Although a Brit, Johnson exudes love and support for America and all it stands for. In fact, his dedication reads, "This book is dedicated to the people of America—strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched."
Johnson focuses on personalities and the associated events more than the "forces" and "trajectories" favored today. Also, he does none of the Zinn-style of telling history from the point of view of the disenfranchised or outcasts. Rather, he tells the story of those who actually made history and he is not afraid to pass judgment on them. This is one thing I love about his style. He freely acknowledges that these are flesh-and-blood humans with good and bad qualities, exercising their free will and making decisions that impacted history. Nothing is fore-ordained. People, not forces, shape history. And their legacy is fair game for fair judgment.
He does not begin his history with where many begin, pre-history and the Native Americans. He starts with the men we know who ventured to a New World to make something great. Christopher Columbus shows up on page one. It is not that the history of Native people is unimportant, but it simply plays little role in the foundations of America. And America's story is the one he's telling.
He begins by detailing Spanish exploration and then goes into the failure of Roanoke. Interestingly, and another reason to love Johnson as a historian, he gives as one reason for the failure the fact that it was an entirely secular effort with no religious dimension. Johnson, a devout Catholic, does not shy away from the role of religion in forming America. The theme will resurrect time and again. Yet his is not a jingoist story of America as a Christian nation, but simply one that has been informed and shaped by Protestantism. In telling the story of the Pilgrims, he details the desire for religions freedom and liberty. Yet, believing as they did that Catholicism shackles liberty, they defined liberty as the liberty to practice their form of religion. From the beginning we had a tension surrounding the definition of liberty, while making clear that it was a central American value.
The tension with liberty continued in the introduction of African slavery into the Carolinas and the treatment of Native Americans. England took little notice of either issue, leaving the colonies to develop their own systems and regulations as regards to both. Although the royal colonies had governors sent from England, the mother country was far more concerned with trade. By and large, the colonies were on their own. As such, they quickly developed different norms and customs, making each colony distinctly different from the others. But the Great Awakening came along, uniting the colonists in religious fervor and helping to create a distinct American.
The French and Indian War took the foundation laid by the Great Awakening and sparked a consciousness that would lead to Revolution. The victory by Britain produced a great empire and simultaneously saw a rise in incompetent and arrogant leadership. "It is now time to see the origins and progress of the breakdown between Britain and America through the eyes of a man who was involved in all its stages and did his considerable best to prevent it—Benjamin Franklin." (p. 134) This is where Paul Johnson shines. He uses real people and their lives to highlight historical events. In fact, I would argue that the close study of a few individuals would be enough to inform the average American of almost all the American history he needs to know. Johnson then shifts to a study of Thomas Jefferson as "the archetypal figure of the Entire Enlightenment." (p. 143) He's similar to Franklin in many ways, but a representative of a different class of people who would impact the American project. It was this man who would give us, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." as the fledgling colony declared its independence from Great Britain. The next individual that requires careful study is obviously George Washington. From the time hostilities broke out until his death, he will be the central figure in the formation of a new and distinct America.
After winning the war, the question became how to govern this sui generis entity? "There is no question that the Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and that the Revolutionary War had the approbation of divine providence. They had won it with God's blessing and, afterwards, they drew up their framework of government with God's blessing, just as in the 17th century the colonists had drawn their Compacts and Charters and Orders and Instruments, with God peering over their shoulders." (p. 204) Yet the Constitution makes little mention of God. Johnson attributes this to a happy coincident of history. "As it happens, by a historical accident, it was actually drawn up at the high tide of 18th-century secularism, which was as yet unpolluted by the fanatical atheism and the bloody excesses of its culminating storm, the French Revolution." (p. 205) For a brief period of time, it was possible for a very religious people to form a government that neither mandated nor proscribed religion. Because of this, America has never had a religious war and continues to be have a healthy religious flourishing to this day. Johnson, a devout Catholic, is the rare historian who does not treat religious belief as an interesting artifact of a backward people. He believes in his subjects sincerity and understands it. This kind of understanding allows Johnson to make a brilliant defense of the original intent of the First Amendment. "This guarantee [of religious freedom] has been widely, almost willfully, misunderstood in recent years, and interpreted as meaning that the federal government is forbidden by the Constitution to countenance or subsidize even indirectly the practice of religion. That would have astonished and angered the Founding Fathers." (p. 209) Although wisely not incorporating a national church, the Founders understood that a self-governing nation was appropriate only for a religious and moral people.
