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The Preamble
Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight with Julia Sweig
00:46:47
Sharon talks with author Julia Sweig about her book, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight. The research and writing took Julia over six years, as she meticulously poured over the details of not only Lady Bird’s life, but also the 1960s and the state of the nation at that time.
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- [00:00]
Sharon McMahon
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- [04:10]
Julia Sweig
I'm chatting today with Julia Swig, who has written a fascinating portrait of a first lady that I feel like many Americans know very little about. We know a lot more about people like Abigail Adams and Jackie Kennedy and of course some of the more recent first ladies. But you've written a fascinating portrait of Lady Bird Johnson.
- [04:34]
Unnamed Historian
Lady Bird is not the first person I personally would have chosen to write about. In fact, when I was hunting around for my next book topic and I wrote about foreign policy and diplomatic history and never about first ladies, she wouldn't have been my first choice. She was in the White house in the 1960s and married, of course, to Lyndon Johnson, who we associate with two big parts of recent American history, civil rights and the Vietnam War and American protest at home. So three components of the Johnson era. And Lady Bird was his spouse and his political partner for the 30 years before he landed in the White House, which happened when he was vice president, to Jack Kennedy when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in November of 63. She was a total political animal. As it turns out, I live outside of Washington, D.C. and Washingtonians associate her with Daffodils and tulips and the incredible springtime blooms that are associated with what was called beautification. But in fact, she had a huge strategic role to play in the Johnson White House and was a pioneering environmentalist. And I didn't know either of those two things until I discovered how she recorded her own history of her time in the White House.
- [05:59]
Julia Sweig
I'm very excited to hear more about that. Can you give everybody who's listening a little bit more about your background and how you came upon her recorded history?
- [06:10]
Unnamed Historian
My background is working in foreign policy think tanks in Washington, D.C. for most of my professional life. I came of age in the Reagan era and became kind of a political animal myself at the time when American foreign policy was very much on display in Latin America. I am bilingual in Spanish. Having the Spanish language drew me to Latin America. I had a professor in college who was a documentary filmmaker there. He sent a group of us to Cuba. This was at a time when nobody knew anything about Cuba. And my kind of intellectual policy and political interests all congealed around US Policy in Latin America. Nothing to do with Lady Bird Johnson. But my first book was a history of the 1950s in Cuba based on Fidel Castro's presidential archive. I was able to kind of disrupt the received wisdom about who Castro was, but especially how he took power and the women involved in that time in Cuban history. So I've always been interested in using primary source documents to upheave the conventional wisdom about something. I got to a certain point where I just didn't want to be working on the same topics I'd been doing forever. I needed a pivot, and I had worked in a world that was completely dominated by men and foreign policy in Washington. And I wanted to do some thinking about how women navigate power. And that was the portal that led me to Lady Bird Johnson. And from there, once I discovered that she had recorded 123 hours of tapes about her own experience in the White House, tapes that had never been really incorporated into the story about lbj. This is the other LBJ and her tapes. That's what really sealed the deal to me, that I should kind of dive in and try to figure out her story.
- [08:13]
Julia Sweig
That is a huge undertaking to listen to that much recorded history.
- [08:20]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. And it was definitely the hardest thing that I've ever done because it was time consuming. And I also had to teach myself that history. I'm a historian who can riff forever about Latin American foreign policy, but Not American politics and history in the 1960s. So I had to teach it to myself, place her in context, fact check her, read all the secondary source material about Lyndon Johnson himself, and then try to make sense of how she fit into all of it.
- [08:57]
Julia Sweig
Where are the tapes? How did you become aware of them? How did you obtain the tapes? These are things that people will want to know for sure.
