervention of the war in Vietnam, which deprived us of the
resources, the energy, the time, and the force that were needed to move further in the direction
of the Great Society that President Johnson dreamed of here at home. Well, Senator, I don't
want to interrupt you, but the President did point out that expenditures on education,
health and education, have gone from $30 billion in 1964 to $68 billion in the coming fiscal year.
Senator Muskie, we haven't heard from you. Would you give us your views on that? Can you have
education and the war? Well, you can't have as much education as you'd like in the war,
and we haven't done as much as we should in the cities and the war. Incidentally, commenting on
what Senator McGovern had to say about the President's mood on this subject, I had the
feeling when he used the words great society tonight, and he used them just once, that he was
using them with a small G and a small S. I've always felt that the great society really is what
we began building 180 years ago, a society in which the individual citizen could achieve
fulfillment. And this is really what he's committed to in his great society with the
capital G and capital S, the areas that Senator McGovern spoke of. These are the areas in which
we must work in order to make it possible for the creative energies of the individual to be
unleashed. We must eliminate, or at least help eliminate, the barriers to individual development,
which our crowded technological society has created. And we have to use the tools of education,
primarily. This is the most important one, and it's the one that the President takes the greatest
pride in. He uses the figures quite often, some 49 individual pieces of education legislation
enacted. And as he said tonight, a lot of these pieces of legislation are no more than commitment
still. He acknowledged that, that they yet remain to be funded, notwithstanding the rather startling
figures on the health and education appropriations that he gave us tonight. Well, Mr. Majority Leader,
the money comes from your side of the Congress. Do you suppose, do you see in the 91st Congress
a continued funding of great society programs? Yes, I think the Congress will insist on funding
the great society programs. And I don't mean by that that we intend to not to cooperate with and
to consult with a new President. When I say great society programs, I'm not talking about
every individual item. But I think the general purposes of the four major areas, which
my friend and former committee mate, Senator McGovern mentioned, we will insist upon being
properly and adequately funded, because I think the country will demand it, and I think we have
the funds and the resources with which to fund those programs, at least moderately adequately.
And a very heartfelt appeal from the President tonight to keep these programs going. We have
other people on the program who want to talk about the President. Here's Ed Newman.
We'll be back to resume our discussion in a moment. We pause now for station identification.
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In 1964, President Johnson achieved a political triumph. In the presidential contest that year,
the Republicans ran Arizona Senator Barry Gowater, and they armed him with the title of Mr.
Conservative. They sent him out to battle against the growth of the federal government,
Supreme Court decisions, the Democratic Party, and of course, President Johnson.
The president, politicking, was in his element. He used to go around the country saying,
come to this speaking. He waged a vigorous campaign. He extolled his great society and
the war on poverty as he crisscrossed the nation.
Go- It is the dedicated purpose and objective of the Democratic Party in our time to abolish
poverty in the United States of America.
Gowater called the president's anti-poverty program a Madison Avenue vote-getting scheme.
Johnson did not answer his opponent, but he stressed his great society's achievements.
In November, the voters decided and gave President Johnson 61-4% of the vote.
It was the biggest Democratic victory since FDR trounced Al Flandon in 1936.
The Johnson administration began its first full term with an apparent mandate that echoed
the Johnson theme, let us continue. Ray Shear.
Mr. Busby, you have been watching the president for 20 years. It seems to be we have been
Mr. Busby, you have been watching the president for 20 years. It seems to be we have a kind of
a paradox in him as a politician. He has a reputation as an enormously astute politician, yet
when he left the presidency, as he's leaving now, the Democratic Party is in kind of shambles.
He started as a popular man. He's leaving somewhat less popular, although he was certainly
popular tonight. Why is this? What happened?
Well, I suppose that among politicians, the most important thing is to build capital
in terms of popularity. That becomes a way of life to continue to build the popularity.
