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TV, Documentary The American President 04 The Professional Politician
The American President is a series that aired on PBS in 2000 profiling 41 U.S. chief executives, using exclusive interviews with Presidents Clinton, Bush, Ford, and Carter. Well known figures lend their voice to presidents of the past who lived before sound recordings, including: Colin Powell, Bob Dole, Walter Cronkite, Ben Bradlee, John Glenn, James Carville, Andrew Young, and the Rev. Billy Graham. Narrated by Hugh Sidey.
The American President is a series that aired on PBS in 2000 profiling 41 U.S. chief executives, using exclusive interviews with Presidents Clinton, Bush, Ford, and Carter. Well known figures lend their voice to presidents of the past who lived before sound recordings, including: Colin Powell, Bob Dole, Walter Cronkite, Ben Bradlee, John Glenn, James Carville, Andrew Young, and the Rev. Billy Graham. Narrated by Hugh Sidey.
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00:29I'll see you next time.
00:47I'll see you next time.
01:26I'll see you next time.
01:47I'll see you next time.
02:12I'll see you next time.
02:36I'll see you next time.
02:39I'll see you next time.
03:19In 1821,
03:20the magician was named his secretary of state.
03:24It was a triumph for Van Buren's quiet, behind-the-scenes approach to politics.
03:32He was a person who quite consciously endeavored to get along with everyone with whom he needed to deal.
03:40It was once said of him that he rode to his objects with muffled oars, a term I've always liked.
03:51This made him very attractive to other professional politicians, not least to Andrew Jackson, who can't be characterized that way
04:02at all, but saw the great value of having a lieutenant who could.
04:07In late March 1829, Van Buren arrived in Washington to meet, for only the second time in his life, the
04:15man he had helped put into office.
04:20It was dark when I reached the White House.
04:23There was a solitary lamp in the vestibule and a single candle in the president's office.
04:29From that night on, relations were inviolably maintained between that noble old man and myself.
04:40In the White House, Van Buren became Andrew Jackson's chief political ally, calming opposition, wooing the press, putting a good
04:50spin on Jackson's use of the spoils system.
04:55They became so close that others grew jealous.
04:59When Jackson dances wrote one observer, it is Van Buren who plays the fiddle.
05:07Cartoonists portrayed him as a sly fox, always lurking on the sidelines.
05:13Why the deuce is it that they have such an itching for abusing me?
05:18I try to be a most decided friend of peace.
05:24In 1832, when Andrew Jackson was elected to a second term, his new vice president was Martin Van Buren.
05:33And four years later, with Jackson's endorsement, the magician was elected the country's eighth president.
05:41He promised a continuation of economic good times.
05:45But less than two weeks into his administration, a financial crisis erupted.
05:52And as waves of panic spread across the country, local banks refused to pay off their depositors.
06:00The situation of the banks is a matter of the gravest consideration.
06:06You cannot form an adequate idea of the dreadful state of the money market.
06:13Van Buren's solution to the crisis was ironic, since his mentor, Andrew Jackson, had forcefully put an end to the
06:21National Bank.
06:23It was to propose the establishment of an independent treasury.
06:27And it became the central accomplishment of Van Buren's presidency, eventually becoming the backbone of America's financial system.
06:39Our foundations are wisely and firmly laid, and our triumph will come in good time.
06:47But as the election of 1840 approached, the economy took another sudden plunge downwards.
06:54And nothing Van Buren could do could restore public confidence.
06:59He became the first of a handful of American presidents to be done in by economic bad times.
07:07When times are good, and there's economic expansion, professional politician is a very desirable thing.
07:15A man who can bob and weave his way through our complicated system.
07:19When times are bad, you want a statesman, not a politician.
07:27And he suffered that fate.
07:31It cannot be said that Van Buren failed as president.
07:35What?
07:37When this catastrophe happened, people didn't want a professional politician.
07:43They didn't want Little Van the Magician.
07:47They wanted somebody who would fix things.
07:50And he couldn't fix things.
07:52And that was essentially the end of him.
07:58In the presidential campaign that followed, Van Buren watched as a new party, the Whigs, adopted the same political techniques
08:07that he himself had invented.
08:10And used them to elect their own candidate.
08:16A pro-Van Buren newspaper wrote,
08:20We have taught them how to conquer us.
