Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight

by Julia Sweig Narrated by Kirsten Potter

Overview

A magisterial portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, and a major reevaluation of the profound yet underappreciated impact the First Lady's political instincts had on LBJ's presidency.

“An inviting, challenging, well-told tale of the thoroughly modern partner and strategist Lady Bird Johnson, whose skill and complexity emerge fully in this rich tale of history and humanity.”-John Dickerson, author of The Hardest Job in the World
 
“This riveting portrait gives us an important revision of a long-neglected First Lady.”-Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, vol 1-3

In the spring of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson had a decision to make. Just months after moving into the White House under the worst of circumstances-following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy-he had to decide whether to run to win the presidency in his own right. He turned to his most reliable, trusted political strategist: his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. The strategy memo she produced for him, emblematic of her own political acumen and largely overlooked by biographers, is just one revealing example of how their marriage was truly a decades-long political partnership.

Perhaps the most underestimated First Lady of the twentieth century, Lady Bird Johnson was also one of the most accomplished and often her husband's secret weapon. Managing the White House in years of national upheaval, through the civil rights movement and the escalation of the Vietnam War, Lady Bird projected a sense of calm and, following the glamorous and modern Jackie Kennedy, an old-fashioned image of a First Lady. In truth, she was anything but. As the first First Lady to run the East Wing like a professional office, she took on her own policy initiatives, including the most ambitious national environmental effort since Teddy Roosevelt. Occupying the White House during the beginning of the women's liberation movement, she hosted professional women from all walks of life in the White House, including urban planning and environmental pioneers like Jane Jacobs and Barbara Ward, encouraging women everywhere to pursue their own careers, even if her own style of leadership and official role was to lead by supporting others.

Where no presidential biographer has understood the full impact of Lady Bird Johnson's work in the White House, Julia Sweig is the first to draw substantially on Lady Bird's own voice in her White House diaries to place Claudia Alta "Lady Bird” Johnson center stage and to reveal a woman ahead of her time-and an accomplished politician in her own right.

This program includes an actual recording of Lady Bird's audio diary, dated October 12, 1965.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2021 - AudioFile

The highly skilled Kirsten Potter gracefully narrates this intimate portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson. With a pronounced focus on her White House years, the text is principally drawn from her recently unredacted diary tapes and transcripts. The audiobook is also a portrait of the 1960s, replete with social turbulence, issues of racial equality, an unpopular war, and groundbreaking artistic creativity. Potter’s approachable performance applies a light Southern accent to the direct quotes. While using accents can often be a risky maneuver, Potter does it with such understatement that it works well. Consider stepping back in time to take a look at Lady Bird’s influence on LBJ’s presidency. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

10/19/2020

Sweig (Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know), a senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, portrays First Lady Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson (1912–2007) as “a prodigiously disciplined participant, actor, witness to, and student of history” in this revealing biography. Drawing on the diary recordings Johnson began making shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy, Sweig contends that Lady Bird effectively served as her husband’s vice president while he filled out the remainder of JFK’s term. She was also a key factor in LBJ’s decision to run for president in 1964, eliciting his doctors’ approval and drafting a memo of pros and cons “that would set the course for the arc of the Johnson presidency.” Sweig details Lady Bird’s opinions on the Vietnam War, Great Society programs, and civil rights legislation, as well as her own policy agenda, which included urban planning reforms, natural conservation programs, and home rule for Washington, D.C. Johnson also hosted “doers” luncheons, highlighting the achievements of professional women, and supported the arts while working to preserve LBJ’s physical health and cultivate his political legacy. Sweig brings her subject to life with exhaustive research and fluid writing. This polished account takes the full measure of the “disarmingly modern” partnership between Lady Bird and LBJ. (Dec.)

