For the oldest of us, the Evening News died yesterday, the "most trusted man in America" who came into our living rooms every weekday night and told us about what was happening beyond our own senses, "And that's the way it is."
For two tumultuous decades, before 24/7 cable and the Internet, Walter Cronkite was the face of the news, mediating between millions of Americans and the raw chaos of events, ordering the flood of words and pictures into a hierarchy of importance and sending viewers off to live the other 23 and a half hours feeling well-informed.
It was an illusion, of course, but Cronkite was the ideal embodiment of reassurance that the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s was not upending the world as they knew it.
In the days before O'Reilly, Olbermann et al, he presented violent scenes at home and abroad with a McLuhanesque cool that drained most of the threat from them, giving only rare glimpses of human emotion in his welling eyes and shaking voice as he reported JFK's death, the disorder of the 1968 Democratic Convention and the sight of a man walking on the moon.
But beyond that calm façade were good journalistic instincts about the failed war in Vietnam ("If I've lost Cronkite," LBJ said. "I've lost middle America") and the meaning of Watergate (along with Woodward and Bernstein, CBS News was following the break-in while the rest of the media slept).
In the flood of tributes that inevitably follow the death of such a figure, the one that undoubtedly would have meant the most to Walter Cronkite was that he was always a good reporter. That he certainly was.
Showing posts with label Vietnam war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam war. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Death of the Best and Brightest
Robert S. McNamara, who died today at 93, was the exemplar of American know-how gone awry in a world too complicated for the practical mindset that built the most powerful nation on earth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
As one of JFK's "whiz kids" who went on to become LBJ's architect of the disastrous war in Vietnam, McNamara exemplified the limits of intellectual brilliance in a subtle and savage world.
"What went wrong was a basic misunderstanding or misevaluation of the threat to our security represented by the North Vietnamese,” he said, looking back in an oral history. “It led President Eisenhower in 1954 to say that if Vietnam were lost, or if Laos and Vietnam were lost, the dominoes would fall...
"I am certain we exaggerated the threat. Had we never intervened, I now doubt that the dominoes would have fallen; I doubt that all of Asia would have fallen under communist control...
“We didn’t know our opposition. We didn’t understand the Chinese, we didn’t understand the Vietnamese, particularly the North Vietnamese. So the first lesson is know your opponents.”
A Harvard professor who left to become president of Ford after the financial devastation of his wife's illness, McNamara successfully brought his systems-analysis approach to running the Pentagon but became the main figure described in David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," Kennedy's crew of academic and industry brainiacs who pushed "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam.
In later years, McNamara rued his role. "External military force cannot reconstruct a failed state, and Vietnam, during much of that period, was a failed state politically," he told CNN in a 1996 interview. "We didn't recognize it as such."
The lessons of his life are a critical reminder for the Obama Administration of the hubris that can blindside brilliance without accompanying insight into the realities of human behavior. Robert S. McNamara learned them too late, but they can help guide American policy today.
As one of JFK's "whiz kids" who went on to become LBJ's architect of the disastrous war in Vietnam, McNamara exemplified the limits of intellectual brilliance in a subtle and savage world.
"What went wrong was a basic misunderstanding or misevaluation of the threat to our security represented by the North Vietnamese,” he said, looking back in an oral history. “It led President Eisenhower in 1954 to say that if Vietnam were lost, or if Laos and Vietnam were lost, the dominoes would fall...
"I am certain we exaggerated the threat. Had we never intervened, I now doubt that the dominoes would have fallen; I doubt that all of Asia would have fallen under communist control...
“We didn’t know our opposition. We didn’t understand the Chinese, we didn’t understand the Vietnamese, particularly the North Vietnamese. So the first lesson is know your opponents.”
A Harvard professor who left to become president of Ford after the financial devastation of his wife's illness, McNamara successfully brought his systems-analysis approach to running the Pentagon but became the main figure described in David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," Kennedy's crew of academic and industry brainiacs who pushed "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam.
In later years, McNamara rued his role. "External military force cannot reconstruct a failed state, and Vietnam, during much of that period, was a failed state politically," he told CNN in a 1996 interview. "We didn't recognize it as such."
The lessons of his life are a critical reminder for the Obama Administration of the hubris that can blindside brilliance without accompanying insight into the realities of human behavior. Robert S. McNamara learned them too late, but they can help guide American policy today.
Friday, November 07, 2008
John Leonard
The writer-critic-editor who died today was a gifted man who never seemed to fit into categories. It started when he was a teenager and applied for a job as a Disneyland guide. "I failed the physical," he recalled. "I wasn't blond enough."