08:25He had pioneered the art of professional politics.
08:30And for 35 years, he had exercised it with unparalleled success.
08:37Now, he quietly returned to Kinderhook, New York.
08:43I have at last got home.
08:48It would have been impossible to comprehend the degree of odium brought upon me within the White House.
08:55The result of the election causes me no personal regret.
09:03In the two decades after Martin Van Buren, the country continued to elect professional politicians to the White House.
09:11And in 1857, a 65-year-old Pennsylvanian who came to power had more political experience than any of the
09:2114 presidents before him.
09:24He was James Buchanan.
09:36I know that it is generally in bad taste for anyone to speak of his own motives.
09:42I always tried to be wise as the serpent, but harmless as the dove.
09:51His home was his southern-style estate known as Wheatland, from which he launched his political assault on the high
09:58office.
09:59He was from the same generation as Martin Van Buren, learned and ambitious and possessing an extraordinary memory.
10:09He was also stiff and utterly humorless.
10:13One friend said,
10:15I do not think he ever uttered a genuine witticism in his life.
10:21His grim nature could be traced in part to a terrible tragedy he had suffered as a young man.
10:27He had been engaged to Ann Coleman, a young woman from one of the wealthiest families in the country.
10:35But in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she heard rumors that he was interested in her only for her money.
10:42She angrily broke off the engagement and then apparently committed suicide.
10:49Buchanan was stunned.
10:51He was banned from the funeral and ostracized by his townspeople.
10:55And from then on, he became overly cautious in everything he did.
11:02To fill a void in his life, Buchanan threw himself into politics.
11:07He was elected five times to the House of Representatives, where he shifted political parties and became a Democrat.
11:16He served overseas as his country's foreign minister to Russia.
11:21And back in Washington, he also served in the U.S. Senate.
11:26Living a bachelor's life, he shared boarding house rooms with Southern politicians, who helped shape his own sympathies.
11:36In 1845, he was named Secretary of State by James K. Polk, but he detested the job.
11:43My life is that of a galley slave.
11:46I have to do the important drudging of the administration without the power of obtaining offices for my friends.
11:54I have no power.
11:58Critics noted his careful self-promotion and how he regularly shifted his stance on controversial issues.
12:09But no one challenged the fact that he was a masterful politician.
12:17And after serving four years as minister to England, Buchanan was hailed as the only candidate who could hold the
12:25country together.
12:27As civil war now loomed as a real probability.
12:31And the flag of the Union forever.
12:40In Washington, construction was underway on a new Capitol building.
12:44And in its shadow, James Buchanan was inaugurated the country's 15th president.
12:52I have no other object of earthly ambition than to leave my country in a peaceful and prosperous condition.
13:01Disunion is a word which ought not to be breathed among us, even in a whisper.
13:09What America needed most in 1857 was a president who could boldly face the nation's problems and help bridge the
13:18widening chasm between North and South.
13:21But from the start, Buchanan proved he was not up to the challenge.
13:26How easy it would be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever.
13:31All that is necessary is to let it alone.
13:38Mr. Buchanan, as a National Democrat, was always sympathetic toward the South.
13:45I think he shared with the Southerners a fury at the Northern abolitionists who were a minority stirring up trouble
13:56from his point of view.
14:01I think he was a man carried out of his depth, out of the depth of normal politics, by the
14:10intensity of emotion that was beginning to be felt both North and South.
14:16And those emotions and the activists who held them created a polarization that pulled the rest of the country along
14:25and apart.
14:28I don't know what Buchanan could have done to bridge the emerging gap.
14:37Some gaps are too big for politics.
14:41As president-elect, Buchanan had made a damaging mistake.
14:46He had secretly and improperly contacted Supreme Court Justice Robert Greer of Pennsylvania and convinced him to vote the pro
14:56-slavery line in the Dred Scott case.
15:01It was the work of a cunning politician, but it backfired.
15:06Though the court now ruled that slavery was indeed protected by the Constitution in all territories, the decision virtually ensured
15:14that there would be civil war.
15:19Buchanan also backed a pro-slavery state government in Kansas, which resulted in bloody fighting.
15:26He was criticized for trying to shove slavery down the nation's throat.
15:35On October 17, 1859, abolitionist John Brown seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and called for a massive
15:45slave uprising.