From the Publisher

A revelation . . . a book in the Caro mold, using Lady Bird, along with tapes and transcripts of her entire White House diary, to tell the history of America during the Johnson years.”—The New York Times

“Sweig makes a persuasive case for Lady Bird’s influence not just within her marriage but on her husband’s career. In doing so, she forces us to adjust the lens through which we’ve viewed one of our most consequential presidencies.”—The Washington Post

“A superb portrait that elevates Lady Bird’s stature as one of the most accomplished first ladies of the twentieth century.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“With impressive research and admirable skill as a superb storyteller, Sweig’s book for the first time captures the full extent of Lady Bird’s influence on LBJ’s administration and her importance in making the Great Society a landmark moment in American history. Hers is the best book written about Lady Bird Johnson and also a model for how we should understand the influence of First Ladies on the country’s turn toward a more humane society.”—Robert Dallek, author of How Did We Get Here?: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

“Sweig has given us a fascinating portrait of a marriage—and of a shrewd, tough, tender, and wise woman who understood the uses and limits of power. Her biography of Lady Bird Johnson is a magisterial, revealing, and rewarding work.”—Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O’Connor

“This is the best book ever written about one of the most influential—and least understood—First Ladies in history. In Julia Sweig’s beautifully rendered, intimate portrait, one can finally take the full measure of Lady Bird Johnson as environmentalist, feminist, and shrewd political strategist on whom her husband always depended but should have heeded more.”—Michael Kazin, Georgetown University, co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s

“Julia Sweig has gifted us with a most timely and splendidly enhanced portrait of Lady Bird Johnson: daughter of Alabama and Texas wealth—historian, journalist, activist, speechwriter, campaigner, successful businesswoman. Lady Bird championed the New South and was partner to LBJ’s efforts regarding civil rights, human rights, and the Great Society. We learn about Lady Bird’s previously unknown work for real environmental change, which extended far beyond ‘beautification’ and floral plantings—with profound visions for a Green New Deal. This riveting portrait gives us an important revision of a long-neglected First Lady.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, Vols. 1–3

“Sweig has written an inviting, challenging, well-told tale of the thoroughly modern partner and strategist Lady Bird Johnson, whose skill and complexity emerge fully in this rich tale of history and humanity.”—John Dickerson, author of The Hardest Job in the World

Library Journal

12/01/2020

Claudia Alta Johnson (1912–2007), also known as Lady Bird, was the wife of the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson. Sweig (LBJ School of Public Affairs, Univ. of Texas at Austin) describes Lady Bird not as the deferential wife of a boisterous politician, but as the key adviser to the leader of the Senate, vice president, and, ultimately, president of the United States. Lyndon Johnson presided over tumultuous years in the mid-1960s with the aftershock of the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. Sweig successfully illustrates how Lady Bird strongly influenced her husband on topics ranging from the environment to civil rights, all the while remaking the position of First Lady, shaping how we view it today. This portrait of Lady Bird focuses primarily on her time as First Lady, making ample use of her own recorded diaries along with other primary sources to show how she was both essential to Lyndon Johnson's triumphs and deeply supportive in his failures. Insight is also given to relationships with other First Ladies, such as Jackie Kennedy and Pat Nixon. VERDICT A perceptive consideration of an often-understudied First Lady and her lasting legacy. For public and academic libraries everywhere.—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

APRIL 2021 - AudioFile

The highly skilled Kirsten Potter gracefully narrates this intimate portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson. With a pronounced focus on her White House years, the text is principally drawn from her recently unredacted diary tapes and transcripts. The audiobook is also a portrait of the 1960s, replete with social turbulence, issues of racial equality, an unpopular war, and groundbreaking artistic creativity. Potter’s approachable performance applies a light Southern accent to the direct quotes. While using accents can often be a risky maneuver, Potter does it with such understatement that it works well. Consider stepping back in time to take a look at Lady Bird’s influence on LBJ’s presidency. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2021-01-06
A welcome revisionist study of Lady Bird Johnson’s roles and accomplishments within her husband’s administration.

