Elected Lives: Stories of Leaders in Twentieth-Century American Government

The second half of America’s twentieth century was punctuated by seminal events: Johnson’s Great Society, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights, Watergate, the Reagan Revolution. Several new books trace the lives of insiders to these epoch-makers—the presidents who held the ultimate responsibilities, and the governors, senators, and representatives who influenced them.

In the White House

Lyndon Johnson Remembered: An Intimate Portrait of a Presidency is a collection of essays edited by Thomas W. Cowger, associate professor of history at East Central University, and Sherwin J. Markman, who was assistant to President Johnson from 1965 to 1968. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 0-7425-2789-0). The essays, written by diverse Johnson intimates, describe various aspects of the president’s life: Markman writes in one essay about Johnson’s demanding and sometimes abusive personality; in another, he praises the president’s mastery of the legislative process and his influence-wielding in passing his Great Society reforms.
One essayist answers any criticism of Johnson’s actions in Vietnam by citing the “impossibility of the choices with which the new president was confronted from his first day in office.” In this collection, Johnson’s biographers remember him most glowingly for his work in civil rights, offering titles such as “The Best We Ever Had” and “The Wind at His Back.”
The public events of Richard Nixon’s life are hardly news. Healing Richard Nixon: A Doctor’s Memoir by John C. Lungren, M.D. and John C. Lungren, Jr. (The University Press of Kentucky, 0-8131-2274-0) assumes as much. Rather than re-telling the familiar facts, the authors provide a fresh perspective: that of Nixon’s personal physician, a post that the senior Lungren held from 1952 until the early 1980s. With great compassion, the Lungrens show Nixon’s courage and idealism, traits that were belied by the fiasco of Watergate. Initially confused about what he had done wrong—or so much more wrong than any of his predecessors—Nixon eventually realized the extent of his mistakes—and, even more importantly, their ramifications: “Nixon lamented that he had gravely harmed democracy in America by estranging a generation of young people from politics and by losing the chance for a generation of peace.”
In this memoir, the reader sees strength of character in a man who has been caricaturized as having none; for example, he routinely denied the excruciating pain of his phlebitis in order to show appropriate respect in diplomatic encounters. The Lungrens describe Nixon’s torment over his resignation and resulting isolation in the grandest terms: referring to Nixon’s memoir, Six Crises, the authors call Watergate and its aftermath the seventh crisis: “Like Dante, he had descended into hell.”
The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism & Its Legacies, edited by W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham (University Press of Kansas, 0-7006-1268-8), is an assessment of a presidency, not a portrait of a man. Focusing on Reagan’s policies and their effects, this collection of essays aims to provide comprehensive documentation of the Reagan years. Brownlee and Graham point out that Reagan’s greatest supporters and detractors alike agree that there was a “ ‘Reagan Revolution’—a set of fundamental shifts in national policy . . . [having] dramatic effects, for good or for ill.” Essayists point to Reagan’s unabashed invocation of God in his vision of America: “From Reagan’s first to his last political utterances, God’s unique relationship to America [was] the central chord from which all else followed.” Ronald Reagan believed that God had chosen America as His historical agent, and his presidency reflected this belief.

In the Wings

As described in his Promises Kept: A Memoir (The University of Arkansas Press, 1-55728-754-6), Sidney McMath’s career is a tale of the advancement of civil rights in the American South. When he ran for governor in 1948, McMath’s opponents sought to undermine him by accusing him of being in cahoots with “Negroes.” McMath was criticized in the press for other perceived offenses. In what might be used as a literary device in a work of fiction, McMath describes a scene from his tenure as governor that foreshadows future president Nixon’s troubles: like Nixon’s dog Checkers, McMath’s Ol’ Red was the source of an innocent scandal. Ol’ Red served as a guard to the governor’s mansion; the biscuits that the dog ate were purchased from the mansion fund—a breach of the rules that actually earned McMath a berating.
Through a decades-long career, “quintessential insider” Stuart Symington enjoyed an influence in Washington that preceded and ultimately paralleled the evolution of American public opinion. In Stuart Symington: A Life (University of Missouri Press, 0-8262-1503-3), James C. Olson, president emeritus of the University of Missouri, describes Symington as a progressive businessman who integrated his Missouri work force and agreed to a union shop, and as a U.S. Senator who urged the military buildup that so strongly characterized the twentieth century. Symington consistently encouraged both Johnson and Kennedy to escalate the hostilities in Vietnam, but, by 1968, changed his mind and voiced opposition to the ill-conceived war. By the time he died in 1988, he was known as a champion of liberal causes—who would never let himself be called a liberal.
Mike Mansfield, a Congressman and Senate Majority leader, was respected by a wide spectrum of his peers, from Ted Kennedy to Jesse Helms—as evidenced by their presence at his funeral, described in the opening chapter of Don Oberdorfer’s Senator Mansfield (Smithsonian Books, 1-58834-166-6). Oberdorfer, author of The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History and National Book Award finalist for Tet!, describes the influence employed by Mansfield for many years. With some access to President Johnson’s ear, Mansfield voiced opposition to the Vietnam War from its earliest days, a stance unusual in the high ranks of the federal government. Touching President Nixon’s story, too, Mansfield was instrumental in creating the Watergate investigative committee. Despite his strong stands on many highly visible issues, however, Mansfield was humble. “When I’m gone,” Oberdorfer quotes Mansfield’s attempt to discourage his would-be biographer, “I want to be forgotten.”
While the Reagan administration pursued its conservative agenda in the federal government, governor Dick Thornburgh created a similar phenomenon in Pennsylvania. Thornburgh’s engagingly written Where the Evidence Leads: An Autobiography (University of Pittsburgh Press, 0-8229-4220-8) traces his path from a sheltered childhood—in a community that was “racially, ethnically and religiously homogeneous . . . It was the kind of community where doors were often left unlocked at night”—to a career in public service at both state and federal levels. As U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh during the Nixon years, he describes himself as having felt betrayed by Watergate. But his descriptions of other business-as-usual activities indicate that Watergate wasn’t unique in giving politics a role in determining “where the evidence leads.” He recalls an Attorney General who recommended against prosecutions when it was revealed that the CIA and FBI opened mail belonging to U.S. citizens who corresponded with people in the Soviet Union, “finding a continuum of presidential authority for it,” and acknowledging the wide acceptance of this sort of activity.

This collection of first-person narratives and scholarly essays, tales of personalities and analyses of policy, provides a multi-faceted look back at the last century in American government. These are the lives that we elected to lead us, and the legacies we chose to portray us in history.