15:48Although the revolt was put down by federal troops, John Brown, through his capture, trial, and execution, ignited the land.
15:59On the day of Brown's execution, bells were tolled in many places in the North as if he were a
16:05martyr.
16:08This inflamed the southern mind with intense hostility against the North and enabled the disunion agitators to prepare it for
16:16the final catastrophe.
16:22All Buchanan wanted was to get safely out of office, and he declined to run for a second term.
16:31But when he refused to support the leading Democratic candidate for president, Stephen A. Douglas, he virtually handed the election
16:39to Abraham Lincoln, and thereby set secession into motion.
16:46From December 1860 until March 4, 1861 was by far the most important period of my administration.
16:55No public man was ever placed in a more trying and responsible position.
17:04Believing he had no constitutional power to oppose secession, Buchanan remained paralyzed, unwilling to try and save the Union.
17:16As Civil War marched steadily closer, it was charged that he was deliberately harboring traitors within his own government.
17:24And his secretary of war, John B. Floyd of Virginia, was accused of shipping arms from northern arsenals to the
17:33south.
17:35It is true that Floyd made the attempt, but I arrested the order before a single gun was sent.
17:45On December 20th, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union.
17:55Buchanan threw up his hands and said there was nothing more he could do.
18:01From this point on, Congress ignored his leadership.
18:06Mr. Buchanan was a total failure.
18:12He could have succeeded only in the degree that he could have made plain to both northerners and southerners.
18:25The terrible character of the war that was approaching.
18:33And he did not.
18:35He presumably could not grasp it himself.
18:40His imagination wasn't up to it.
18:44And certainly his oratory wasn't up to it.
18:48His physical strength wasn't up to it.
18:53He failed, thus, a severe test at a severe time.
19:00His tragedy, and I think it was a tragedy, is that he found himself at the end of his term
19:06presiding over the beginnings of the dissolution of the Union, powerless to stop it.
19:13But had he been a stronger man, or a luckier man, I don't think it would have made a substantial
19:19difference.
19:20I'm afraid, I think, it was an irrepressible conflict.
19:27In the end, he was vilified, considered a traitor by both North and South.
19:35His portrait, hanging in the Capitol Rotunda, had to be taken down to prevent it from being defaced.
19:46When I parted from the executive mansion, I said to President Lincoln,
19:50If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning
19:56home, you're the happiest man in the country.
20:02As civil war erupted, James Buchanan went home to his Pennsylvania plantation.
20:12History would label him as cowardly, weak, senile, and vacillating.
20:19What he was, was a lonely, limited man, who mistook politics for statesmanship.
20:28The presidency, although a crown of honor far more glorious than that of any monarch in Christendom, is also a
20:36crown of thorns.
20:38I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that I at least meant well for my country.
20:47If James Buchanan represented party politics unable to cope with great events, his successor came to stand for the exact
20:56opposite.
20:58Yet for 26 years, Abraham Lincoln was as concerned as Buchanan ever had been with his own political advancement.
21:18No man knows when that presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep it will get until he
21:25has tried it.
21:28Abraham Lincoln's law partner wrote of him, that his ambition was a little engine which knew no rest.
21:38He did everything he could to get himself to the presidency.
21:44Oh, oh, he was an ambitious man.
21:56Brought up in rural Indiana, he was required by his father to perform what he called the roughest work a
22:03young man could be made to do.
22:08With a strong distaste for manual labor, Lincoln launched out on his own and began attracting attention in Illinois.
22:20He was friendly, he was honest, and he had a desire to win the respect of others.
22:26And he began to take an interest in local politics.
22:31Every man is said to have his own peculiar ambition.
22:35I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men by rendering myself worthy
22:42of their esteem.
22:47The 1830s and 40s saw Lincoln's rapid ascent in Illinois politics.
22:54Three times elected to the state legislature, he became a lawyer, a Whig operative, and a recognized expert at forming
23:03coalitions.
23:05Like Van Buren, he learned how to keep secrets, how to trade favors, and how to use the press to
23:12his advantage.
23:15Those who knew him best came to speak of his ruthlessness.
23:19One colleague said he handled men remotely, like pieces on a chessboard.
23:26But he also became known for his humor and his frankness.
23:31If you should hear anyone say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you would tell him
23:37he is mistaken.