- [09:04]
Unnamed Historian
Well, this was kind of luck and right place, right time, and it's now almost 10 years ago, which is kind of shocking. I had embarked upon the search for my next book topic. I knew I wanted to write about women in power. I had lunch with a person who at the time was an editor at my publishing house, Random House, who is himself a presidential historian, John Meacham. And was talking with him about what my new topic or subject would be. And we didn't really land on anything. And when I was going back to the airport, I looked at my then BlackBerry and there was an email that says, you know, Lady Bird kept a diary. Why don't we start there? Because there's a big power story between Lady Bird and Lyndon. He wrote. So that began and I went down to the LBJ library to answer your question in Austin, Texas, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. And it just so happened that they were just finishing the process of releasing the transcriptions of her recording. She recorded in the White House on a reel to reel with a microphone and, you know, push the buttons herself. And there's great images of her doing this. They were just completing the process of cleaning up the tape so that they were audible and releasing the full transcripts of all of it. They handed me the DVDs and said, here they are. And it wasn't until a couple of years later that they became fully online. And so if your listeners want to go to the LBJ Library's website, they can easily find all of them now and all of their transcripts. And you can see her own handwriting in the margins of the transcripts because in 1970 she published a short, although 700 page compilation of them. And she did all of the editing and some redacting of it. So it's all there at the library. And it was all just coming out when I walked into the museum exhibit on the first floor and heard her voice. And I think, Sharon, that's another incredibly compelling part of this story is listening to her on November 22, 1963, when she is describing her experience of the assassination of JFK and the beginning of this 14 day transition and her relationship with Jackie Kennedy. When you hear Lady Bird's voice and how cogent she was and her penchant for detail and drama and storytelling, it really draws you in. And that launched my process of spending a year writing the book proposal and getting my arms around the story, and then six years of writing it.
- [11:46]
Julia Sweig
People who have never done original works of scholarship have absolutely no idea sometimes how much work goes into it. They think research is Googling.
- [11:54]
Unnamed Historian
Yes. Well, as a former teacher, you know that it's so much more than that. And I think I was really lucky to be trained as a scholar at a time when you had to go into the stacks and physically touch material and not rely on whatever comes out from Dr. Google.
- [12:13]
Julia Sweig
Yeah, we think. Well, I've done my research, and it involves Googling, clicking on the first three links, skimming some of the things that are at the top of the page. I researched it.
- [12:24]
Unnamed Historian
Well, one of the things that's actually really cool now is that so much material has been digitized. In fact, in the Presidential Library System or the Library of Congress, a lot of material can be accessed through the Google. But when I started this, that wasn't quite the case.
- [12:42]
Julia Sweig
All right, let's go back in time a little bit. Can you give us a very, very high level, brief overview of. First of all, people are curious. They're not familiar with her life. They want to know how she got the name Ladybird, Right.
- [12:54]
Unnamed Historian
Well, Lady Bird is the daughter of the South. She grew up on the Texas border with Louisiana, and she lost her mother when she was 4 or 5 years old. And she was raised by her father and by her nannies, who were descendants of enslaved people. And they gave her that nickname. And it stuck. And it stuck at times, much to her chagrin, until the very end of her life, but she kept it. Her name was Claudia, but she didn't go by Claudia, although sometimes she said she wished she had.
- [13:27]
Julia Sweig
So she never introduced herself as Claudia.
- [13:30]
Unnamed Historian
Not that I know.
- [13:31]
Julia Sweig
Everyone called her Lady Bird.
- [13:33]
Unnamed Historian
They called her Lady Bird, or if you were lbj, called her Bird.
- [13:37]
Julia Sweig
And how did she meet Lyndon?
- [13:39]
Unnamed Historian
It was a setup by one of her best friends. She came to Washington, didn't have time to see him. And then when he was back in Austin, they had breakfast at the storied Driscoll Hotel in Austin and spent the day together. And she was very smart and very, very well read. And he was working as a staffer for a member of Congress at the time. He was in his 20s. She was four years younger by the end of that first date. He had proposed to her.
- [14:08]
Julia Sweig
Wow.