The president has differed from many men in politics, and I speak of all of them in friendly
terms, in that he has been willing throughout his career to spend his popularity for the causes
that he was supporting. I think that in this presidency, much more than we realize, he has,
he has, whatever else, he's been a figure who has spent the very great popularity of his 1964
campaign victory for the causes that he is commemorating tonight and that we're talking
about. Mr. Busby, the president's critics say that he never really understood national politics,
that he thought of the United States as one big state of Texas. What's your answer to that?
Well, I think he understood national politics but did not enjoy the thought of being a party
politician. I agree that he was not at his best in the realm of party politics because he was more
concerned with nonpartisan achievements. Tell me a little about Johnson the man. What about his
famous temper? You were on the White House staff, and if he has one, you must have been subject to
it on occasion. I would say I wasn't very often. He's a driving man, a man with great commitment,
great energy, always in motion, and this leaves rough edges on some people and others
welcome a man who is that committed to what he's doing. He's not a disinteresting man to work for.
Mrs. Carpenter, can a president be effective and be popular? Can he be both?
Well, I think that the words of Edmund Burke, the only way that evil can triumph is for good
men to do nothing. He's not a do-nothing man. He's a do-something man, and if it's popularity
you're running for, that's one thing, but he was running for achievement, for trying to make this
country live a little bit better, and I think that it has. There have been giant steps taken,
and it somehow, well, to me the most exciting days at the White House were not necessarily the
parties for Princess Margaret, though I enjoyed those and the champagne and the chandeliers,
but were really the days when we hammered out the war on poverty with the nine weapons of
Head Start, Job Corps for Boys, other things, and decided that it was worth the gamble,
it was worth the risk to try to lift a great segment of American society off the dole and into
being taxpayers instead of tax eaters.
Thank you, Mrs. Carpenter. Now to John Chancellor on Capitol Hill.
We're talking now with Senator Jacob Jabotts of New York, and we'll be talking in a minute
with Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas. What were you saying, Senator
Jabotts, about the President?
Well, I'd like to just spend a minute upon the apparent acceptance and the discussion we've had
so far that whatever the President has said at this speech is necessarily valid for the future.
I think he spoke very much as a party leader. I think he wants very much to keep party leadership,
not necessarily exclusively. So he was rallying his troops and giving them the necessary
signals and the necessary banners for the future. But I'd like to put these questions to my colleagues,
and they know I'm not bitterly partisan, but I think it's very important to our country.
Isn't it a fact that much of what he's talking about is likely to be as obsolescent as much of
the New Deal? I mean, Social Security is achieved, many other things, the Labor Relations Acts,
et cetera. Now I happen to just to give a few comments because I'm in it very deeply,
as so many of you are. We have very much, we have less poverty in the sense of less people involved,
but a much more vociferous protest on the part of the poor themselves. We have the inflationary
situation in the country, notwithstanding almost full employment. Now I'm not going to indict the
President or not indict him. The point is that you have a very serious inflation resulting in
such an erosion now that it even takes away the benefit of higher incomes. This is probably the
first year in which that happens. You're still in heavy war, Vietnam, the Middle East. And isn't it
logical, therefore, and there are many other things, but isn't it logical, therefore, that we
will in the new administration go off on new bases, new things, new openings, new ways of doing
things as well as perhaps even new objectives? Congressman Brooks, just one moment to say that
I think that the continued basis of political action in this country will be people and their
improvement and increasing their opportunities to share in the better things in this country,
what we can produce and what we can make available to all of our people. And I would say without any
hesitation that I think that most of the problems that we discussed and that we worked on as members
of the Congress during the Johnson administration are not fully resolved. There is still much to be
done in almost every one of these areas. This includes hospitals and education and Medicare
and urban renewal. You can name them all and none of them are finished. I think we will still be
trying to reach the ultimate answers within the framework of these problems. I think the most
important thing probably that the Johnson administration has brought out is we have
brought the problems out on top of the table, whether they're civil rights or housing or Medicare,
and we've laid them out. We have tried to solve them. The solutions are not perfect,
but we're going to keep working on the same problems, and I think that this Congress will
continue to do exactly that. I think we've heard both sides of that question, gentlemen,
and if we can go on to New York now, we'll see what they have to say about it. Here's Ed Newman.