23:39The truth is, I would like to go very much.
23:44With the support of his ambitious young wife, Mary Todd, he was elected to Congress in 1846.
23:54But as a junior congressman in Washington, at the same time that James Buchanan was a powerful force in national
24:02politics, Lincoln found he had little influence.
24:07And when he publicly opposed President Polk's war against Mexico, he became unpopular back home.
24:16After a single term in office, he returned to Illinois deeply discouraged.
24:25Practicing law once again, he began making more money than he had ever made in his life,
24:30and went on retainer representing the Illinois Central Railroad.
24:34From 1849 to 1854, I practiced law more assiduously than ever before.
24:42I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.
24:53It became the turning point in Lincoln's life.
24:57The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had drawn a line to keep slavery exclusively in the South.
25:06Its repeal meant slavery could now spread into Kansas and Nebraska and throughout the West.
25:16If any one man chooses to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.
25:23This covert zeal for the spread of slavery I cannot but hate.
25:30I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
25:41In 1856, he committed himself to the newly formed Republican Party.
25:47And in a race for the Senate two years later, he entered a series of debates with Democrat Stephen A.
25:53Douglas.
25:55While Lincoln subtly tailored his message depending on the politics of his audience,
26:00he steadfastly stuck to his principles.
26:05The Republican principle, the unalterable principle never to be lost sight of, is that slavery is wrong.
26:15Although he lost to Douglas, Lincoln emerged as one of the strongest men in the Republican Party.
26:22The presidency now loomed as a real possibility.
26:26I will be entirely frank. The taste is in my mouth a little.
26:33Shrewdly, he began to position himself for an assault on the high office.
26:37He arranged for his debates with Douglas to be published.
26:41They became a national bestseller.
26:45He traveled to New York City to show Easterners firsthand his oratory and his fire.
26:54And when a formal portrait was taken by Matthew Brady, Lincoln saw to it that the photograph was widely circulated.
27:03My name is new in the field, and I suppose I'm not the first choice of a great many.
27:12Lincoln's managers went to work repackaging their candidate.
27:17Instead of showing him as the prosperous, politically tough, at times corporate lawyer he was,
27:24he became Abe Lincoln the rail splitter.
27:28The humble man of the people.
27:34I am in height six feet four inches nearly, lean in flesh, weighing on an average 180 pounds, dark complexion,
27:44with coarse black hair and gray eyes, no other marks or brands recollected.
27:52In May 1860, following intense behind-the-scenes politicking, Lincoln was chosen as the Republican Party's candidate for president.
28:05In November, when he won the election, the New York Tribune proclaimed,
28:11never till now has there been a time when the slaveholders have not dictated the choice of a president.
28:22He, himself, was prepared to accept slavery where it existed, though he didn't like it at all.
28:29But he was prepared to accept it for the sake of union.
28:33By the time he came to office, that distinction no longer interested the activists in the South.
28:42But they pulled the South out of the union, into war.
28:49The Civil War was the greatest of events ever to engage this country.
28:59It was 20th century warfare in the 19th century.
29:03Nobody knew what to make of it.
29:05It was horrifying. It was continuous.
29:08It seemed to go on forever.
29:11It involved everybody.
29:15He appreciated what the consequences could be used for politically.
29:23Lincoln called the Civil War the great event.
29:27All knew that slavery was somehow the cause, he said.
29:32But unlike more radical members of his party who urged him to declare immediate emancipation for slaves,
29:39Lincoln's political instincts told him to bide his time.
29:47Free the slaves too precipitously, he believed, and the border states would join the Confederacy.
29:54Delay too long, however, and a great opportunity would be lost.
30:01When the rebel army was at Frederick in 1862,
30:05I determined as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland to issue a proclamation of emancipation.
30:13I said nothing to anyone, but I made a promise to myself and to my maker.
30:22In a political move designed to prepare public opinion and minimize disaffection,
30:29Lincoln outlined his position to the country.
30:34My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,
30:38and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
30:42If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.
30:47And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.
30:52What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union.
31:02He had chosen these controversial words with immense care,
31:07and though on the surface they seemed to lack conviction,
31:10he had announced that freeing the slaves was within his power,
31:14and that if he decided to do so, it would be unpatriotic to resist.