Now America has to get on to the hard task of actually governing. Early presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson set the tone and structure of how the new nation would proceed. Alexander Hamilton, a most forward-thinking economic mind, would place the nations fractured economy on solid footing. In addition, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice, John Marshall, would outline the contours of the new judiciary. It is nothing short of a miracle that the men needed to guide the experiment were all on the scene at the same time. The fact that they had heated disagreements about the ends and means was even more beneficial as we needed all of them together to form a balance.
By the time we get to Andrew Jackson, America is more mature and ready to be unleashed from the elites that have guided her. He enters like a force of nature and forever alters the character and trajectory of America. A study of his life would again tell us so much of what we need to know about life in the early republic. He was born in 1767 and so was literally born into a revolutionary time. By the time he entered politics, he was a self-made man, able to take advantage of the freedoms offered in America. Unlike his predecessors, he was from the West and the first military hero since Washington. He ushered in unprecedented democracy and expansion, representing a young nation chomping at the bit to make something of itself. "Jackson thought the people were instinctively right and moral, and Big Government, of the kind he could see growing up in Washington, fundamentally wrong and immoral. His task, as he saw it, was to liberate and empower this huge moral popular force by appealing to it over the heads of the entrenched oligarchy, the corrupt ruling elite." (p. 329
A credit to its success is that America came to be described, by Benjamin Franklin, as a "happy mediocrity." Johnson says, "The fact that, unless we investigate closely, we hear so little about the mass of the population is itself a historical point of great importance, because it testifies by its eloquent silence to the success of the republican experiment." (p. 283) In the first half of the 19th century Americans got about the business pursuing happiness. Freedom was literally paying off. "Not only were American wage-rates high, but you kept your earnings to spend on your family. Then there were other blessings. no conscription. No political police. No censorship. No legalized class distinction. Most employers ate at the same table as their hands. No one (except slaves) called anyone 'Master.'" (p. 289) Prosperity allowed these early Americans to consider universal education. Horace Mann "opened the first 'normal' school in the United States at Lexington in 1839, and thence reorganized the entire primary and secondary education system of the state, with longer terms, a more scientific and 'modern' pedagogy, higher salaries and better teachers, decent, clean, and properly heated schoolhouses, and al the element of a first-class public school system." (p. 302) Although government-run education became problematic at the turn of the next century, a country that could afford to educate all its citizens was an unheard of luxury.
Into this growing, prosperous nation the issue of slavery remained to be tackled. The contradictions of freedom demanded an answer to the question of human chattel. The Founders recognized the inherit hypocrisy and predicted a war would result. Adams stated that "its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent and, calamitous and devastating as this course of events must be, so Glorious would be the final issue that, as God should judge me, I dare not say it is not be desired." (p. 319) But that predicted war would be delayed by compromise time and again until it finally broke in 1860, which allowed the nation to solidify the gains made by the Revolution and fight a war for freedom for all from a place of solid strength.
This strength came from Americans' belief in the greatness of their destiny. As one essay put it in 1838,
"The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles: to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High-the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere—its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens—and its congregation the Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling and owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood-of ‘peace and goodwill among men’." (p. 371)Yet as de Tocqueville would note, slavery was a chain holding back those who practiced it. "'On both sides [of the Ohio River] the soil is equally fertile, the situation just as favorable.' But Kentucky, because of slavery, is inhabited 'by a people without energy, without ardor, without a spirit of enterprise.' He was led, he said, again and again to the same conclusion: leaving aside the slave states, 'the American people, taking them all in all, are not only the most enlightened in the world, but (something I place well above that advantage), they are the people whose practical, political education is the most advanced.'" (p. 391) Into this setting arrives Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1853, making the moral case for the abolitionist position. Not only did it help spark the Civil War, it probably kept Britain from coming to the aid of the South.