- [14:09]
Unnamed Historian
Right? Lbj, I always like to say, had a real eye for low ego, brilliant, hardworking people. And he surrounded himself with those people. And she was, I would say, the very first of these individuals. She said no to him at the end of that first date. And that triggered about a six week feverish courtship where he was in Washington, D.C. she was living at her father's house in Kak, Texas. And he wrote and he called and they wrote. And there's in fact, a whole trove of love letters from this period of time. By the end of six weeks, he showed up at her house and he said, it's now or never. Are you going to marry me? Because this is over if you're not. And they drove that day to San Antonio, Texas, and got married in a little church. She wore a dress she already had. They didn't even have a ring. It was not quite an elopement as her parents had eloped, but it was very fast. And that began this whirlwind life for her, which was difficult. LBJ was an incredibly difficult individual, but they had a kind of mutual bond at the beginning that went on and on and on with many layers of complexity.
- [15:31]
Julia Sweig
In what ways was he difficult?
- [15:33]
Unnamed Historian
Well, you know, he had kind of a voracious appetite in every way. He was not loyal to her in terms of the marriage. He had affairs outside of the marriage. He had incredibly vast political ambitions. He expected her to be his partner in all ways. And he was also capable of being quite emotionally volatile. I think today we would describe him as having a kind of anxiety, depression, continuum. And so not only was he demanding in. In ways of her that were more understandable conventionally, but he relied on her increasingly for his own emotional stability. So that's just a piece of it. And that's well before we even get them into the White House.
- [16:23]
Sharon McMahon
I often hear people talking about how the media has us siloed into echo chambers. We exist in multiple different versions of reality. If you're on the left, you're hearing some stories, and on the right you're hearing information, entirely different ones. And even if you're hearing about the same event, you're hearing about it in very different ways. And this leads to a declining trust in media where people feel like they are not getting the real picture. And this morning I was using ground news to read about the upcoming tariffs that are going to be imposed on imports from not just Canada and Mexico, but from, from the European Union, the eu. And on the left, you see headlines like this Donald Trump announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on imports from the EU, claiming the EU was formed to, quote, screw the United States. And on the right you saw headlines like Trump insisted it is Europe's responsibility to provide security guarantees to Ukraine. Headlines about the exact same topic. I also really like the Blind spot section. It shows you stories that are basically not being covered at all on the left or on the right. I just think it's interesting to see what the other side is perhaps not paying any attention to. With Ground News you can gain access to different viewpoints and have a more well rounded view of the world. Go to Ground News Sharon to get 40% off the ground News Vantage plan which will unlock access access to all of their news analysis features. I think Ground News is doing important work and I hope you'll check them out. That's Ground News Sharon. You know I have always wanted to be a better communicator, whether it's in my work or just day to day life. So when I saw that Ryan Holiday has a class on using ancient wisdom to solve modern problems, I knew I had to check it out on Masterclass. I do love Ryan Holiday. I think he's fantastic. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best. It is the only streaming platform where you can grow and develop. With over 200 of the world's top experts. For just $10 a month billed annually, you get unlimited access to every instructor, including Ryan Holiday. And and whether you're watching on your phone, your computer, smart TV or whether you're listening in audio mode, learning fits right into your life. In his Masterclass, Ryan shared the key to personal growth through building resilience and connecting more meaningfully with others. It's just one example of how Masterclass can make a real difference. In fact, 88% of members say Masterclass is had a positive impact on their lives. And the best part, there is no risk. Every new membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Right now our listeners can get an additional 15% off any annual membership@masterclass.com Sharon that's 15% off@masterclass.com Sharon masterclass.com Sharon how.
- [19:38]
Julia Sweig
Did he end up as Jack Kennedy's running mate and what did she think of that?