He went from being an "apostate" intern at William F. Buckley's National Review to editor of the New York Times Book Review, where he breathed life into a staid journal until 1970 when he devoted an entire issue to books against the war in Vietnam and lost his job for not being "centrist" enough.
From then on, he devoted himself to writing, in his words, "sorting the signals of an overheated publicity culture, manufacturing opinions instead of widgets" and earned a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle for seeing into the heart of every form of expression from serious literature to sitcoms.
In my working lifetime among writers, there were few I admired as much.
He went from being an "apostate" intern at William F. Buckley's National Review to editor of the New York Times Book Review, where he breathed life into a staid journal until 1970 when he devoted an entire issue to books against the war in Vietnam and lost his job for not being "centrist" enough.
From then on, he devoted himself to writing, in his words, "sorting the signals of an overheated publicity culture, manufacturing opinions instead of widgets" and earned a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle for seeing into the heart of every form of expression from serious literature to sitcoms.
In my working lifetime among writers, there were few I admired as much.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
A Noun, a Verb and POW
In the Democratic debates, Joe Biden famously dismissed Rudy Giuliani with: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11...there’s nothing else."
Now, Biden may have the chance to do the same for his Senate friend as John McCain's campaign reflexively parrots POW to any questions raised--about how many homes McCain owns, about whether or not he was in a "cone of silence" at the Saddleback Forum, even the gaffe of suggesting his wife Cindy enter the topless Miss Buffalo Chip contest.
As Maureen Dowd puts it, "His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength--and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his POW experience--by flashing the POW card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. The captivity is already amply displayed in posters and TV advertisements."
Giuliani abruptly discovered a voter expiration date for cashing in on 9/11. Will McCain's campaign discover that it is, in the World War II term, "a bridge too far" from the Hanoi Hilton to the White House?
"While McCain’s experience was heroic," Dowd asks, "did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to US military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, 'We are all Georgians,' mentality?"
McCain has opened the door to such questions by putting his POW experience so close to the center of his campaign. He suffered for his country three decades ago, but does that qualify him to end its pain here and abroad in 2009?
Now, Biden may have the chance to do the same for his Senate friend as John McCain's campaign reflexively parrots POW to any questions raised--about how many homes McCain owns, about whether or not he was in a "cone of silence" at the Saddleback Forum, even the gaffe of suggesting his wife Cindy enter the topless Miss Buffalo Chip contest.
As Maureen Dowd puts it, "His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength--and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his POW experience--by flashing the POW card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. The captivity is already amply displayed in posters and TV advertisements."
Giuliani abruptly discovered a voter expiration date for cashing in on 9/11. Will McCain's campaign discover that it is, in the World War II term, "a bridge too far" from the Hanoi Hilton to the White House?
"While McCain’s experience was heroic," Dowd asks, "did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to US military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, 'We are all Georgians,' mentality?"
McCain has opened the door to such questions by putting his POW experience so close to the center of his campaign. He suffered for his country three decades ago, but does that qualify him to end its pain here and abroad in 2009?
Shedding Tears for Hillary
Memo to disaffected Clinton Democrats arriving in Denver: Forty years ago at the convention in Chicago, as a delegate supporting anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, I was tear-gassed by the police of Mayor Richard Daley, a supporter of Hubert Humphrey. The Democrats lost that election and Richard Nixon moved into the White House.
The internal strife will be less riotous this week, but the danger of self-inflicted damage is just as great. The passions in 1968 were political, about ending a war, but the powerful feelings of 2008 are personal, about perceived sexism and disrespect for the first woman within reach of a presidential nomination.
From the sidelines, hopeful Republicans are shedding crocodile tears for Hillary Clinton with TV commercials about being "passed over," and ardent feminists like William Kristol are bemoaning "The Democrats' Glass Ceiling."
Such sympathy is touching, coming from those whose political sensitivities have brought on a devastating war and economic chaos, but Democrats of all persuasions are faced with the challenge of not letting their own passion for fairness and justice lead to another victory for politicians whose priorities are power and privilege.
That would be cause for sadness beyond tears.
The internal strife will be less riotous this week, but the danger of self-inflicted damage is just as great. The passions in 1968 were political, about ending a war, but the powerful feelings of 2008 are personal, about perceived sexism and disrespect for the first woman within reach of a presidential nomination.
