![]() Bird’s a true believer in progressive causes - civil rights, environmentalism - but she’s also the product of her own generation and background. 6: Blindsided By the mid-60s, you can hear a growing distance between Lady Bird and the protest movement that’s sweeping the country. And on her return to Washington, a sex scandal involving Lyndon’s closest aide presents an October surprise that could easily upend the election.Įp. But she’s met with open hostility, and worse. In the run up to the ’64 election, Lady Bird makes a Whistle Stop tour of the South - her home turf - to try to keep Southern Democrats from defecting over Civil Rights. We hear Lady Bird’s growing sense that Bobby Kennedy will become LBJ's political rival, and RFK’s bring-down-the-house performance at the Democratic Convention in the summer of 1964. In a memo to Lyndon just five months into his presidency, Lady Bird predicts how the Vietnam war will derail his administration, and proposes a clear end-date for his time in office - fully four years before he shocked the nation with his announcement in March of 1968 that he wouldn't run for reelection. This episode includes one of the most consequential. ![]() Vice President There are moments in Lady Bird’s audio diaries that truly re-write the known history of LBJ's presidency. One night, sitting in her private office in the White House family quarters, and reflecting on one of those shallow, glowing books about her written at the time, Lady Bird sighed and recorded, “Sometime, somewhere, I hope someone will write one with more depth about Lyndon and me.”Įp. The fraying of the social contract the Johnsons were so vital in knitting together 50 years ago.Īnd it made me think: How many other women are “in plain sight,” women in powerful positions and many more unseen women whose stories likewise make up the fabric of who we are and who we will become as a society. Thanks to her tapes, Lady Bird brings alive aspects of American politics that are highly relevant today: Race, political polarization, inequality and how Americans use their power abroad, often at our own peril. That marriage between the two LBJs? It was a political partnership and a powerful one at that. And to purchase an Austin radio station that she probably had a big hand in growing into a very successful media company.įrancis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images If they’ve read any of the LBJ histories, they might remember that she used her inheritance to finance Lyndon’s first congressional campaign. Some might remember she had a thing for wildflowers and planting them along highways. ![]() She came into office in the wake of the JFK assassination. She’s a first lady - with never a hair out of place on her petite frame. If I asked, say, a few hundred people anywhere over 25 or 30 years old, it’s a good bet they’d know a few things. Lady Bird Johnson isn’t exactly an obscure figure in the life of the nation. Once I listened to her often riveting, unique and surprising diary accounts - accounts of some of the most iconic moments in our country’s history - I began to see that all of the volumes of history and journalism written about the 1960s - Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Great Society - suffer from a pretty big gap without her voice, without an idea of her influence. ![]() I’m sort of an archive geek, so when I heard that Lady Bird had recorded her own White House tapes, the idea of getting to know her and her story didn’t sound so far-fetched. Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
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