- [19:44]
Unnamed Historian
That's a wonderful story. And it unfolds in the late 1950s and culminates at the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. LBJ had become Senate majority leader in 1953. He was a kingmaker in Washington and in the U.S. senate for much of the decade when the Kennedys, Jack and Jackie came to Washington D.C. they were baby members of Congress, and it was LBJ who Joe Kennedy, Jack's father, went to at one point and said, why don't you consider my son on your ticket as your Vice president going into the 1956 presidential Democratic Party convention. But by 1960, one of Lyndon's weaknesses was that he was very indecisive. He didn't trust his own capacities. He was a bit of a hamlet and by 1960 had not built a political operation nationwide to could help him into the nomination for the Democratic Party, whereas the Kennedys had done so for Jack. So by the time they get to Los Angeles, there's a moment after Lyndon loses the nomination in the second ballot and Jack win winded when Jack goes to the Johnson suite and asks if they will consider being his vice president. And I say they because by then they're very much a they. Lady Bird's initial response is over my dead body. She describes it as a nettle stuck in their throat that they can't swallow and can't spit out, that it's an impossible proposal because they understand that if he gives up his position of power in the Senate to be the vice president, widely recognized as the worst job in American politics, he'll lose everything. So that's if he says yes. If he says no, it will be just seen as disloyal. And once the Democrats are in the White House, it will be the President's legislative agenda, not his, that drives the process in the Congress. It kicks off an incredible period of time when Lady Bird becomes and remains a very significant political surrogate for both the Kennedys and then of course, for lbj.
- [22:06]
Julia Sweig
I do want to get to the portion of the book that you repeatedly refer to Lady Bird as a surrogate, but I'd love to chat first about their move to the Naval Observatory and what was it like for her to essentially step into this higher profile role? LBJ certainly had a lot of power in the Senate, but many Americans don't know the spouses of senators, but they do know the spouse of the President and Vice president. What was that transition like for her?
- [22:37]
Unnamed Historian
She diminishes her capacities always when she's talking about these public roles that she played. But by the time she becomes second lady, she's been in Washington for almost 30 years. So she's kind of dominated the ecosystem that the Senate wives run, for example, as wife of the majority leader, she's the sort of number two in the wives pecking Order beneath the First Lady. And she has already become kind of an unpaid staffer to LBJ's political operation, going back even to when she ran his office during World War II. Jackie was not so into the ceremonial public aspects of being First Lady. And just as she had relied on Lady Bird during the campaign to campaign with the Kennedys and for the Kennedys, she also asked Lady Bird to do things all the time. Lady Bird was just a woman who showed up and rarely said no. And she had a kind of empathy for Jackie.
- [23:39]
Julia Sweig
All right, well, let's go then to November of 1963. I would love to hear your description of what Lady Bird had to say about Jack Kennedy's assassination.
- [23:52]
Unnamed Historian
Lady Bird, for a little bit of context, was a history and journalism major at the University of Texas in Austin. She was trained to document her life, and she put a very high premium on documenting and on history. And of course, as LBJ's political career grew on legacy, she always carried around these tiny little notebooks, and she used them to write shorthand, to take notes about what was going on, about who was in the room, phone numbers, information about donors and constituents, you name it. All those little notebooks are still at the LBJ library, by the way. So when she went to Texas In November of 63, this was for a big political campaign tour by Jack Kennedy. Texas was divided politically, and he was planning his second term run, and the Johnsons were getting ready to host the Kennedys at the ranch. When Lady Bird went to Dallas with LBJ to greet the Kennedys on 11-22-63, she had one of those notebooks in her purse. She describes the sound of hearing the shots of being in the car behind the Kennedys, of seeing Jackie Kennedy throw her body over Jack as if in a kind of plume of pink petals. She describes careening toward the hospital, getting out of the car, being rushed into some room. She describes learning, finally, that the President has died. And then she describes the scene in Air Force One where she goes to find Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy, of course, is wearing her pink outfit, which is covered in blood, as her stockings are. She asks Jackie, do you want to change? And Jackie says, no, I want them to see what they've done to Jack. Jackie is very much aware of how the public is going to take in this moment. And this is, of course, where she begins to shape the legacy of Camelot. So keeping the pink suit on with blood is part of that. On Air Force One, after LBJ is inaugurated, Lady Bird is sitting by herself, and she takes out her notebook, and she starts to take notes about what had happened that day. So that eight days later, when she records her first diary entry of the next five years, she has detail that she can access in order to make it so vivid.