31:20In striking contrast to James Buchanan, Lincoln didn't avoid political conflict.
31:27He confronted it.
31:29And in doing so, he steered the nation towards a high moral purpose.
31:37Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
31:42In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.
31:48There is no statesmanship without politics.
31:54Statesmanship consists in raising one's sights to the dimensions of the problems one's society faces.
32:04And that requires a kind of selflessness and a kind of imagination that Lincoln had in spades.
32:18The quality that stands out in Lincoln is a combination of imaginativeness and humility,
32:32combined with humor.
32:36Humor, the greatest armament against frustration that we have.
32:41And Lincoln's greatness consists in part in the fact that he suffered greater frustrations of necessity than any of his
32:52predecessors,
32:53any of his successors, and suffered it with grace.
33:01That's a good lesson for all presidents.
33:06Throughout the war, Lincoln continued to exercise political adroitness.
33:11He promised lucrative war contracts and government appointments in return for support and key votes.
33:21At times, such patronage verged on out-and-out bribery,
33:26as when the editor of the New York Herald was offered the ministry to France in return for the paper's
33:33political support.
33:35My administration distributed to its party friends is nearly all the patronage any administration ever did.
33:43In the main, the use of money is wrong.
33:46But for certain objects in a political contest, the use of some is both right and indispensable.
33:55Despite heavy criticism throughout his presidency, Lincoln continued to use his political skills to build a platform for even-handed
34:05statesmanship.
34:08I happen temporarily to occupy this White House.
34:12I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
34:21His public addresses at Gettysburg and at his second inaugural in Washington were masterpieces of healing and compassion.
34:34And as the Civil War neared its end, it was Lincoln who extended his hand to the conquered South.
34:43I hope there will be no persecution, no bloody work after the war is over.
34:50Let them have their horses to plow with, and if you like, their guns to shoot crows with.
34:56We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and union.
35:03Blood cannot restore blood, and government should not act for revenge.
35:09We must extinguish.
35:11He could see the society whole, and he could distance himself from himself enough to capture the meaning,
35:24and then try to put it into words at the right time to have an effect on his national audience.
35:35And it was all done through words.
35:41His imagination just bloomed.
35:45Though it seems harsh to say so, his sense of timing was so exquisite
35:54that he bowed out of life at the perfect moment for his retrospective reputation.
36:05The war was won.
36:10He then disappeared.
36:16After Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt became the most accomplished politician to serve in the White House.
36:24Then, two decades later, a man appeared on the scene who vowed he was going to finish what Lincoln began.
36:32He was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
36:41I never thought that I would awaken and find myself in the position of power that a president has.
36:50I'm going to use it to try to correct what I know and genuinely believe are injustices toward my fellow
36:59man.
37:02Lyndon Johnson was raised near Austin, Texas, in the years before the Depression,
37:08where he developed a deep and genuine compassion for the poor and the oppressed.
37:14When I was a young man, I taught in a Mexican-American school.
37:19And there I got my real deep first impressions of the prejudices that existed
37:26and the inequity of our school system between whites and browns.
37:32Johnson could identify with the disenfranchised of society.
37:37From early on, he always saw himself as an underdog,
37:41a poor boy who would have to do big things in order to prove himself.
37:47In 1934, he married Claudia Alta Taylor, nicknamed Lady Bird.
37:53And she became Johnson's closest advisor when he entered politics.
37:59In my first race for Congress, I had to borrow $10,000 from my wife.
38:06I didn't have near enough money then.
38:10I was in the House of Representatives 12 years.
38:14I tried to be a good congressman, but I was not a national figure at all.
38:21Johnson put in 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
38:25demanding the same effort from his entire staff.
38:29And he became recognized as a political genius.
38:36Write your uncles and your cousins and your aunts,
38:39and ask them to join you in electing Lyndon Johnson to the Senate.
38:44He made his first run for the Senate in 1941.
38:51But his victory celebration was premature.
38:56Johnson had lost.
39:01Determined never to lose again, he set his sights on 1948.
39:07And this time he made certain that his campaign would be the most extraordinary political event in Texas history.
39:15He sent advance men, musicians and entertainers to lure people to rallies.
39:24And his own dramatic arrival by helicopter, a rare sight in those days,
39:29ensured plenty of local media coverage.
39:33As a professional at politics,
39:37Johnson was extraordinary and exceptional.
