Political junkies take note.
If you subscribe to HBO in any form, or can beg or borrow access from a friend, be sure to watch the HBO movie, “All the way.”
It’s a movie adaptation of Seattle playwright Robert Schenkkan’s stage play which follows Lyndon Baines Johnson through the intense period from the beginning of his presidency in November 1963 through the 1964 election, where “All the way with LBJ” was the Democratic candidate’s campaign theme.
Count me on the side of critics who called Bryan Cranston’s depiction of LBJ “mesmerizing.”
We stumbled on the movie by accident a few nights ago while looking for something to watch, and were unaware of all the press attention it received following its debut earlier this year.
If you lived through those years back in the 1960s, it’s powerful and disturbing. If you’re way too young for that, it’s a pretty close-to-real-life look behind the scenes of hardball politics.
“Politics is war by other means,” LBJ muses at one point. Then he quickly circles back. “Politics is war.” Period.
I’ve read several of the books about LBJ, including a couple of valumes of Robert Caro’s intimate portrait of the man and his career, and collections of the secret White House tapes compiled by historian Michael Beschloss. I thought “All the way” captured much of what’s there in the historical record, and made it very human.
Johnson was being hit by competing political forces on all sides, the growing civil rights movement, the overt racism of the formerly solid Democratic South, a conservative challenge by GOP candidate Barry Goldwater, a deteriorating political and situation in Southeast Asia. We watch as he alternatively cajoles, bluffs, arm twists, horse trades, and outright bullies those who stand in his way, resorting to temper tantrums where necessary.
And there were great performances by those playing the other characters, from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey and Georgia’s Richard Russell.
Good entertainment and engrossing history at the same time.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I voted for LBJ and I know he accomplished a lot of good things. But I just didn’t care for him as a person–such an egomaniac! So I would never be able to watch a movie or TV series about him. The real thing was too much to witness all those years ago.
Look at how riveted we can be like this to presidential politics!
It’s because it has become a participatory sport, LBJ as LeBron James, or watching at-peril mountain bikers negotiating downhill twists & turns at the Rio Olympics with us at their shoulders via technology-based mini-cams, or ourselves mentally rewriting a candidate’s words before they become trip-ups in real time, which is exactly what one of our own, Kellyanne Conway, has been hired to do inside the Trump campaign.
An entire wall at a large used book shop in Merced, California, is devoted to “presidential” books, including all six volumes of Winston Churchill’s unique shoulder-cam view of “World War II”.
Notwithstanding Robert Caro’s four volumes of LBJ bios (with a fifth on the way), there are at least 25 “presidenial” gems that are fit for full cover to cover reads.
Edmund Morris wrote three packed volumes on Theodore Roosevelt, “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt”, “Theodore Rex” and in 2010 “Colonel Roosevelt”. In between, in 1999, Edmund Morris finished a steeply readable “Dutch: A Memeior of Ronald Regan”.
Colin Powell wrote a powerful “pre-presidential” primer “My American Journey” in 1995.
Barack Obama’s pre-presidential “Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams of My Father” have so far earned $6 million.
Back in 2000, when John McCain was a viable candidate, except in the minds of his party operators, his “Faith in My Fathers” appeared just in time.
In 2006 the hero of the day, President Musharraf of Pakistan, wrote “In the Line of Fire” about his presidency in clear CNN English.
Arguably the most substantive of all is President Clinton’s 960-page 2004 masterpiece blandly entitled “My Life”, a worthy textbook in the workings of government.
Hillary (“my emails are so boring”) Clinton recently published “Hard Choices”, inevitably boring and yet relevant.
Timothy Geithner drives us through the first four years of the Lehman crisis in “Stress Test”.
David McCullough knows his research and keeps the Fonding Fathers alive in “John Adams”.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair carries on purposefully in 2010 in the pre-Theresa May treatise “A Journey”.
Henry Kissenger cuts to the chase in overview a couple of years ago in “World Order”.
Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, had time while he was still Mayor of London to write “The Churchill Factor”. Never give up on a dude who can write this well.
If you’re not a Woodrow Wilson fan yet try the brand new bio “Wilson” by A. Scott Berg.
And in paperback, William Manchester’s “American Caesar”.
There were two photos of LBJ in the newspapers (not on the same day) that I can never get out of my head (I was in grad school at the time). 1. He used each of his two hands to grab each of the two ears of his pet dog and raise the dog into the air. The photo caption quoted a bible verse excoriating “him who taketh a dog by the ears.” 2. LBJ had abdominal surgery and, while still in the hospital, he pulled up his gown to display the foot-long scar. Another picture I also cannot get out of my head but which was not in any newspaper: reporters (including at least one female) said that LBJ, not wanting to let time go to waste, would let reporters interview him through the open door of the bathroom while he was seated on the porcelain throne.
LBJ’s legacy will forever be linked to the Vietnam War, and all that entailed. But when it came to setting down a domestic agenda and making that vision a reality in modern times, the man had no equal. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the anti-housing discrimination act, Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other Great Society programs. This is the kind of stuff that impacts millions of Americans every day. Admire JFK, Reagan, and Obama for their charisma, if you want. But what LBJ left behind was far more meaningful than great speeches and feel-good nostalgia. Johnson accomplished more in his one full term in office than Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, and Obama did with two terms.