In the past 50 years, there have been several notable biographies of LBJ, yet only recently has first lady Claudia Alta "Lady Bird” Johnson (1912-2007) received meaningful attention for her influential role. Sweig, a nonresident senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, casts a wider lens around Lady Bird’s public persona and personal life, especially the White House years. The author covers a lot of ground, from when the Johnsons were prematurely thrust into their roles following the assassination of JFK and individually struggled to gain their own distinction in the shadow of the star-powered Camelot era up through when LBJ left office after his first full term. Sweig deftly constructs a complex and admiring portrait of Lady Bird as a hardworking, intuitive, and highly intelligent political strategist who served as a vital bolstering force behind LBJ’s political ambitions. Despite his insecurities, mood swings, and health concerns, she actively sought to advance her own urgently felt causes. At the time, her environmental endeavors were superficially labeled as “beautification,” yet her aim was far more expansive. “Beneath the surface of the beautification efforts she promoted,” writes the author, “were deeper, structural dimensions to the urban crisis that connected to hous­ing, industrial pollution, race, and economic inequality.” Drawing extensively from Lady Bird’s White House diary—after transcription, 123 hours of content (a portion of the transcript became a bestseller when published by Johnson in 1970)—Sweig provides an engrossing, well-researched narrative that offers useful historical context about the prevailing issues of the day. The Johnsons’ unified efforts successfully advanced an impressive number of social reform policies, yet their accomplishments were increasingly overshadowed by the weight of the Vietnam War, which dramatically escalated during LBJ’s tenure.

A superb portrait that elevates Lady Bird’s stature as one of the most accomplished first ladies of the 20th century.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177426297
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/16/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

The Surrogate

Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the nation, and indeed to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.

So let us not be petty when our cause is so great, let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our nation’s future is at stake. —John F. Kennedy, speech to have been delivered in Austin, Texas, November 24, 1963

When he came to the White House, suddenly everyone saw what the New Frontier was going to mean.

It meant a poet at the Inauguration; it meant swooping around Washington, dropping in on delighted and flustered old friends; it meant going to the airport in zero weather without an overcoat; it meant a rocking chair and having the Hickory Hill seminar at the White House when Bobby and Ethel were out of town; it meant fun at presidential press conferences.

It meant dash, glamour, glitter, charm. It meant a new era of enlightenment and verve; it meant Nobel Prize winners dancing in the lobby; it meant authors and actors and poets and Shakespeare in the East Room. —Mary McGrory, The Evening Star, November 24, 1963

Claudia Taylor Johnson drew her initial impression of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy not from a luncheon for spouses or an evening social event in Washington, but rather, from Jack and Jackie’s 1953 Life magazine wedding pictures. Jackie, she thought, was “absolutely the essence of romance and beauty.” When the newlywed Kennedys moved to Washington, real life, as it turned out, was even more remarkable than the photos. As a freshman senator’s wife, Jackie was “a bird of beautiful plumage” who “couldn’t have been more gracious.” By comparison, Bird felt, she and the other Senate wives were “little gray wrens.” When the Kennedys married and Jack began his first term in the Senate, the Johnsons had already been in that chamber for four years. In the Washington, D.C., of the 1950s, the Johnsons and the Kennedys were not personally close. They didn’t run in the same social circles. In fact, by the 1956 Democratic convention, Jack and Lyndon had become quasi-overt rivals. Elected Senate majority leader in 1955 and approaching the peak of his power in Congress, LBJ conveyed his standing to Lady Bird, who ruled the roost of Senate wives. Despite the differences between their husbands, Bird graciously inducted Jackie into the carefully choreographed courtlike world of Washington spouses, hosting her at their brick Colonial on 30th Place, Northwest, and otherwise brushing up against her youth and glamour throughout the decade. Finding Jackie impossibly young, Lady Bird worked to put her at ease at these spouse gatherings; Jackie liked Lady Bird and made a point of connecting with the Johnsons’ elder daughter, Lynda, just eleven when they first met. But Washington was not entirely new to Jackie: At fourteen, she’d moved with her mother and her mother’s new husband to an estate in Virginia’s hunt country. She briefly attended the private girls’ school Holton-Arms, and she finished her undergraduate degree at George Washington University before marrying Jack.

