Lyndon Baines Johnson didn’t shy away from confrontation. “If two men agree on everything,” he once said, “you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.” Striking words from an American president whose formidable political career was shaped by his ability to build consensus… and eventually undone by a lack of it over the war in Vietnam. When Johnson took over the Oval Office after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, it was a loaded inheritance. He had a legacy to honor: Kennedy’s commitment to a civil rights revolution. He had a Great Society to build: And a Cold War commitment to keep: to battle the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. Lyndon Baines Johnson: conflict and character.
Guests:
William Leuchtenburg, William Rand Kenan
Professor of History Emeritus at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of “In the Shadow of F.D.R.: From Harry Truman to Bill Clinton”
David Gergen, Professor of Public Service at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.