39:41He had huge, unappeasable hunger to be loved by everybody.
39:48He had a huge desire to effectively manipulate everybody.
39:58He was capable of inflicting terror on people,
40:01and also capable of overwhelming them with kindness.
40:05And he was capable of shifting from one to the other with no loss in time.
40:10He was larger than life.
40:15In 1951, Johnson became the Senate's majority whip.
40:20Soon after, the position of minority leader followed.
40:24And in 1955, the 46-year-old Texan became the youngest majority leader in the Senate's history.
40:34Driving himself too hard,
40:37Just as Johnson was being widely touted as the next Democratic candidate for president,
40:42he suffered a massive heart attack.
40:46I'm going home to get a long rest,
40:49and if the doctors give me the okay,
40:52I'll be back on the job in the Senate,
40:55when the Senate reconvenes in January.
40:57In the meantime, no politics, and on to the rocking chair.
41:00Well, I wouldn't say that you could take politics completely away from him,
41:05but we'll have it as a minimum.
41:11For the first time in his life, this chain-smoking, food-shovelling workaholic was forced to slow down.
41:22Unable to fully regain his political momentum,
41:26Johnson lost his 1960 bid for the presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy.
41:33It was then that Lyndon Johnson lowered his political sights,
41:37and agreed to serve as Kennedy's vice presidential running mate.
41:45In November, they won a narrow victory in the national elections.
41:51President Kennedy was very good to me,
41:53and tried his best to elevate the office any way he could.
41:57But it was not the most productive three years I ever had.
42:14On November 22nd, 1963,
42:17Johnson traveled with the president on a political visit to his home state of Texas.
42:26We heard some sound.
42:29Some thought it was a firecracker.
42:31Some thought it was a gun.
42:33And the next thing, we were on the way to the hospital.
42:37The president was wounded.
42:41The greatest shock that I can recall was one of the men saying,
42:47he's gone.
42:49It was suggested that we go to the plane as quickly as we could,
42:55and we go to Washington as quickly as we could.
43:00We had decided that the plane would not take off until
43:03Miss Kennedy arrived with the president's body.
43:07I wasn't going to leave without her.
43:11And we were in the plane about 15 minutes or less.
43:19We took the oath, and we were off.
43:31I felt I was a trustee to carry on after he had been taken from us.
43:42After I finished running into execution, the dreams that he had,
43:46I started on my own.
43:48And I had some, too.
43:51Johnson's dreams went beyond those of virtually any other president
43:55the country has ever had.
44:01He declared an unconditional war on poverty
44:05and pledged to put an end to America's long legacy of racism.
44:13It would all be part of an ambitious plan he called the Great Society.
44:23I wake up in the morning and have my briefings and my breakfast,
44:28and come to the office between 9 and 10 o'clock.
44:32Then I work at a rather feverish rate until 1.30 at 2, and I have a swim,
44:37take out 15, 20 minutes.
44:39Then I go and have a lunch, usually a business lunch, working lunch.
44:44And about 3 o'clock, I take a little nap for 20 or 30 minutes, and that breaks the day
44:49for me.
44:50And then I'm good until 8 at 9 at night, and I usually read until about 1 o'clock.
44:54I don't require too much sleep, but I'm never in better health.
44:59I never felt better in my life.
45:03In 1964, Landslide Linden was elected to his own term of office
45:09by the largest percentage of the popular vote in American history.
45:16When Lyndon Johnson became president in his own right,
45:22his ambitions rose with the opportunity he saw.
45:29He wanted to pass legislation at every opportunity.
45:37The endeavors expose a well of idealism somewhere inside it.
45:46They also expose a lack of restraint.
45:55Johnson doled out public works projects, prized appointments,
45:59and photo opportunities to those who cooperated
46:03and withheld them from those who did not.
46:06He saw everything in terms of winning or losing.
46:11If nothing else worked, Johnson abruptly cut off any debate
46:15and tried to shame a person into compliance,
46:18as he did when powerful Senator Richard Russell
46:21tried to avoid serving on the Warren Commission.
46:25Well, Mr. President, I know I don't have to tell you my devotion to you,
46:30but I just can't serve on that commission.
46:33Don't tell me what you can do and what you can't,
46:35because I can't arrest you and I'm not going to put the FBI on you,
46:40but you're that damn sure going to serve, I'll tell you that.