- [26:32]
Julia Sweig
That's fascinating that she had the presence of mind to think to herself, someday I'm going to want this information.
- [26:40]
Unnamed Historian
I know. It's actually magnificent that she had that and that she had the kind of discipline in that incredibly emotional, difficult time to start recording in real time.
- [26:51]
Julia Sweig
Yes. Did she have feelings of reticence about becoming the first lady? Was she like, I don't want this job. I don't know how to do this job?
- [27:03]
Unnamed Historian
Well, Yes. I mean, she sort of had classic imposter syndrome. She was used to diminishing her qualities and her capacities. That was how women were socialized, especially very, very bright women and especially women from the South. And so she said, and she recorded very often that she was stepping into a role for which she had no training, but she had plenty of training for that role. But she was, I wouldn't say terrified, but highly acutely aware that she couldn't occupy Jackie's shoes, that the state of Texas, her state, was now being held responsible nationally for what had happened to Jack Kennedy, that she and her husband both were derided as culturally subordinate to the Northeasterners that were the Kennedys.
- [27:50]
Julia Sweig
You mentioned in the book that she was a surrogate. Did she view herself as a surrogate for Jackie Kennedy?
- [27:59]
Unnamed Historian
Absolutely. I mean, you know, now that you say that word, I think that word is such a gendered word, but I think I chose it purposefully because, I mean, it's a word that's used on political campaigns all the time. Right. Who are the surrogates for? Presidential candidate acts that we can send out that are going to speak to an issue. But going Back to the 1960 campaign, she saw herself as a surrogate. Not literally, but, you know, when Jackie was pregnant and prone to miscarriage in 1960, in that campaign, she didn't want to go out and campaign and risk losing another baby. Lady Bird already had hers. She was 10 years older. And she saw her role as stepping in on Jackie's behalf. And she continued to see herself having that role willingly throughout Jackie's exit from the White House and what shoes to.
- [28:50]
Julia Sweig
Try to fill, what a woman to try to be a surrogate for. And under such extraordinary circumstances.
- [28:56]
Unnamed Historian
You know, that's where the word surrogate is kind of imperfect, because at a certain point, she was aware that she couldn't possibly fill Those shoes that she wasn't a replica, that she couldn't cut the same shoe figure that Jackie did. And that starts to actually be a source of freedom precisely because they're so different. Especially once Jackie leaves the White House. She then has the chance to fully emerge as her own self and come out from the surrogate role.
- [29:26]
Julia Sweig
What made her start voice recording instead of just taking written notes?
- [29:31]
Unnamed Historian
She had an extremely important collaborator in all of this, and that was Liz Carpenter. And Liz Carpenter was a journalist, also from Texas, who was part of the Johnson's Texas and Washington world. And Liz came up with the idea of doing it and proposed it to Lady Bird. I don't know that they had some conversation in which they said, you know, this is going to be an incredible source for historians in the future, and we should just do it. But Lady Bird was also a creature of the media. You know, she was a radio and television executive herself. The Johnsons had acquired a radio and then television station in Austin in the 1930s and 40s, and she felt that she was something of a media maven. So it's not surprising at all to me that she took right away to this multimedia way of recording her own history. And, of course, LBJ was recording secretly at the time as well as JFK and as Nixon did subsequently, those 18.