From the sidelines, hopeful Republicans are shedding crocodile tears for Hillary Clinton with TV commercials about being "passed over," and ardent feminists like William Kristol are bemoaning "The Democrats' Glass Ceiling."
Such sympathy is touching, coming from those whose political sensitivities have brought on a devastating war and economic chaos, but Democrats of all persuasions are faced with the challenge of not letting their own passion for fairness and justice lead to another victory for politicians whose priorities are power and privilege.
That would be cause for sadness beyond tears.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
RFK: Tears for a Tough Guy
Forty years ago tonight, hours before Robert Kennedy was killed, I was campaigning as a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention. When a man rose to spew out Kennedy hatred, I cut him off and said, "I'm running to stop the war. If McCarthy drops out, I'll vote for Kennedy."
Two days later, from an office window, I was looking down at a line of people more than a mile long inching toward St. Patrick's Cathedral on a brutally hot day to view RFK's body lying there.
Watching became unbearable, and I went down with others to wheel a plastic barrel on a dolly and hand out paper cups of water. The air was heavy with heat and tears. Without words, there was an occasional meeting of eyes in shared sadness. In that year of political murder and chaos, we were mourning the loss of more than one man.
Robert Kennedy had been his brother's fierce protector, enforcer, campaign manager, Attorney General and, after the assassination, keeper of the flame. But like JFK before him, in the last days of his life, he became something more.
In late 1963, stunned by grief, he was enraged with me for publishing excerpts from a book of family essays about his oldest brother Joe, who died in World War II. "He keeps sending me rockets." Pierre Salinger said sadly. "If he needs to fight with someone now," I answered, "it isn't going to be me."
The book was in the Library of Congress for all to see, but I sent RFK the copyright of the article, along with a contribution to the Presidential library, and he was mollified to the point of writing back that he was "touched" by an editorial I had written about JFK's death.
Later we skirmished over excerpts from a guileless book by Red Fay, a JFK buddy, but soon afterward RFK, by then Senator from New York, came to lunch in our magazine's dining room to make peace and went into the kitchen afterward to charm the chef by comparing notes on their Irish ancestors.
In 1967, appalled by the unending war in Vietnam, I was among those urging him to oppose Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries. He declined, on the grounds that it would look like a personal vendetta, and we turned to Senator Eugene McCarthy.
When Kennedy declared his candidacy, many of us reluctantly stuck with McCarthy, a vain, arrogant man who had nonetheless been there when it counted. But during the campaign, RFK found his voice, just as his brother had in 1960. If he had lived, he would have won the presidency.
At his funeral Mass, Ted Kennedy said, "My brother need not be idolized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life [but] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
"Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
Before the year was out, Ted Sorensen called about a memoir RFK had written about the Cuban Missile Crisis. My company bought all the rights for $1 million, which would go to trust funds for his children. We ran it in McCall's and arranged for publication throughout the world.
Looking back from another century, Robert Kennedy's book could have served as a primer for George W. Bush in confronting his pseudo-nuclear Iraq crisis. With missiles 90 miles from our shores, JFK rejected military advice for an air strike or invasion, lined up support from the United Nations, gave the Russians every chance to back down and, when they did, ordered that there be no gloating about victory. No CIA “slam dunk,” “Mission Accomplished” or “Bring it on!”
Robert Kennedy played a crucial part in those thirteen days, and like his brother before him, was still learning and growing during his all-too-few years. Looking at today's politicians, that alone is cause for tears.
Two days later, from an office window, I was looking down at a line of people more than a mile long inching toward St. Patrick's Cathedral on a brutally hot day to view RFK's body lying there.
Watching became unbearable, and I went down with others to wheel a plastic barrel on a dolly and hand out paper cups of water. The air was heavy with heat and tears. Without words, there was an occasional meeting of eyes in shared sadness. In that year of political murder and chaos, we were mourning the loss of more than one man.
Robert Kennedy had been his brother's fierce protector, enforcer, campaign manager, Attorney General and, after the assassination, keeper of the flame. But like JFK before him, in the last days of his life, he became something more.
In late 1963, stunned by grief, he was enraged with me for publishing excerpts from a book of family essays about his oldest brother Joe, who died in World War II. "He keeps sending me rockets." Pierre Salinger said sadly. "If he needs to fight with someone now," I answered, "it isn't going to be me."
The book was in the Library of Congress for all to see, but I sent RFK the copyright of the article, along with a contribution to the Presidential library, and he was mollified to the point of writing back that he was "touched" by an editorial I had written about JFK's death.