An accomplished equestrian, Jackie summered in the Hamptons and Newport; had studied at Miss Porter’s School, Vassar, and the Sorbonne; and spoke French and Spanish. Lady Bird had studied French, briefly, and her Spanish was still limited to what she had picked up during her childhood in Texas. Jackie was twenty-three years old, Bird’s age when Lyndon had already served for two years in the House. While Bird worked assiduously to grease the wheels of Lyndon’s political office with endless socializing, charity events, and travel back and forth to and across Texas, Jackie struck Bird as being uninterested in the tedium of the game, content to spend her early years married to Jack as a society photographer for the Washington Times-Herald, taking a course in American history at Georgetown, or repairing to Hickory Hill, the country house in McLean, Virginia, that the newlyweds had purchased and later gave to Bobby and Ethel. Even if outward the cultural signs of their differences were rife, inward, the parallels between Lady Bird and Jackie ran deep. Each had made her mark in Washington as the young, newlywed wife of a young, ambitious husband. Both soon had to contend with their husbands’ infidelities and the humiliation of knowing that their own political and social circles knew of and, indeed, often facilitated the behavior. Miscarriage after miscarriage plagued their quest for offspring. And by 1960, both had husbands for whom serious illness made the prospect of death loom large—Addison’s disease dogged JFK throughout his adult life; depression, heart disease, and other itinerant maladies afflicted Lyndon. Both their husbands smoked and drank too much. Yet, it was not until the 1960 campaign that Jackie and Lady Bird had real occasion to fully evaluate each other. By pairing their husbands on a surprise presidential ticket, the party convention that summer in Los Angeles forced upon the two women a rapid, at times uncomfortable bond, but one that eventually grew into a lifelong empathy and unexpected intimacy.

* * *

Neither Lyndon nor Lady Bird went to the 1960 Los Angeles convention with the ambition of landing the vice-presidential slot. Having turned down Joe Kennedy’s earlier offer to finance an LBJ-JFK ticket in 1956, Lyndon had instead delivered the Texas delegation for JFK’s own failed bid for the vice presidency during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year—former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson was the presidential nominee—on the surface a magnanimous gesture, but one unambiguously intended to telegraph to the young senator and his family that LBJ had the power to act as kingmaker within the party. But by the end of the decade, Joe, Jack, and Bobby made their play to build a national profile and organization to elect Jack to the White House. By 1960, much to the Kennedy clan’s distaste, they needed LBJ, for his regional roots and political chops. In assessing his own prospects for a presidential run, Johnson remained clear-eyed that while as majority leader he could organize massive support in the U.S. Senate, his leverage in Congress would not automatically translate into the national stature necessary for a successful presidential run. After working as a congressional staffer and then running a New Deal youth employment program in Austin, he won his first House seat in a special election in 1937 with ten thousand dollars in financing from Lady Bird’s inheritance. He went on to win it handily, and mostly unopposed, in 1938, 1940, 1942, 1944, and 1946. He lost a bid for the Senate in 1941, and in 1948 he authorized a fraudulent voting operation to secure victory against a primary opponent, winning by just 87 votes, before winning in the general election that year.

Ambivalence, the prospect of loss, the suggestion of illegitimacy—these were constant themes in Lyndon Johnson’s political career. From Lady Bird’s perspective when it came to national office, her husband had been “deeply uncertain about his ability, his health, his being a southerner, whether that was a good thing for him to do.” Yet, by the end of 1959, Lyndon, she recalled, had about “sucked the orange dry” from his tenure as Senate majority leader. “We were reaching a point of no return, a certain defining of pathways” leading toward a presidential bid for Lyndon. Despite his mentor Congressman Sam Rayburn and his longtime aide, future Texas governor John Connally, pushing LBJ to publicize his campaign for the top of the ticket more aggressively, Lady Bird’s husband had instead run an undeclared, ambivalent campaign in 1960. Bird had been at her dying father’s bedside in a hospital in Marshall, Texas, a trip she would make five times that year, when what she knew to be a halfhearted Lyndon finally announced his candidacy just three days before the kickoff of the 1960 convention in Los Angeles. By then, Bobby Kennedy’s national strategy for his brother’s campaign enabled JFK to trounce LBJ by more than double in the first delegate ballot. The night after the bruising defeat, Lady Bird and Lyndon treated themselves to “the best night’s sleep we’d both had in a long time.” But the defeat was a humiliation, and only the first.

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