Presidential historian Dallek (History/Boston Univ.; Hail to the
Chief, 1996) has all the dogged persistence of the scholar, but
little of a master biographer's panache. Yet even in his
conventional telling, LBJ emerges as a Texas-tall-tale hero who
walks improbably into an almost Sophoclean tragedy. LBJ's probably
apocryphal rejoinder to German chancellor Ludwig Erhard's query on
whether he had been born in a log cabin - "No . . . I was born in a
manger" - captures the Texan's grandiosity, yet Dallek also reveals
a politician of surpassing intelligence and drive undone by raging
insecurity. Picking up where his 1991 volume Lone Star Rising left
off, Dallek begins with a chapter on Johnson's two years of
frustration and irrelevance as vice president. John Kennedy's
assassination filled him with "the guilt of a competitive older
brother . . . who suddenly displaces his younger, more successful
rival," but also catapulted him into the only suitable outlet for
his whirlwind energy. Dallek offers a comprehensive account of how
LBJ masterminded epochal reform measures that affected nearly every
American, including civil rights, Medicare, federal aid to
education, consumer protection, and environmentalism. Yet he also
acknowledges that Johnson spent millions on the war on poverty in
what really was an experiment. Few Oval Office occupants had more
extensive pre-presidential experience in foreign affairs than
Johnson, but Dallek demonstrates that, as early as his response to
anti-American agitation in Panama in 1964, LBJ behaved erratically.
In Vietnam, his confusion reflected both a sincere commitment to
halting communism and a mounting paranoia that Dallek says "raises
questions about executive incapacity that can neither be ignored
nor easily addressed." Dallek's extensive use of oral histories and
interviews has uncovered some fascinating details (e.g., Johnson
favored Nelson Rockefeller as his successor), but ultimately does
little to encourage new understanding of LBJ. But this remains a
fair, impressively researched reassessment of this most complicated
of presidents. (Kirkus Reviews)
Flawed Giant--the monumental concluding volume to Robert Dallek's biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson--provides the most through, engrossing look ever at Johnson's years in the national spotlight. Drawing upon hours of newly released White House tapes and dozens of interviews with people close to Johnson, Dallek shows LBJ as the visionary leader who worked his will on Congress like no president before or since, and also displays the depth of his private anguish as he became increasingly ensnared in Vietnam. With a thoughtful, evenhanded style, Dallek reveals both the greatness and the tangled complexities of one of the most extravagant characters ever to step onto the presidential stage.
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