Thank you, John. Gentlemen, I'm Len McKissick, Jack Bufield, Richard Goodwin. Let's talk about
President Johnson as man and as politician. Mr. McKissick, is it possible to say that there is one
predominating black response to President Johnson? My answer would be that there is,
that one time was one response to President Johnson. I think President Johnson had the
highest rating among black people shortly after President Kennedy's death when he pushed through
the legislation that was passed by the Congress, three successive bills, and I think shortly after
that is when the Democratic administration failed to hear, and they got hung up on the concept of
integration versus separation, and it was at the historic White House conference after the speech
that Goodwin had done to secure these rights at Howard University, that the Democratic administration
failed to hear that even though one could holler for a concept of integration, integration was not
the goal, it was the strength through which black people would actually secure basic constitutional
rights, protected constitutional rights. You're saying that the administration did not sufficiently
secure those rights to the black people of the country because it didn't understand how to go
about doing it? Is that it? I think two things. They didn't understand how to do it. They were
not enforcing the laws. For example, the President got to Congress to pass the voters' rights bill,
but he wouldn't send federal registrars into the South in massive numbers as was promised.
I remember we had this historic conference on the Potomac with Vice President Humphrey then,
and this was what it was suggested, that we send massive numbers of registrars into the South,
and immediately we could have assured massive numbers of black people's registering voting.
This was never done. I think it was shortly after that, at the White House conference, that
a new form of militancy, of black militancy, started, and the cries of black power first heard,
and the issue of Vietnam came up, and Vietnam was becoming the issue which was
really pushing down the cause of black people and civil rights, and it was taking the forefront,
and we said that we have to abolish this issue, and of course they couldn't accept. The Democratic
administration said that this issue comes first, really, over civil rights, and then the President
went in to get at this conference to stop the emphasis on my personal part, I recall, and he
introduced Thurgood Marshall that night at the conference to secure these rights.
Mr. Newfield, what do you make of President Johnson as man and politician?
Well, I think President Johnson has been a disaster as president, and I think this program
is like Linden in Wonderland, and it doesn't reflect any of the things that he's done, and his
own speech in much of the program has been like a brief for the defense, and there's been no
mention of his invasion of the Dominican Republic, for example, and the fact that he...
I should point out to you that the foreign affairs section of the program is still to come.
He lied about it, that he said he went in there because 1,500 Americans had been killed and
beheaded, and the American embassy was being fired upon. That was not true. There's no mention
that thousands and thousands of what McGeorge Bundy is called the best generation we have ever
produced, 31,000 of them have died in Vietnam, other thousands have gone into...
These are subjects Mr. Newfield, we're about to get to, and in particular right now we're
going to get to Vietnam, and at this moment, David Brinkley has some reflections on the
Vietnam War and the Johnson years.
...of Lyndon Johnson and his relationship with the Washington establishment. It is tempting to say
that he made only one mistake, the war, and to say that one mistake was so big it gradually
turned into critics, those who should have been his cheerleaders. Of course, people found other
things to criticize, but that was true even of such saints as Peter, Paul, Washington, Jefferson,
and Lincoln. To put it plainly, what messed it up for Lyndon Johnson was the war. Until that
started, he was having a remarkable success in Congress with achievements other presidents had
wanted and couldn't get. He got them, Medicare, civil rights, aid to education, and so he should
have come out a hero to the liberal academic establishment because that was what they'd always
wanted, they said, but for him the war soured and curdled everything. One of the less appealing
aspects of human nature is that when we get mad at somebody about one thing, we forget all the other
things about him that we liked. After Mr. Johnson irritated the establishment with a war they hated,
then when they looked at him they couldn't see anything else. Some of the criticism then even
turned to his speech and dress and manner, snobbery that is to say. They decided they didn't like the
war, no doubt for good reason, and then decided they didn't like anything. Mr. Johnson will have
some years to sit down there in Texas and think about that one, to think about the fact that if
you do 50 things right and one thing wrong, all they can remember somehow is the one.
