by Naftali Bendavid
The recent death of Lady Bird Johnson raises compelling questions about how reputations change.
In her days as first lady, Johnson was an object of ridicule among many educated liberals–she was seen as a classic mousy 1950s wife, caught up in a trivial beautification campaign and dominated by a husband who was hated in many quarters for his prosecution of the Vietnam war. To some, she represented everything feminism was rebelling against.
A joke from the period, unfortunately not unusual, went something like this: “The best thing Lady Bird Johnson can do for highway beautification is to prevent her daughters from driving with the top down.” That scornful gibe provides a flavor of some of the attitudes toward her.
But in Robert Caro’s majestic biography of President Lyndon Johnson, Lady Bird comes off as almost heroic. In Caro’s depiction, Lady Bird was abused by her husband, to be sure–but she bore it with a stoicism and dignity that was impressive and graceful, and created a noble contrast to the president’s own bullying and sulking. Biographers are often drawn to revisionism for its own sake, but nonetheless Caro’s portrait of the former first lady is persuasive.Lady Bird Johnson, among other things, appears to have been a sharp businesswoman who made the couple a lot of money; to have been fairly astute politically; and to have shown endless devotion and honor, despite an extremely tough situation.
On the one hand, it is not surprising that someone like Lady Bird, who submitted so meekly to LBJ’s affairs and public abuse, would be an object of some derision. And the 1960s rebellion against the subordination of women, which Lady Bird personified in the eyes of many, is understandable.
But she was raised in small-town Texas a long time ago, and she seemed to play the hand that was dealt her with honor, grace and especially kindness, which is a lot more than most people would say about LBJ.
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Many of the tributes since her death have focused on her beautification campaign. It seems a trivial endeavor to many when the nation was on fire over Vietnam, racial justice, sexual freedom and social justice. But, these tributes suggest, it was a significant contribution to future generations and a forerunner of the environmentalist movement.
I’m not sure that’s true, but mostly I wonder if it misses the point. To me the memorable thing about Lady Bird is her strength of character in appallingly difficult situations: a difficult husband, a country torn apart, the hatred directed at LBJ as the Vietnam war grew increasingly unpopular.
For all President Bush’s low poll numbers, he has never had to deal with anything like the opprobrium directed at Johnson (exemplified by the chant, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”)
One of the recent tributes to the former first lady noted that a group of historians recently ranked her as the third most influential First Lady, after Eleanor Roosevelt and Abigail Adams. Those two, of course, are universally acknowledged as major historical players, and it was interesting to see Lady Bird Johnson coming in right after them.
It may be that much of the reevaluation of Lady Bird, if that’s what it is, results from the enormous influence of Caro’s biography. In any case, it’s another lesson in the way perceptions can be so deeply influenced by the shifting perspectives of time.