S2 Ep 1 - The Great Unveiling

Nixon at War

PRX

History

4.8 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the night of JFK’s assassination, with the nation reeling, Lyndon Johnson stayed up much of the night with two young aides, and laid out a list of legislative initiatives he proposed to pursue. In its scope, vision, and sheer audacity, the list was astonishing, affecting nearly every aspect of American public life, from health care to voting rights to education. It would be nearly six months before the agenda that LBJ mapped out that night would fully coalesce, and be officially unveiled, under the banner of the Great Society. But from day one, LBJ was off and running, determined to be not merely the keeper of the JFK flame, but a president of Rushmore level greatness — the president who picked up where FDR left off.

This first episode will look at the forces that shaped LBJ's vision and ambition, and the trajectory of his rise from the near total obscurity of the vice-presidency to the pinnacle of power. Key voices include senior aide Jack Valenti, who mapped the strategy for rolling out the Great Society vision, and Richard Goodwin, who wrote the speech that would articulate that vision to the American electorate.

With commentary and analysis from historians Joshua Zeitz and Julian Zelizer, along with archival audio from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. Learn more at LBJsGreatSociety.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening, my fellow Americans.
0:05.0	Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
0:12.0	On March 31st, 1968, Lyndon Johnson threw in the towel.
0:18.0	During the past four and a half years, I have lived daily and nightly with the cost of this
0:25.9	war.
0:26.9	I know the pain that it is inflicting.
0:30.3	Almost from the beginning, LBJ had tried to keep the unpleasant truth about Vietnam
0:34.5	from the American people.
0:35.5	I can't get out. I just can't be the architect of surrender.
0:41.3	By early 68, with the death toll mounting, that strategy wasn't working anymore.
0:50.3	Embattled, isolated, and demoralized, the President came finally to believe that the only way
0:57.9	to end the war was to take himself out of it.
1:00.0	Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another
1:08.5	term as your president.
1:11.6	It's a sad moment in history.
1:13.6	I think it was not a war that he sought, that once impaled he was not going to turn from it.
1:19.6	David Halberstam covered Vietnam for the New York Times.
1:22.6	So in a sense it seemed to me that this was a welcome moment because it meant we were being,
1:27.5	as a nation, released from Lyndon Johnson's ego.
1:31.0	It was the greatest single political tragedy of my lifetime.
1:36.7	This is South Dakota Senator George McGovern, and an interview recorded only months after
1:41.2	LBJ left office.
	...

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