Of that event, Johnson states, "The civil war, in which are included the causes and consequences, constitutes the central event in American history. It is also America's most characteristic event which brings out all that the United States is, and is not. It made America a nation, which it was not before. For America, as we have seen, was not prescriptive, its people forged together by a forgotten process in the darkness of prehistory, emerging from it already a nation by the time it could record its own doings. It was, rather, an artificial state or series of states, bound together by negotiated agreements and compacts, charters and covenants. It was made by bits of parchment, bred by lawyers. The early Americans, insofar as they had a nationality, were English (or more properly British) with an English national identity and culture." (p. 423) America became America because of the Civil War.
I believe an interesting case can be made comparing slavery at this time to abortion today. Both sides are locked into their beliefs with little movement, yet I don't believe it will end in war. But as Abraham Lincoln said, the nation cannot stand divided. It will become all one thing or all another. Today we see what I believe is the pro-abortion's last, desperate gasp, just as slavery proponents became much more shrill and vociferous as they saw their strangle hold on other humans slipping from their grasp. "The aggressive message of the South was: slavery must be extended because it makes economic sense for America. But beneath this aggressive tone was the deep insecurity of Southerners who had no real moral answer to the North's case and knew in their hearts that the days of slavery were numbered." (p. 432)
Enter Abraham Lincoln. Here again, Johnson turns to an individual to tell the story of a nation. "It was because slavery made him miserable, and because he thought it was destroying the nation, not least the South, that Lincoln reentered politics and helped to create the new Republican Party, primarily to prevent slavery's extension. Looking back with the hindsight of history, we tend to assume that slavery was a lost cause from the start and the destruction of the old South inevitable. But to a man of Lincoln's generation, the South appeared to have won all the political battles, and all the legal ones." (p. 441) But Lincoln had powerfully put himself in the camp of liberalism and nationalism, two very strong forces in the mid-19th century. His Emancipation Proclamation sealed the legitimacy of the North's cause.
As a believer, once again, Johnson does not shy from the spiritual component of American history. "As against all these raucous certainties, there were the doubts, the puzzlings, and the agonizing efforts of Abraham Lincoln to rationalize God's purposes. To anyone who reads his letters and speeches, and the records of his private conversations, it is hard not to believe that, whatever his religious state of mind before the war again, he acquired faith of a kind before it ended. His evident and total sincerity shines through all his words as the war took its terrible toll. He certainly felt the spirit of guidance. 'I am satisfied,' he wrote, “that when the Almighty wants me to do or not to do a particular thing, he finds a way of letting me know it.' He thus waited, as the Cabinet papers show, for providential guidance at certain critical points of the war. He never claimed to be the personal agent of God's will, as everybody else seemed to be doing. But he wrote: “If it were not for my firm belief in an overriding providence it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such complications of affairs, to keep my reason in its seat. But I am confident that the Almighty has his plans and will work them out; and ... they will be the wisest and the best for us.' When asked if God was on the side of the North, he replied: 'I am not at all concerned about that, for I know the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side. As he put it, 'I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.'" (p. 471)
Once the war was over, America had a decision to make—how should the South be treated as it was brought back into the Union. One school of thought was that of the Radical Republicans, hatred and punishment. Second was the moderate Republicans who sought to bring the states back into the Union slowly, while working to guarantee Constitutional rights to the citizens of the South, Black and White alike. The third option, that of the new president Andrew Johnson, was clemency, pardon, and rapid normalization of relations. Of course the worst of all worlds happened. The South believed they were owed clemency but the Radical Republicans imposed a harsh Reconstruction. The moderates continued to push for Constitutional protections in the face of a racist president and a recalcitrant South.
