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Book: Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
Quotes of Book: Lyndon Johnson and the
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  1. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    The American people," Johnson continued, "are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders-people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive. They will turn their backs on the party that is destructive.… If we go forward as positive Americans and not negative oppositionists I am convinced that the time is not too far distant when the Democratic Party will again be in the majority. The party that can produce a record of service to the people … the party that is the least partisan and the most patriotic … that party will win. A party that is overly partisan, overly quarrelsome and obsessed solely with politics will lose.
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  2. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    The American people," Johnson continued, "are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders-people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive.
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  3. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    The sad and poignant thing for Johnson, however, was not his anti-intellectualism in itself but his need to be accepted by the very people he scorned.
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  4. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    debate and decision. Congress itself was not, in his view, equipped with the expertise, the time, or the type of coherent organizational structure needed to formulate and initiate programs of action on a regular and systematically related basis. "Whenever my critics in the Congress talked to me about the responsibility of creating issues, I came back to the question of where in the hell they expected the issues to come from-from our heads? If an issue is not included in the presidential agenda, it is almost impossible-short of crisis-to get the Congress to focus on it. That's the way our system works; but these fellows never understood that. They didn't understand-with all their calls for Congress to have all sorts of expertise and classified information, in order to act in foreign affairs-that the congressional role in national security is not to act but to respond to the executive."9
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  5. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    Nor did Johnson restrict his insistence on his concept of the proper relations between President and Congress to infringements proposed by liberal Democrats. In 1955 the conservative Republicans sponsored a resolution that would put the Senate on record against President Eisenhower's participation in the Big Four summit meeting unless he first obtained a commitment from the Soviets to include the status of the Eastern European satellites as part of the agenda. "This resolution," Johnson argued on the floor, "would make Congress the controlling factor instead of a partner in the field of foreign affairs. It would place a loaded gun at the President's temple.… In our dealings with other nations, only one man can speak for our country. He cannot speak clearly if his words must be strained through a Congressional gag. When he sits down to negotiate with the chiefs of foreign states, I want them to know he is backed to the hilt by every loyal American."13
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  6. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    The idea that the congressional Democrats have a responsibility for taking the national Democratic platform and program and trying to push it through the Congress is simply crazy. A political party at a national convention draws up a program to present to the voters. The voters can either accept it by giving the party full power, reject it by taking the party completely out of power, or give it qualified approval by giving one party the Congress and the other party the Presidency. And when we in the Congress have been given a qualified mandate, as we were in 1956, it means that we have a solemn responsibility to cooperate with the President and produce a program that is neither his blueprint nor our blueprint but a combination of the two. It is the politician's task to pass legislation, not to sit around saying principled things."10
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  7. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    A true leader is a man who can get people to work together on the points on which they agree and who can persuade others that when they disagree there are peaceful methods to settle their differences.
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  8. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    How children dance," Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, "to the unlived lives of their parents,
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  9. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    we have a solemn responsibility to cooperate with the President and produce a program that is neither his blueprint nor our blueprint but a combination of the two.
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  10. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    The biggest danger to American stability," Johnson argued, "is the politics of principle, which brings out the masses in irrational fights for unlimited goals, for once the masses begin to move, then the whole thing begins to explode. Thus it is for the sake of nothing less than stability that I consider myself a consensus man.
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  11. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    He cannot speak clearly if his words must be strained through a Congressional gag.
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  12. Doris Kearns Goodwin _ Lyndon Johnson and the

    Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were "troublemakers," more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tangible achievement."
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