Texas Monthly Talks
Luci Baines Johnson
(Page 2 of 2)
How easily did he persuade you to do things?
Here’s what my father did. He would say things like “I’m fifty years old. I don’t have all the answers. God is not through with me yet, Luci Baines. But my judgment says that nothing good happens on the streets past midnight, and that’s why I really am concerned about you being out then. But you’re a bright girl, and you’re a good girl, and I expect you to do the right thing. You always have. So I’m not gonna tell you what you can or cannot do because I don’t want to make our relationship adversarial. I’m just gonna tell you I have faith in you.”
Parenting by Lyndon Johnson.
If he had just told me, “You cannot,” I might have been up to defying him. But when he told me I was smart and I was good and I was thoughtful and he had faith in me—ohhh! There was no chance of me doing anything except what he wanted me to do.
As someone whose father was in the White House when she got married, you probably have a perspective on the Jenna Bush nuptials, which took place just a few months ago.
I empathize with every member of a first family. So when Jenna was going to be married, I took it upon myself to write the Bush family to say, “I don’t know if any of this will be useful to you, but it would have been useful to me if I had known it ahead of time, so I’m sharing this with you in case it is.” I reminded them that when I married, the mother of the bride traditionally made most of the decisions. I chose the groom—we have four beautiful children and nine precious grandchildren—but the marriage ended in divorce. I chose the wedding dress, for the reasons most people make those kinds of choices: what I felt looked pretty on me, what my parents said was within the budget. I was only nineteen, so I didn’t think about whether it had a union label. I would never have wanted to offend the ladies of the garment workers’ union, who had been good supporters.
You warned Jenna Bush to buy American—
To make sure it had a union label. The third decision I made was the date. My husband was in business school at the University of Texas, so we chose the date together, based on his schedule and how it fit in with my personal needs. As a postwar baby, I didn’t realize it was the anniversary of the day we had bombed Hiroshima. So when we showed up at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to be married, there were picketers outside, saying, “How could you be so insensitive to have your grand wedding on a day when so many people have met such tragedy?” So I wrote the Bushes and said, “These were the three decisions I made, and you can see they didn’t work out very well. If I had only thought about things earlier, all of it might have been avoided.”
The time that you spent as the child of a president is one you look back on favorably?
Yes, very favorably. My father told me when I was sixteen years old, when the campaign began, that I could either be resentful of the limitations that being the president’s child imposed upon my life or I could savor the opportunity. He said, “Luci Baines, I can’t be with all the people I need to be with. I can’t be the eyes and ears of my nation. But you can. You can go to some of the places I’ll never be able to get to. At every stop, I want you to make sure you can recall three people you’ve met and three things that are important to them, and I want you to bring those back to me. I’m counting on you. I need you.” It stopped me from becoming a narcissistic adolescent and made me feel useful. It made me feel important. Mostly, it made me get out of myself, which is something that’s very useful if you’re young, when you tend to be looking more inward than outward. To this day, at every cocktail party, at every event I go to, you will see me at the last few minutes running around to make sure that I meet that third person.
How hard was it for you to hear him criticized over Vietnam?
One of the challenges for me back then was that Pennsylvania Avenue was much more approachable. People actually picketed on the sidewalk right in front of the White House, and my bedroom was on the north side. Frequently, the last thing I heard before I went to bed was “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” My husband was in Vietnam. I had a little baby I was trying to raise by myself. My sister’s husband was in Vietnam. She had an infant she was trying to raise by herself. I had a sister-in-law whose husband had just come back from Vietnam. So “LBJ’s war” was not a war he had sought. It was a war he had inherited. It was a war he was trying desperately to get out of. Every night when he watched the news, it was like a dagger being thrust into his stomach.
Is this another case in which you empathize with the first family, specifically with President Bush, who has been attacked on Iraq?
The circumstances are different. But regardless of whether you agree with people’s decisions, the hard part is the personalization. The first thing you hear out of the mouths of the Democrats is respect for John McCain’s service to his country and the sacrifice he’s made. Americans want to maintain very different points of view, but there’s a level of decency that we all want to strive for.
You were one of the only children of a former president not to endorse in the Democratic primary. The daughters of Nixon, Kennedy, and Carter all supported Senator Obama, as did Eisenhower’s granddaughter, while, obviously, Chelsea Clinton supported her mom. You and your sister were conspicuously absent from the discussion. Why?
I have immense respect for Senator Clinton and immense respect for Senator Obama. I also had immense respect for Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. But after 1968, my father turned to me and said, “Luci, I’m asking you not to get involved in primary politics, especially on the presidential level. There will be those who will choose sides, and you will have your own opinion and your own vote—I know that. But I want you to be able to be part of the healing process for the Democratic party.”
Was it tempting this time?
Oh, gosh, yes. And I will support Senator Obama with great enthusiasm, as I would have supported Senator Clinton with great enthusiasm.
It’s been quite a dramatic election cycle, hasn’t it?
Recently I was going through my mother’s effects and found a piece of parchment in one of her purses. It was a quote I expect she wanted to use in some speech, and it rings so true for the time we’re in. “Not to destroy, but to construct. I hold the unconquerable belief that science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war. That nations will come together not to destroy but to construct and that the future belongs to those who accomplish most for humanity.” As I look back at the Democratic party primary process, I believe with all my heart that every single one of those who participated was trying not to destroy but to construct a future that would accomplish the most for humanity. The Democrats have a candidate with a phenomenal capacity to motivate Americans to care about their country and to give their time and talent and treasure. That is a phenomenal attribute. And the decision will be made by the party to nominate him at the moment of Lyndon Johnson’s hundredth birthday and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, during two days, August 27 and 28, when great leaders from the civil rights community and the community of those who were in our government came together and said, “We shall overcome.” To me, that’s a moment to celebrate. And I will celebrate it.
Pages: 1 2
My Library