Johnson sums up the heartbreaking results, "The South, its whites virtually united in hatred of their governments, hit back by force. The years 1866–71 saw the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society of vigilantes, who wore white robes to conceal their identities, and who rode by night to do justice. They were dressed to terrify the black community, and did so; and where terror failed they used the whip and the noose. And they murdered carpetbaggers too. They also organized race-riots and racial lynchings. They were particularly active at election-time in the autumn, so that each contest was marked by violence and often by murder. Before the Civil War, Southern whites had despised the blacks and occasionally feared them; now they learned to hate them, and the hate was reciprocated. A different kind of society came into being, based on racial hatred. The Republican governors used state power in defense of blacks, scalawags, and carpetbaggers, and when state power proved inadequate, appealed to Congress and the White House. So Congress conducted inquiries and held hearings, and occasionally the White House sent troops. But the blacks and their white allies proved incapable of defending themselves, either by political cunning or by force."(p. 506) Reconstruction proved a failure, setting up the United States and specifically the South for a century of racial tensions.
Meanwhile, the North was anxious to put the war behind it and rush forward. As Americans moved into the frontiers, the conflicts with the Natives became more pronounced. Johnson summarizes, "The Indians were not murderous savages, who ought either to be detribalized and assimilated completely (as scores of thousands indeed were), or exterminated, or penned up in remote reservations—this being the view of the vast majority of 19th-century American whites. Nor were they sophisticated-primitive innocents, living in utopian and preservationist communities, brutally disturbed by cruel and heedless invaders of European extraction, that being the view of 20th-century romantic historians of Indian history. The more they, and the white settlers who displaced them, are studied in detail, and without prejudice on either side, the smaller the differences between them appear. Both Indians and whites were living in the same, often harsh country, and trying their best to master it, in different ways." (p. 518) Johnson believes the issues that led to the biggest conflicts were the Indians extreme fragmentation and general belief in the tribe's superiority to all other peoples, and their attitude toward settled farming, which was viewed as effeminate. While many Native Americans assimilated and lived successfully in white America, those that did not, were hamstrung by these two characteristics. Once again, the solution, Reservations, like Reconstruction, simply preserved and extenuated a bad situation.
Yet despite the violence on the Frontier, the American economy expanded rapidly. While England had been first out of the gate with industrialization, America was determined to surpass the mother country. "Americans were conscious, in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, that they were proud inhabitants of the world's wealthiest country, enjoying living standards unprecedented in the history of humanity. All around them they could see the thriving machinery and infrastructure of this wealth-creating process, and it was inevitable that the men who presided over this pul sating, throbbing, enriching system should inspire confidence and invite emulation." (p. 550) With a new class of "political mediocrities" Americans turned to the real movers and shakers, the men of extreme wealth, the entrepreneur class. Men like Andrew Carnegie, who rose to riches with a steel empire and gave half his wealth away, and money men like J.P. Morgan, who demanded absolute adherence to good character, found a place in the American's imaginations as archetypal heroes. Others like Thomas Edison and Louis Comfort Tiffany created beautiful and useful things as part of America's creator class. Culturally and economically, America was finally growing up and showing the world the way forward. Sadly, Johnson states, "That the United States, lifted up by an extraordinary combination of self-created wealth and native talent, became a great cultural nation in the second half of the 19th century is a fact which the world, and even Americans themselves, have been slow to grasp." (p. 585)
The extreme wealth and cultural progress was not without its detractors. Ironically calling themselves Progressives, this group sought to retard the growth and, well, progress of the American people. Horrified by the growing gap between the rich and the poor and convinced that government action was needed to level society out, socialism began to become attractive. Despite the fact the almost-monopolies of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel were creating cheaper and better products, do-gooders and muckrakers sought to break them up for the simple sin of being big. While becoming unimaginably wealthy themselves, the capitalists were bringing wealth and leisure possibilities to ordinary Americans. But the size of the companies and the extreme wealth generated were enough to attract those who wanted control for themselves.
