The final Presidential Library & Museum visit of the trip (the 5th), Lyndon Baines Johnson’s based at the University of Texas in Austin.
And I think it’s the best of those I’ve seen to date. It may be that’s because of the sheer scope of the man himself – his life is the history of the US in the 20th century, and the museum reflects that: his poverty-stricken background; his training as a teacher; his work for FDR in the 1930s; a hugely influential period in the Senate; his vice-presidency; JFK’s assassination (and some lovely bits on his relationship with Jackie Kennedy); his pushing of the space programme, pop culture in the 60s; and civil rights. All probably bear repeated visits.
It is a library too of course, with several of the 9 floors devoted to the records created during his five years in office. It’s easily forgotten just how forcefully and effectively LBJ used his powers in those early years.
In 1965 alone, he rammed through legislation on Voting Rights, Medicare, Medicaid and Education reform changing his country for the better – perhaps in a way no other has done certainly since then, and arguably with only FDR and Lincoln before him doing more.
His tragedy (and that of the US in those days) was an inability to pull back from the quagmire of Vietnam. It is laudable that that part of his presidency is in no way whitewashed to spare his reputation here. There are several huge rooms devoted to records and correspondence from officials, politicians, serving soldiers and grieving families making the case for both sides of the argument.
At home, I have all four current volumes of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ. That Caro is nowhere near completing the fifth (which will begin in that incredible year of 1965) perhaps tells its own story.
snowinginspace 