Later we skirmished over excerpts from a guileless book by Red Fay, a JFK buddy, but soon afterward RFK, by then Senator from New York, came to lunch in our magazine's dining room to make peace and went into the kitchen afterward to charm the chef by comparing notes on their Irish ancestors.
In 1967, appalled by the unending war in Vietnam, I was among those urging him to oppose Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries. He declined, on the grounds that it would look like a personal vendetta, and we turned to Senator Eugene McCarthy.
When Kennedy declared his candidacy, many of us reluctantly stuck with McCarthy, a vain, arrogant man who had nonetheless been there when it counted. But during the campaign, RFK found his voice, just as his brother had in 1960. If he had lived, he would have won the presidency.
At his funeral Mass, Ted Kennedy said, "My brother need not be idolized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life [but] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
"Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
Before the year was out, Ted Sorensen called about a memoir RFK had written about the Cuban Missile Crisis. My company bought all the rights for $1 million, which would go to trust funds for his children. We ran it in McCall's and arranged for publication throughout the world.
Looking back from another century, Robert Kennedy's book could have served as a primer for George W. Bush in confronting his pseudo-nuclear Iraq crisis. With missiles 90 miles from our shores, JFK rejected military advice for an air strike or invasion, lined up support from the United Nations, gave the Russians every chance to back down and, when they did, ordered that there be no gloating about victory. No CIA “slam dunk,” “Mission Accomplished” or “Bring it on!”
Robert Kennedy played a crucial part in those thirteen days, and like his brother before him, was still learning and growing during his all-too-few years. Looking at today's politicians, that alone is cause for tears.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
A Role Model for Both Clinton and Obama
The race and gender issues that haunt this year's campaigns were embodied by one person who ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972 and won 152 delegates before losing to Sen. George McGovern.
As a first-term House member, Shirley Chisholm had even less experience then than Obama does now, but she was an inspirational figure who understood the importance of reaching out. When her racist opponent George Wallace was shot during the campaign, she visited him in the hospital. Years later, when Chisholm was pushing a bill to give domestic workers a minimum wage, Wallace got her enough votes from southern Congressmen to pass it.
We had been together on the New York delegation to the raucous 1968 Democratic convention, which nominated Hubert Humphrey and failed to pass a resolution to end the war in Vietnam. But Chisholm won a seat in Congress that year and, what she said in her first speech on the House floor could serve as a guide for both Clinton and Obama now:
"We Americans have come to feel that it is our mission to make the world free. We believe that we are the good guys, everywhere, in Vietnam, in Latin America, wherever we go. We believe we are the good guys at home, too...Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.
"I am deeply disappointed at the clear evidence that the number one priority of the new administration is to buy more and more and more weapons of war...and to ignore the war we must fight here, the war that is not optional. There is only one way, I believe, to turn these policies around. The Congress must respond to the mandate that the American people have clearly expressed. They have said, 'End this war. Stop the waste. Stop the killing. Do something for our own people first.'"
She was ahead of her time in more ways than one.
As a first-term House member, Shirley Chisholm had even less experience then than Obama does now, but she was an inspirational figure who understood the importance of reaching out. When her racist opponent George Wallace was shot during the campaign, she visited him in the hospital. Years later, when Chisholm was pushing a bill to give domestic workers a minimum wage, Wallace got her enough votes from southern Congressmen to pass it.
We had been together on the New York delegation to the raucous 1968 Democratic convention, which nominated Hubert Humphrey and failed to pass a resolution to end the war in Vietnam. But Chisholm won a seat in Congress that year and, what she said in her first speech on the House floor could serve as a guide for both Clinton and Obama now:
"We Americans have come to feel that it is our mission to make the world free. We believe that we are the good guys, everywhere, in Vietnam, in Latin America, wherever we go. We believe we are the good guys at home, too...Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.
"I am deeply disappointed at the clear evidence that the number one priority of the new administration is to buy more and more and more weapons of war...and to ignore the war we must fight here, the war that is not optional. There is only one way, I believe, to turn these policies around. The Congress must respond to the mandate that the American people have clearly expressed. They have said, 'End this war. Stop the waste. Stop the killing. Do something for our own people first.'"
She was ahead of her time in more ways than one.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Exits: Paul Newman and Robert Redford
“Certain friendships,” Robert Redford once said about Paul Newman, “are too good and too strong to talk about.” This month, Redford broke his silence to say that the final movie they planned to make together was not to be:
"It's not happening, sadly. Paul and I were planning to do a film version of Bill Bryson's wonderful book ‘A Walk In The Woods.’