Johnson summarizes the Progressives excellently, "The anti-bigness emotion, so characteristic of the decades between the Civil War and World War One--and becoming stronger with each—is worth looking at because it was unAmerican. It is necessary to distinguish between Populists, who aimed deliberately at the farming vote and agricultural prejudices, and Progressives, who tended to be highly educated intellectuals aiming at an urban audience… It has been argued that Progressivism was the hostile reaction of the educated middle class to the overwhelming power of Big Business, whose wealth and scale and lure elbowed them out of the political-economic picture entirely, or so they feared. Since the days of the Founding Fathers, the educated elite had guided, if they had not exactly run, the United States, and they felt their influence was being eroded by the sheer quantity of money now sloshing around in the bowels of America's great ship of state… careful [prosopographical] analysis shows that the great majority were solidly middle class, university graduates of old British stock... By 1900, however, a number of new political fashions had come together to constitute a broad-based educated left-gas-and-water (or municipal) socialism, which was worldwide, trust-busting, conservationism (anti-urban sprawl, pro-wilderness), health fanaticism, the notion of educated purposeful elites as ‘guardians of the people, which was shared by a wide range of elitists, from Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Benito Mussolini, and literary and artistic bohemianism.'" (p. 609)
Despite the attacks on the national success, America continued to grow. By the time of avowed Progressive Woodrow Wilson's presidency, however, it was time for America to take the international stage. "Americans enjoyed a laissez-faire society which was by no means unrestrained but whose limitations to their economic freedom were imposed by their belief in a God-ordained moral code rather than a government one devised by man. The rise of rural Populism, the development of muckraking, the appearance in the big cities of middle class Progressivism, and, not least, the romantic reformism and altruistic nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt-all these were premonitory symptoms of change. And under Wilson the changes actually began to take place, hastened and accelerated by America's fortuitous involvement in a catastrophic world war which destroyed Old Europe forever." (p. 627)
This new maturity ushered America into the familiar territory of modern day. It was time, in the Progressive's opinion, for America to grow up and fulfill the utopian promise the reformers believed they had be given. "Gradually, the progressive intelligentsia, and the bulk of the Democratic Party, began to see a strong federal government, with wide powers of intervention, as the defender of the ordinary man and woman against the excesses of corporate power. The notion of the Public Sector (good; needs to be expanded) as opposed to the Private Sector (potentially bad; needs to be invigilated and regulated) began to take possession of the minds of the do-gooders. For this purpose, it was necessary for the state to expand its revenues. Therefore a persona income tax, especially if it possessed progressive characteristics, and therefore was income-redistributive as well as revenue-raising, was a desirable institution." (p. 636)
From the ability to impose their political will, the Progressives moved to the desire to impose on the morality of Americans with the ill-fated Prohibition amendment. Johnson provides a great analysis, "The imposition of Prohibition, and its failure, illustrates perfectly a number of important principles in American history. First, it shows the widespread belief in America that utopia can be achieved in the here and-now and the millennium secured in this world, as well as the next. Second, it indicates a related belief that ‘Americanization' can be achieved by compulsion and law. Third, it draws attention to a weakness in American public opinion and policy—a tendency to will the end without willing the means ('freeing the blacks was another instance).... Fourth, the utopianism inherent in Prohibition came up against the utopianism inherent in the rooted and active American principle that freedom of enterprise must be totally unrestricted." (p. 680) Lack of effective enforcement led to the failure of the effort to clean up America and it was quickly repealed.
The 20s brought Harding and his "return to normalcy." It also landed Calvin Coolidge in the presidency. "Like his predecessor Harding, only more systematically and of set purpose and belief, Coolidge was a minimalist politician. He thought the essence of the republic was not so much democracy itself as the rule of law, and that the prime function of government was to uphold and enforce it." (p. 713) He was an incredible administrator, fighting budget deficits with a vengeance. Together with Harding, they let the market crash in 1921 with no government intervention. Had his method been followed in 1929, some argue the Great Depression may have been nothing more than another roll of the business cycle. His minimalism allowed America to prosper in a way that was "real, widespread, though not ubiquitous, and unprecedented." (p. 718) Coolidge chose not to run again, even though he knew the country could have used his steady guiding hand during the market correction he saw coming. Being president simply taxed him too much and he was not up for another term.
And the market did correct. Herbert Hoover reversed course dramatically from Coolidge and pulled every government lever he could. FDR doubled down on these policies. Johnson makes a good case that while all reasons the Great Depression became "great" are complicated, it seems clear that FDR's interventionist policies probable lengthened what should have been a much shorter recession. "The 1929 crash revealed... the naivety and ignorance of bankers, businessmen, Wall Street experts, and academic economists, high and low; it showed they did not understand the system they had been so confidently manipulating. They had tried to substitute their own well-meaning policies for what Adam Smith called the 'invisible hand' of the market and they had wrought disaster." (p. 734) Roosevelt's policies were erratic and followed no clear, discernible ideology, injecting fatal uncertainty into an already tenuous situation.