46:44He loved the telephone.
46:46Well, people said he had a telephone growing out of his ear.
46:50And he, he also loved to use his size.
46:56He was a very tall man, a big man.
46:59He was always grabbing people by the lapels, pushing his face up against them,
47:04and just scaring them into agreeing with him.
47:10The trouble with Lyndon Johnson, as best I can understand it,
47:15is that it was all too much.
47:19It was all too much.
47:21He didn't have enough internal confidence
47:26to be able to moderate both his programmatic ambitions
47:33and his personal techniques.
47:37His political powers might well have gained Lyndon Johnson
47:40recognition as one of the country's most effective presidents,
47:46if it were not for Vietnam.
47:49As the conflict in Southeast Asia escalated into an undeclared war,
47:56Johnson was determined not to let it divert congressional attention
47:59away from his domestic legislation.
48:02So he secretly escalated the war,
48:05providing Congress with overly optimistic military reports
48:10in an effort to get complete support.
48:13Anyone who served in Congress 25 years as I had served in Congress
48:16wasn't about to undertake the responsibilities
48:19and the dangers that I had in South Vietnam
48:22without the Congress being with me.
48:26And the Congress was with me.
48:28But when the going got hard,
48:30when the road got longer and dustier,
48:33when the casualties started coming in,
48:37why they certain folks started looking for the seller.
48:43As the death toll mounted to more than 500 American casualties each week,
48:49the country grew bitterly divided.
49:02I think I did a very poor job
49:07of pointing up to the American people
49:09that one time, two times, a dozen times
49:13we made substantial overtures to Ho Chi men,
49:19just please, let's talk instead of fight.
49:22And not one single instance, not one,
49:26did we get anything but an arrogant, tough, unyielding rebut.
49:33When he was faced with an opponent,
49:36he couldn't master by either a cajolery, persuasion or intimidation.
49:43Ho Chi Minh.
49:45And when he faced the consequences of the Vietnam War
49:50in terms of popular dissatisfaction,
49:54public sentiments changed.
49:58And people wanted a commander-in-chief
50:02and a man of temperate judgment.
50:06They didn't want a politician.
50:09And Johnson couldn't change his style.
50:14Ultimately, he failed.
50:17He tried to do too much.
50:21His is a true tragedy.
50:24His means of dealing with his own frustrations
50:28was resigning from office.
50:30In effect, there was not in Lyndon Johnson
50:35a saving moderation.
50:37It just wasn't in him.
50:42I shall not seek,
50:46and I will not accept,
50:48the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
50:54Good night, and God bless all of you.
51:11All his life, Lyndon Johnson used politics to do big things.
51:18In civil rights, in education,
51:21in poverty programs and in conservation,
51:23he changed the face of American society.
51:30But he overreached.
51:33And in the end, politics failed him,
51:35as the war in Vietnam overwhelmed his presidency.
51:45He was an ambitious and powerful and driven social reformer
51:48who had used political bluster to cover up a deep
51:52and almost childlike sense of insecurity.
52:01I don't think that I can ever explain to the American people
52:05something that's so deeply embedded in their beliefs
52:09as the fact that Lyndon Johnson was an extremely ambitious man
52:15who sought power, who enjoyed using it,
52:19and whose greatest desire was to occupy the top job
52:24in American political life.
52:27Now, I have never really believed that I was the man
52:30to do that particular job.
52:33I always felt that every job I had was really too big for me.
52:38I have never really believed that I was the man
52:43Throughout most of our history,
52:45our truly effective presidents have been masterful politicians.
52:49When times are good and there is economic expansion,
52:53a professional politician may seem very desirable.
52:58But when times are bad,
53:00when economic crisis threatens,
53:03or governmental scandal breaks open,
53:05or war erupts,
53:07then the country demands a higher level
53:10of national leadership.
53:12And it is then that Americans look to a president
53:16who is not just a politician,
53:18but who is above all a statesman.
53:27To learn more about the American president,
53:29visit our website at pbs.org.
53:40you
54:02because you can't wait for the only one
54:05You can't hear anything.
54:05Everything is so common.
54:33THE END
54:35That's why we're proud to bring you
54:38The American President
54:41This is History's Best
54:43on PBS
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