- [30:34]
Julia Sweig
Minutes of missing tapes from now seven hours. And now we have seven hours, and somehow that's fine. Did she like being the first lady? Did she like living in the White House? When she moved into the White House, was she like a chef and a butler in this beautiful, grand home, despite the difficult circumstances that she ascended to that role under, did she eventually come.
- [30:58]
Sharon McMahon
To enjoy living in.
- [31:00]
Unnamed Historian
I think she loved it. I think she was happy to leave. When she left, I know that she started counting the days many, many months, even years, before she actually left. But I think she had a great time, even despite the convulsions in the country, it's a pretty powerful place to be. And she was a woman who was often in the room. She was not a person who was relegated to choosing china and doing that ceremonial stuff. She was in the Oval Office and in Lyndon's bedroom, where he conducted a lot of business all the time. And she was the first lady, I believe, since Eleanor Roosevelt, to really build a cohesive political operation as part of the West Wing's own operation and to knit those two together. I think she was agonized and bereft over the very same things that her husband was, but stimulated by the opportunity at the same time. On civil rights especially, and on the environment.
- [32:10]
Sharon McMahon
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- [33:26]
Unnamed Historian
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- [33:56]
Sharon McMahon
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- [35:19]
Julia Sweig
I would love to hear more too about her desire for beautification and her work on environmental issues. And you mentioned that Washingtonians know her because of all these flowers that were planted and park projects. Why did she care so much about that? And can you describe that to people who aren't familiar?
- [35:42]
Unnamed Historian
Well, beautification is a euphemism for a pretty significant environmental vision that she had. It wasn't like she landed in the White House and said beautification is my thing. But she comes into the White House at a time in the United States when we're just coming off of a period of putting tons of money into building the Interstate highway system and into urban renewal programs, which means bulldozing communities in 300 cities around the country and replacing them with these tower and plaza kind of horrible public housing places. Those are both very controversial because both urban renewal and interstate highway system have huge environmental consequences, negative consequences, primarily for communities of color. She's a Washingtonian, as we talked about, and Washington was at the time the largest black majority city in the country and totally segregated, as it pretty much still is, but segregated in the sense not just like geographically, but in terms of the distribution of resources. So individuals in the black communities and black neighborhoods in Washington D.C. just didn't have the kind of resources that white neighborhoods did in terms of access to nature, in terms of parks, in terms of swimming pools. She was a person who was a swimmer herself. She believed that access to nature was essential to making us feel fully human. So you take all of that kind of high minded stuff that I just laid out and you think politically, at a time when environmentalism wasn't a thing as it is today, how do you start to build public consciousness about the environment? How do you start to bring together access to nature and civil rights? And in Washington, D.C. not only did she decide to use the phrase beautification as kind of a political kabuki theater to conceal a larger environmental agenda, but also to try to start thinking about how to use all this federal space in Washington D.C. to desegregate it, to make it accessible to Washingtonians who lived right in it and adjacent to it. And I'm not talking about white Washington and the Potomac. I'm talking about black Washington and the Anacostia river, the other river that borders Washington, D.C. her evolution begins with this kind of ornamental approach, and then it gradually evolves and she builds these partnerships with landscape architects, environmentalists, civil rights activists, to make Washington, D.C. the kind of test case for other cities around the country. Not just with the flowers, but also with putting money and community organizing and federal attention into parks and nature in American cities.
- [38:39]
Julia Sweig
As we start moving towards the end, I'm sure many people know, but just for Context, LBJ finished JFK's term and then runs for reelection, rides some of the wave of public sentiment against the loss of the President, rides into his own elected term as President. Can you talk a little bit more about their decision about whether or not they should pursue staying in Washington or whether they decide to bow out? What was that decision like for them?