But then came World War II. FDR was in his element as a war-time president. Although he had railed against business before the war, he begged for their assistance once war was upon us. Johnson believes, "America won the war essentially by harnessing capitalist methods to the unlimited production of firepower and mechanical manpower." (p. 781) America had literally been preparing her whole life for this moment. And in this moment, she shone. The apotheosis of her power became the atomic bomb. Johnson convincingly shows how this weapon of mass destruction was the only thing that would actually make the world safe for democracy. Truman, a simple man of simple convictions, made the decision to drop them on Japan with a clear conscience, knowing it was the best way forward. This plunged the United States into the role of international policeman as we took up the mantle of keeping the forces of evil at bay. This Truman Doctrine, combined with the Marshall Plan, caused America to be looked at as the world's savior as well as making it an object of hate. No one likes to be a dependent, but America continues to provide and protect, knowing it is ultimately best for the world.
As America entered the peaceful and prosperous 1950s, Eisenhower took the helm. He seems to have deliberately downplayed his own genius for the benefit of the country. "George Kennan came closer to the truth when he wrote that on foreign affairs Eisenhower was a man of keen political intelligence and penetration ... When he spoke of such matters seriously and in a protected official circle, insights of a high order flashed out time after time through the curious military gobbledygook in which he was accustomed to expressing and concealing his thoughts. At public press conferences Eisenhower used his gobbledygook to avoid giving answers which plain English could not conceal, and often pleaded ignorance for the same reason. He was Machiavellian enough to pretend to misunderstand his own translator when dealing with persistent foreigners. Transcripts of his secret conferences show the lucidity and power of his thoughts. His editing of drafts by speechwriters and of statements by Dulles reveal an excellent command of English which he could exercise when he chose. Churchill was one of the few men who appreciated him at his worth, and it could be said that they were the two greatest statesmen of the mid-20th century.” (p. 829)
Johnson spends considerable time on Nixon and Kennedy. It was clear that the media had a favorite and they would use their influence to control the narrative. Nixon was to be the bad guy and Kennedy the messianic figure. Johnson show clear disgust with the unfairness, describing Nixon in glowing terms and reserving some of his harshest criticisms for Kennedy. "By all historical standards, Nixon should have been an American media hero. He was a natural candidate for laurels in the grand old tradition of self-help, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. He came from nowhere. His family background was respectable but obscure. He worked his way through an unfashionable college. He had no money except what he earned by his own efforts. He had, to begin with, no influential friends or connections. His life was dominated by a passionate desire to serve in public office, sometimes masquerading as brutal ambition, and by his patriotism and love of country, which knew no bounds. He was an autodidact and voracious reader, always trying to better himself, intellectually as well as professionally. He combined this earnest cultural endeavor with solid campaigning and administrative skills, which brought him early and continuing success, and with a modest private life which was morally impeccable." (p. 847)
Of Kennedy, Johnson says, "Jack never had his father's insatiable relish for money, power, and corruption. Most of his life he simply did old Joe's bidding. As he put it, ruefully: 'I guess Dad has decided he's going to be the ventriloquist, so that leaves me the role of dummy." In one important respect, Jack rejected the family tradition. Money did not interest him and he never troubled to learn anything about it. It was not that he was extravagant. Quite the contrary, he was mean...But, if he was not interested in making money, in most other respects he happily accepted the family philosophy, especially its central tenet: that the laws of God and the republic, admirable in themselves, did not apply to Kennedys, at any rate male ones. Like his father, he dealt with gangsters, when he felt so inclined. From the start he was taught by his father that bluff, freely laced with money—or outright mendacity if need be-could remove all difficulties." (p. 849) Johnson goes after Kennedy on every level, referring to his drug addiction, womanizing, poor political decision, outright lying, and marriage of convenience to Jackie. He even bursts the bubble on JFK's most notable success, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Johnson is not entirely sure that Kennedy did not make a bad situation worse.
