All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election

All the Way with LBJ mines an extraordinarily rich but underutilized source - the full range of LBJ tapes - to analyze the 1964 presidential campaign and the political culture of the mid-1960s. The president achieved a smashing victory over a divided Republican Party, which initially considered Henry Cabot Lodge II, then U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, before nominating Barry Goldwater, who used many of the themes that later worked for Republicans - a Southern strategy, portraying the Democrats as soft on defense, raising issues such as crime and personal ethics. Johnson countered with what he called a "frontlash" strategy, appealing to moderate and liberal GOP suburbanites, but he failed to create a new, permanent Democratic majority for the post-civil rights era. The work's themes - the impact of race on the political process, the question of politicians' personal and political ethics, and the tensions between politics and public policy - continue to resonate.

Author: Robert David Johnson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 02/23/2009
Pages: 324
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780521737524


Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2010

About the Author
Johnson, Robert David: - Robert David Johnson earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. He held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, Tel Aviv University, for the 2007-2008 academic year. His most recent publications include Congress and the Cold War (2005); Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition (1998); and The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (1995). He is also co-author of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (2007); and co-editor of volumes 2, 3, 4, and 5 of The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon Johnson (2005 and 2007).