Mr. Neufeld, let's start with you. We're going to have a discussion now in which everybody on the
program is invited to take part, but I hope that nobody will try to come in before I call on him.
Mr. Neufeld, do you think that, as David Brinkley suggested, that there has been unfairness to
President Johnson, that he was right on 50 issues and wrong perhaps on one? Some people would say
he was wrong and that he suffered unduly because of that? Well, one, I do not believe that he was
criticized because of his manners or his style. He was criticized because of his policies in Vietnam,
in the Dominican Republic, and in the ghettos at home, and I think that has to be made.
Senator Dirksen, I believe, is in John Chancellor's group. Am I right about that, John?
I don't see him here, Ed. I can try and, I don't think he's here.
Greg, your pardon, John.
I can offer you Senator Jarvis, Senator Muskie, Senator McGovern, Congressman Brooks.
Well, you put me in an invidious position, John, so I'm going to call on Senator Van Oake.
Gentlemen, in the few moments remaining, can we address ourselves to this problem?
The office of the presidency is one of the most marvelous offices in the world,
and certainly in this century, the office has usually magnified the person who was in it. Indeed,
we have a recent biography of President Harding which showed that he wasn't as bad as we all
thought. How, what happened? Dick, you were in the White House at that time. What happened that
perhaps the office, in a sense, magnified President Johnson's defects and minimized his virtues?
Because it throws the whole theory into a cocktack. Well, I think that you really had
two Johnson administrations, Sandy. I think you had the administration of 64 and 65,
when the office and the man were being magnified together, and there was enormous trust forward,
not only in terms of programs, but in terms of ideas, talking about the quality of American life,
the post-New Deal civilization that you were referring to. And then I think that the war
swept in at the end of 65 and began to turn the administration inward on every issue,
paralyzed action, drained off the moral energies, so that the fact of the immense power of the
presidency being exercised in a direction which was contrary, I think, to the interests of the
country, and ultimately, of course, to the will of the people of the country, did serve to magnify
the defects. But if you have great power and you exercise it, if you exercise it, in what in my
judgment was badly, then I think on that issue, it's going to seem like an enormous mistake,
just as great deeds will seem like great deeds. The American president speaks and the world listens,
and the president of Guatemala speaks. It doesn't happen.
Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. You have the last word. In his final State of the Union address to the
Congress and what amounts to his last formal word to the American people as their president,
Mr. Johnson thanked the legislators for their help. He said that no president could ask for more,
and he said that few had been given so much. And now it's time to leave.
I hope it may be said a hundred years from now
that by working together we help to make our country more just,
more just for all of its people, as well as to ensure and guarantee the blessings of liberty
for all of our posterity. That's what I hope. But I believe
that at least it will be said that we pride.
There are no brickbats for Lyndon Johnson tonight. Republicans and Democrats alike believe it was a
fitting farewell for a man who is not always loved by Congress and a man who in his final two years
was defeated by Congress on many issues. As one Northern Democrat put it, I never knew that Lyndon
Johnson would bring the tears to my eyes. The address was interrupted by applause more than
50 times. The Democrats liked what the president said because he ticked off the party's accomplishments
in recent years and implied Mr. Nixon should expand democratic programs. The Republicans liked
the address because the president took Mr. Nixon off the hook with his recommendations for keeping
the income tax, the income surtax. They also were pleasantly surprised to hear Mr. Johnson recommend
reorganization of the poverty program, something Republicans have long been advocating. There is,
to be sure, a bit of grumbling too, with some congressmen suggesting Mr. Johnson missed a
golden opportunity to recommend broad tax reform. If there was a surprise, it was that Mr. Johnson
did not go out with a flurry of recommendations as many legislators had anticipated he would.