"I got the rights to the movie four years ago, and we couldn't decide if we were too old to do it. Then we decided, 'Let's go for it.'
"But time passed, and Paul's been getting old fast. I think things deteriorated for him. Finally, two months ago he called and said, 'I gotta retire.' The picture was written and everything. It breaks my heart."
Like their other work together, it would have been about the friendship of men, two old college buddies walking the Appalachian trail from Georgia to Maine.
Toward the end of life, biology is destiny. A British actor of the past century, A. E. Matthews, who worked to the age of 90, explained, “I get up every morning, look at the obituaries in the Times and, if my name isn’t there, get dressed and go to work.”
But last spring, the 82-year-old Newman told an interviewer, "I’m not able to work at the level I would want to. You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me."
Redford at 71 has a new picture coming out next month, “Lions for Lambs,” which he directed and plays a leading role in. More polemical than his previous work, Redford hopes the movie will encourage young people “to take command of their voice" in American politics.
Over long careers, Newman and Redford personified an alternative American manhood to the full-throttle macho of John Wayne and the young Clint Eastwood--a more complex mix of strength, wit and sensitivity. (Newman turned down "Dirty Harry.")
Off-screen, they lived away from Hollywood--Newman in Connecticut, Redford in Utah--lives of social responsibility rather than movie-star celebrity.
In 1968, my path crossed Newman’s as we both stepped out of our working lives to oppose the war in Vietnam. When I invited him to lunch with a dozen magazine editors, he told me the prospect of talking about himself was so unnerving he had stayed too long in a steam bath to calm down. Sitting next to him, I had to titrate the balance of beer and ice water to keep him relaxed and hydrated as he eloquently described his feelings about the war.
In the early 1980s, our mutual friend A. E. Hotchner wrote about their light-hearted efforts to bottle and sell Newman's salad dressing. Since then, a line of Newman's Own products has earned $200 million for charity.
Meanwhile, Redford was creating a mecca for independent film makers in Sundance, Utah and giving their work recognition and commercial opportunities.
As Newman exits from the public stage and Redford keeps working for the public good, those repeated showings of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" on TV are reminders of how much actors can accomplish in what we call real life.
"It's not happening, sadly. Paul and I were planning to do a film version of Bill Bryson's wonderful book ‘A Walk In The Woods.’
"I got the rights to the movie four years ago, and we couldn't decide if we were too old to do it. Then we decided, 'Let's go for it.'
"But time passed, and Paul's been getting old fast. I think things deteriorated for him. Finally, two months ago he called and said, 'I gotta retire.' The picture was written and everything. It breaks my heart."
Like their other work together, it would have been about the friendship of men, two old college buddies walking the Appalachian trail from Georgia to Maine.
Toward the end of life, biology is destiny. A British actor of the past century, A. E. Matthews, who worked to the age of 90, explained, “I get up every morning, look at the obituaries in the Times and, if my name isn’t there, get dressed and go to work.”
But last spring, the 82-year-old Newman told an interviewer, "I’m not able to work at the level I would want to. You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me."
Redford at 71 has a new picture coming out next month, “Lions for Lambs,” which he directed and plays a leading role in. More polemical than his previous work, Redford hopes the movie will encourage young people “to take command of their voice" in American politics.
Over long careers, Newman and Redford personified an alternative American manhood to the full-throttle macho of John Wayne and the young Clint Eastwood--a more complex mix of strength, wit and sensitivity. (Newman turned down "Dirty Harry.")
Off-screen, they lived away from Hollywood--Newman in Connecticut, Redford in Utah--lives of social responsibility rather than movie-star celebrity.
In 1968, my path crossed Newman’s as we both stepped out of our working lives to oppose the war in Vietnam. When I invited him to lunch with a dozen magazine editors, he told me the prospect of talking about himself was so unnerving he had stayed too long in a steam bath to calm down. Sitting next to him, I had to titrate the balance of beer and ice water to keep him relaxed and hydrated as he eloquently described his feelings about the war.
In the early 1980s, our mutual friend A. E. Hotchner wrote about their light-hearted efforts to bottle and sell Newman's salad dressing. Since then, a line of Newman's Own products has earned $200 million for charity.
Meanwhile, Redford was creating a mecca for independent film makers in Sundance, Utah and giving their work recognition and commercial opportunities.
As Newman exits from the public stage and Redford keeps working for the public good, those repeated showings of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" on TV are reminders of how much actors can accomplish in what we call real life.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Farewell to a Lady
"My mother," Lynda Bird Johnson once told me, "thinks well of everybody. She's even sure the Devil's been maligned. Just got a bad press.”