- [39:13]
Unnamed Historian
Right. So it is known that on March 31, 1968, LBJ surprised this pretty much everyone when he announces that he will not run for a second term. This is a shocking announcement because the assumption in the press and in the country is that nobody walks away from power, not least lbj. That decision was something that was not a surprise, however, to Lady Bird Johnson. Because In May of 1964, just a few months into their term, after Kennedy's assassination, with Vietnam looming, with his own kind of perennial insecurity about his capacities as commander in chief, he asks Lady Bird to lay out her thoughts, pros and cons, about whether he should run in August of 64. She does that in a strategy memo that I found in the library in Boston, ignored by other LBJ historians. She says, yeah, it's too early for you to get out of the arena now, and I don't want to go back to the ranch. You'll be miserable and so will I. You still have some time, and we still have things to do in the White House. So she says, May 64, let's run. You'll win. And in February or March of 68, you can announce to the world that you won't be running for a second term. And that's precisely what he does at the time when he makes that announcement. The assumption is it's because of Vietnam and Bobby Kennedy and the outrage over his presidency as a whole, which is tragic in so many ways. And all of those factors were real. But they had seen enough of the future to know and worried enough about his health and knew how volatile it was, how vulnerable it was that the idea For LDJ of getting out while he was still alive. Took Holden, stop. And it was Lady Bird who orchestrated that decision and its implementation.
- [41:15]
Julia Sweig
Do you think she regretted it?
- [41:17]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's these incredible entries from August 1968. So now they've announced it, and the Democratic Convention is happening in Chicago. Country is going crazy. Chicago's a mess. There's a big deal around celebrating Lyndon's birthday every year on August 1, 1968. And the time for deciding again comes up because now MLK has been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy has been assassinated. Lyndon's kind of thinking, maybe they'll bring me back. Maybe I can really pull the country together and bring peace. Vietnam. She is adamant this is not going to happen. Where this decision is done. She didn't regret it a second. And once the decision was made public, she was just wrapping things up for the rest of 1968. No intention of staying.
- [42:05]
Julia Sweig
Why do you think she wanted to be done? Why do you think she planned so many years in advance like we're done after this term?
- [42:11]
Unnamed Historian
Well, so many years in advance, it was because she wanted to enjoy a post presidency with her husband while he was still alive. His father had died at 60 and his uncle had died at 60, and he was 56 in 1963. And she wanted to have a life with kids and grandchildren at the ranch with him. But then by the time we get to 1968, the whole country has turned against them. She can't get any traction for her environmental agenda. The projects that she started have died on the vine of more guns, less butter. The protest movement, the pressure, seeing Lyndon withering against it all, it took a huge toll on her. So she was absolutely delighted to get out.
- [42:52]
Julia Sweig
You call the epilogue of your book To Survive All Assaults. Why did you call it that?
- [42:59]
Unnamed Historian
Well, she is, I think, constantly in awe of her husband's resilience. As much as she is aware of his vulnerabilities, physical, psychological, political, she's also aware that he has this capacity to bounce back. And she describes, Lyndon is somebody who's able to survive all assaults. And of course, it's used as a little bit of irony there, or at least some emotional pathos, because he doesn't survive for very long once they leave. He survives for only four years. And in fact, she's the survivor of all assaults. She lives for 30 more years after he dies in 1973.
- [43:47]
Julia Sweig
What did she do with her later years after she was no longer the First Lady?
- [43:52]
Unnamed Historian
Well, she was still young, you know, she lived for A very, very long time. And she spent so much time with her grandkids and her daughters. She became this much loved grandmother. But she also spent time on those key legacy issues that she had started in the White House on the environment. She was on the board of National Geographic, and she put her political capital and some financial capital into making Austin, Texas, as green as it is today, with access to swimming and access to nature. Kind of the idea she had for Washington, D.C. she built the LBJ Library and School. She was very, very active in the creating and solidifying the institution of the LBJ library. It was her decision, in 1993, I believe it was, to release all of those LBJ tapes that have been so vital to historians being able to understand the LBJ White House. She was deeply involved in the Johnson legacy, and she also rekindled her relationship with Jackie Kennedy, which is another piece of the story that I wish I had been able to continue. But it's an important, long arc that the two of them had together in the 1980s. They spent a day together every summer in America's Vineyard. And Lady Bird went to New York for Jackie's funeral. When she died.