Upon Kennedy's death and beatification, Lyndon Johnson found himself unexpectedly president. Although he had coveted the job his whole life, getting it under these circumstances seems to have affected him. The corrupt, racist threw himself into preserving the Kennedy legacy with a series of social programs designed to end poverty and bring about the utopian ideals so desired by the original Progressives. While greatly expanding government outlays in what would eventually prove to be a colossal waste of money, he also expanded America's role in Vietnam. This ultimately led to his inability to run again and win his second elected term.
His unpopularity opened the door for Nixon's reappearance. Unfortunately, the hatred of the press meant that all Nixon's mistakes and errors in judgment would be magnified. Even spying on rival campaigns, which was apparently de rigueur , would be turned into a Constitutional crisis, referred today as Watergate.
Ford took over, pardoned Nixon, but was left with a very hostile Congress. This led to what is actually a bigger crisis than a 2-bit bungled spying campaign, the fall of Vietnam. Although America had won the war, after Nixon's resignation, "Ford was obliged to look on helplessly while such freedom as a decade of effort by America had secured for the peoples of Indochina was removed step by step. As US military aid to South Vietnam tailed off from 1973, the balance of armed power shifted decisively to the Communist regime in the North. By the end of the year the North had achieved a two to-one superiority and, in defiance of all the accords carefully worked out by Nixon and Kissinger, launched a general invasion. Bound hand and foot by Congress, Ford felt powerless to act and simply made verbal protests. In January 1975 the whole of central Vietnam had to be evacu ated and a million terrified refugees fled towards Saigon. In an appeal to Congress, Ford warned: ‘American unwillingness to provide adequate assistance to allies fighting for their lives could seriously affect our credibility throughout the world as an ally.' Congress did nothing. At his news conference on March 26 Ford again pleaded with Congress, warning of a massive shift in the foreign policies of many countries and a fundamental threat ... to the security of the United States. Congress paid no attention. Four weeks later, on April 21, the Vietnamese government abdicated. Marine helicopters lifted American officials, and a few Vietnamese allies, from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon, an image of flight and humiliation etched on the memories of countless Americans who watched it on TV. It was indeed the most shameful defeat in the whole of American history. The democratic world looked on in dismay at this abrupt collapse of American power, which had looked so formidable only two years before." (p. 908)
It took the presidency of Ronald Reagan to restore America's faith in itself. He presided over a genuine economic expansion and a peaceful foreign landscape. Although the media had developed a taste for blood and so Washington became a constant source of scandal and rumor-mongering. Most good and decent people seem to be scared off from such an environment which meant that America got Bill Clinton at the top. Scandal followed him in all he touched, whether it was financial dealing, womanizing, or shady behavior in governance.
Finishing his history in 1997, Johnson concludes, "It is appropriate to end this history of the American people on a note of success, because the story of America is essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence. America today, with its 260 million people, its splendid cities, its vast wealth, and its unrivaled power, is a human achievement without parallel. That achievement—the transformation of a mostly uninhabited wilderness into the supreme national artifact of history-did not come about without heroic sacrifice and great sufferings stoically endured, many costly failures, huge disappointments, defeats, and tragedies. There have indeed been many setbacks in 400 years of American history. As we have seen, many unresolved problems, some of daunting size, remain. But the Americans are, above all, a problem-solving people. They do not believe that anything in this world is beyond human capacity to soar to and dominate. They will not give up. Full of essential goodwill to each other and to all, confident in their inherent decency and their democratic skills, they will attack again and again the ills in their society, until they are overcome or at least substantially redressed. So the ship of state sails on, and mankind still continues to watch its progress, with wonder and amazement and sometimes apprehension, as it moves into the unknown waters of the 21st century and the third millennium. The great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world's eyes. It is still the first, best hope for the human race. Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint an expectant humanity." (p. 976)
My favorite historian has written on my favorite historical topic, the history of America. He has covered us fairly, "warts and all", and he evokes a genuine love of an extraordinary place.