I got to know the First Lady during the time her daughter worked for me when I was editor of McCalls.
She was womanly in a way that has gone out of style. Without the chic of Jacqueline Kennedy or the country-club cool of Laura Bush, Claudia Taylor Johnson devoted most of her life to herding a bull-in-the-china-shop husband from the Texas panhandle to the White House.
When he had a massive heart attack in 1955, she slept for a month on a cot in his hospital room.
"I never turned over in the night," LBJ later recalled, "that I didn't hear Lady Bird's feet hit the floor coming to see what I needed." After that, she changed his diet, subdued his frantic schedule and kept him alive with her positive outlook.
She will be remembered for her dedication to beautifying America with wildflowers, but Lyndon Johnson was her life’s work. She never stopped.
Not long before he died, I spent a weekend at their ranch as she was managing his life down to the last millimeter to keep him from sliding into despair.
At dinner I watched Lady Bird covertly sliding serving dishes out of reach and subtly signaling the server to remove them before he could ask for more and keeping the conversation cheerful, making sure to focus on him so he would be forced to respond. She surrounded him with friends and grandchildren and, as always, kept him within bounds by softly saying, “Now, Lyndon...”
History will have mixed feelings about a President who changed race relations in America forever by pushing through Congress against all odds the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the rallying cry of the movement, “We shall overcome,” and then damaged the country with his stubborn refusal to end a disastrous war.
But whatever he achieved would never have been possible without the loving woman who died today at 94.
I got to know the First Lady during the time her daughter worked for me when I was editor of McCalls.
She was womanly in a way that has gone out of style. Without the chic of Jacqueline Kennedy or the country-club cool of Laura Bush, Claudia Taylor Johnson devoted most of her life to herding a bull-in-the-china-shop husband from the Texas panhandle to the White House.
When he had a massive heart attack in 1955, she slept for a month on a cot in his hospital room.
"I never turned over in the night," LBJ later recalled, "that I didn't hear Lady Bird's feet hit the floor coming to see what I needed." After that, she changed his diet, subdued his frantic schedule and kept him alive with her positive outlook.
She will be remembered for her dedication to beautifying America with wildflowers, but Lyndon Johnson was her life’s work. She never stopped.
Not long before he died, I spent a weekend at their ranch as she was managing his life down to the last millimeter to keep him from sliding into despair.
At dinner I watched Lady Bird covertly sliding serving dishes out of reach and subtly signaling the server to remove them before he could ask for more and keeping the conversation cheerful, making sure to focus on him so he would be forced to respond. She surrounded him with friends and grandchildren and, as always, kept him within bounds by softly saying, “Now, Lyndon...”
History will have mixed feelings about a President who changed race relations in America forever by pushing through Congress against all odds the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the rallying cry of the movement, “We shall overcome,” and then damaged the country with his stubborn refusal to end a disastrous war.
But whatever he achieved would never have been possible without the loving woman who died today at 94.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Funny Lady
Judging from the caricature illustrating her “Shenaningans” space on Politico, Anne Schroeder is an attractive young person whose blog “shifts the spotlight from the buttoned-up, straight side of politics to the fun, tawdry and light side of Washington culture.”
Today’s fun consists of accusing Paul Newman of “scare mongering” in a message to raise funds for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Newman, who is a contemporary of mine, can take care of himself, but disgust overcomes discretion in leading me to observe that, as someone who got on Nixon’s Enemies List for trying to protect the country he loves, the octogenarian actor is not a suitable subject for someone less than half his age who is an expert on the “tawdry.”
Ms. Schroeder was probably a pre-natal gleam in her father’s eye when Newman and I were criss-crossing Indiana in 1968, begging voters to help stop an insane war. If he has something to say about politics today, he has earned the right to say it without heckling from the cheap seats.
Today’s fun consists of accusing Paul Newman of “scare mongering” in a message to raise funds for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Newman, who is a contemporary of mine, can take care of himself, but disgust overcomes discretion in leading me to observe that, as someone who got on Nixon’s Enemies List for trying to protect the country he loves, the octogenarian actor is not a suitable subject for someone less than half his age who is an expert on the “tawdry.”
Ms. Schroeder was probably a pre-natal gleam in her father’s eye when Newman and I were criss-crossing Indiana in 1968, begging voters to help stop an insane war. If he has something to say about politics today, he has earned the right to say it without heckling from the cheap seats.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)