As it is, the things that Mr. Johnson did propose will not necessarily have easy sailing.
He is, for all the sentimentality, for all the nostalgia here at the Capitol,
a man giving up power. And as one Democrat remarked, it's pretty hard to orchestrate a
swan song into a full symphony, even if the conductor has been a man like Lyndon Johnson.
This is Paul Duke, NBC News at the Capitol. The Johnson years were born in national mourning,
grew through domestic turmoil, international crisis, and an unpopular war,
and they ended with a hope for peace. And the Nixon years will start on that note next Monday.
There's been a naval disaster in the Pacific, explosions and fire aboard the nuclear
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Lives lost, men injured, much damage. So we've ended our program
on the Johnson years for a report on the Enterprise. Here's NBC News correspondent, John Palmer.
A bomb fell from a plane landing on the aircraft carrier Enterprise this morning and set off
a fire and a dozen or more explosions. The disaster occurred as the carrier was maneuvering
about 75 miles southwest of Honolulu. Thirteen men were killed, 85 to 100 more injured,
and undetermined number of men are reported missing at this hour. Some presumably were
blown overboard from the carrier by the tremendous force of the explosions. The fire spread through
the aft end of the flight and the hangar decks and was brought under control in about an hour
and a half. With that fire and those explosions left 200 feet of the 85,000 ton warships after
section scorched and blackened by smoke. Among the heaps of twisted metal, which could be seen as
the Enterprise arrived in Pearl Harbor about an hour ago, were the remains of two of her aircraft.
When the fire started, the Enterprise was going through a bombing drill. She had been on station
off the coast of Vietnam three times and she was scheduled to return for a fourth tour of duty.
Coast Guard, Marine, and Air Force helicopters flew to the carrier. They flew with blood and
other medical supplies and some of the injured were flown to an Army hospital in Honolulu
as the big ship, which has 4,600 men aboard, moved toward Pearl Harbor. Now here by a satellite are
films of the disaster which overtook the Enterprise about 75 miles southwest of Honolulu
about eight o'clock this morning Honolulu time. The shots taken by the Navy, these films taken
about an hour after the fire was put out aboard the carrier Enterprise. They battled the flames
for an hour and a half. Many helicopters brought in doctors, 16 doctors were flown to the Enterprise
just as soon as word of the severity of the explosions was received. Naval officers in
Honolulu say that they really don't know at this hour the extent of damage but you can see the rear
end of the carrier here, the blackened areas, several holes in the flight deck of the carrier,
no doubt holes chopped in the deck to try to let out some of the heat and pour water and chemicals
to the hangar and flight decks below. Again the side shot a very good picture of the damage
aboard the Enterprise, 10 to 12 explosions and rapid fire, some of the men blown overboard.
The destroyer Rogers and the frigate Bainbridge helicopters, Navy and Coast Guard airplanes began
circling the seas near the Enterprise searching for survivors. There is no word of any bodies or
survivors being found, several of the ships and aircraft are still in the area. The water temperature
about 76 degrees so presumably a man could survive. There you got a shot of the helicopters on the
flight deck, again bringing in doctors and to your right of your screen the hole in the flight deck
of the Enterprise, another hole. Men walking around the scarred flight deck of the carrier
Enterprise, several planes, what remains of them on the flight deck. About as we said an hour ago
the Enterprise returned to Pearl Harbor, 200 of her 1,100 feet turned black by the fire and the
explosions which struck her. On deck could be seen the remains as we just saw of at least two
aircraft destroyed in the disaster. This is a scene taken just about an hour ago in Pearl Harbor,
Honolulu, the scene there of the aircraft carrier Enterprise as she pulled into dock. It took about
an hour to dock, this satellite transmission through the facilities of KHUH-TV in Honolulu.
In just a few minutes you'll be able to get a very good look.