JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents - Hardcover

What prompted you to write this book?
 
Over the years, as I studied different fields of twentieth-century American political history, I came to feel more and more strongly that LBJ deserved a more positive reassessment, that he had not been given his just due.
 
 
How would you characterize the main differences between the two presidents?
 
As men, in background and temperament they could hardly be more different. JFK was highly educated, though not academically especially brilliant. LBJ’s formal education was undistinguished, though those who dealt with him all commented on his exceptional intelligence. JFK was the child of great wealth; LBJ, if his family’s poverty has been exaggerated, came from a family of local notables that had fallen on hard times. If JFK was all charm, LBJ was forceful and relentless. As politicians, LBJ was a populist, JFK a Whig in the British sense, an aristocrat with a passion for liberty and a devotion to public service.
 
 
How did JFK and LBJ differ on civil rights and Vietnam?
 
LBJ was profoundly, viscerally committed to the idea that the time had come to give African Americans equality. JFK came late to understand that the civil rights movement was the most urgent item on the national political agenda. On Vietnam, they were essentially agreed: that American “credibility” demanded defeat of communism in Vietnam.
 
My argument boils down to two counterfactuals: Would Kennedy, had he lived, have carried out LBJ’s remarkable domestic agenda? Would he, in 1965, have avoided LBJ’s commitment of American forces to the Vietnam War? Recognizing that the answers are ultimately unknowable, I offer carefully argued answers that illuminate the qualities and achievements of both presidents.

Godfrey Hodgson was a White House correspondent during the Kennedy and Johnson years. He taught at Oxford University and lives in Oxfordshire, U.K.