- [45:17]
Julia Sweig
I love the epilogue so much because it describes the transfer of power from LBJ to Nixon and specifically her role. And I love your descriptions about how both of these women are wearing fur hats and, you know, the description of what it was like for the women who were participating in this very momentous occasion and how she kind of had to hold together for how nervous Pat Nixon was, et cetera.
- [45:45]
Unnamed Historian
It's a chilly moment between Pat and Lady Bird, isn't it? It is.
- [45:49]
Julia Sweig
I thought that was really interesting.
- [45:51]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. In that moment before when they leave the White House. I mean, I would like to see that depicted cinematically, to tell you the truth. And down the road, I'll put you in touch with the woman that's writing the Pat Nixon biography. She said some great stuff.
- [46:06]
Julia Sweig
There were some quotes, too, where I can see how Lady Bird would have bristled at things that Nixon said. Like you say here, nine months later, standing among the ancient trees, near referring to Redwood National Park, President Nixon delivered a speech placing Lady Bird in the long line of presidential conservationists that began with Teddy Roosevelt, A tree is a tree. How many trees do you need? And I can imagine her just being.
- [46:32]
Unnamed Historian
Like, she was very gracious, and she played a huge role in creating the Redwood National Park. She was, by the time you got to the end of 1968, very strongly out of the closet in terms of leaving Beautification that euphemism behind. So having Richard Nixon sort of benefit from it, but also cuckoo it at the same time, must have just caused her to tell herself some pretty arch comments internally.
- [47:05]
Julia Sweig
I can only imagine.
- [47:06]
Unnamed Historian
Yes.
- [47:07]
Julia Sweig
What would you love the reader to take away from her story and take away from your book? If you could have your druthers, what would you love for somebody to have learned or to take away?
- [47:18]
Unnamed Historian
I think it's very easy to underestimate public figures, especially women. And the takeaway for me is that all of us, whatever our gender, really need to record our own history. I mean, this was, to me, such an incredible act of public service that she undertook in building the library and collecting all the material, but in recording her own story. And I really worry today that the world of social media and leaks and digital communication has vastly undermined the ability for public figures to find a way to document their own stories. I don't think it's only public figures. You know, I really. I know it sounds a little cliche, but everyone should do it because we're making our own history as we go, and it's impossible for us to see in the moment its significance. That's what's so cool about Lady Bird. I mean, obviously she knew she was living in these incredible times, but she carried that meta awareness with her from the time she was in college.
- [48:29]
Julia Sweig
Well, Julia Sweig, thank you so much for this. Your book is called Lady Bird Hiding in Plain Sight, and what a fascinating woman and a fascinating portrait of her.
- [48:40]
Unnamed Historian
Well, thank you for a wonderful conversation and for reading the book so carefully. I'm very grateful and happy to be here with you. Shar.
- [48:46]
Julia Sweig
Yes, I learned so much. I truly did. I learned so much. You want to better understand the 1960s. You want to better understand the presidency. First ladyship, this is a fantastic read.
- [48:59]
Unnamed Historian
I'm really grateful to hear you say that. Thank you so much.
- [49:02]
Sharon McMahon
Great pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to here's where it gets interesting. If you enjoy today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show that helps podcasters out so much? I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon. Today's episode is sponsored by Nerd Wallet's Smart Money podcast. Making financial decisions shouldn't feel like picking a new streaming show. Too many options, too easy to fall for the hype. And you wish you'd done more research before committing. That's why I love NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast Their finance journalists break down real world money decisions, from investing to home buying to credit cards. With clear, research backed insights, the nerds help you cut through misinformation and get straight to the facts. So before you make your next financial move, get the clarity you need to make make smart decisions with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast. Apparently.