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Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore historian_88.qxp 20/12/2005 12:54 Page 8 Feature Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore: — PROFESSOR A.J. BADGER Southern New Dealers And The Modern South LBJ and Albert Two Southern New Dealers Gore, Al’s father, Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore were elected to Congress within a year of each other in helped to 1937-38. They were elected in the old style of patronage-oriented southern Democratic transform the Party politics in which a plethora of candidates, with few issues to divide them, contested Southern States. primary elections. Both circumvented the local county seat elites who usually delivered their counties' votes by taking their case directly to the people, mounting vigorous campaigns to establish their name recognition. Johnson reached out to the tiniest and most isolated communities in his district and completely overturned the 'leisurely pace normal in Texas elections.' Gore played the fiddle with a small band to attract a crowd on Saturday afternoons in courthouse squares across his district. But if they started their political lives in the traditional, old, rural South, their careers – LBJ till he stood down from the Presidency in 1968 in the face of the intractable war in Vietnam, Gore till he was defeated as the no I target of the Nixon Southern Strategy in 1970 – spanned the creation of the modern South. In no small measure they themselves contributed to the collapse of the poor, rural, white supremacy South and the creation of a prosperous, urban, bi-racial South. Their careers saw the replacement of the props that had underpinned the Old South: a rural one-crop region mired in poverty became a booming industrialized, urbanized society with a diversified agriculture; a rigidly segregated South became a desegregated society in which African Americans enjoyed full civil rights; a politics which excluded disfranchised African Americans became a bi-racial democracy in which African Americans voted, held office and shaped public policy; a one party system in which the Democrats monopolized power became a two-party system in which a lily-white Republican Party routinely won the region's presidential votes. Gore and Johnson were very similar. Both came from the hill country South and had struggled to go to modest colleges. Both had taught in poor schools but only briefly. Both were natural politicians who carved out reputations in state politics before going to Washington. Both served in World War II for strictly limited periods and neither had the sort of tough war-time experience that profoundly shaped so many southerners, white and black. Johnson and Gore were elected to the Senate in 1948 and 1952. Johnson defeated the rigidly conservative, popular governor, Coke Stevenson, Gore defeated the veteran chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ally of Boss Crump, Kenneth McKellar. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Both did so by dauntingly vigorous personal campaigns. While Johnson used a helicopter Albert Gore, June 1968. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Library to follow a punishing schedule across the state, the stately Stevenson deigned to give one photo by Mike Geissinger address in each county seat. While Gore criss-crossed Tennessee in a relentless daily 8... The Historian / Winter 2005 historian_88.qxp 20/12/2005 12:54 Page 9 schedule of stump speeches and provide everything from hospital President Lyndon B. Johnson and Albert Gore meet in the Oval Office, television broadcasts, the enfeebled construction to rural telephones. White House, June 1968. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library Library McKellar largely remained in his photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto hotel while supporters hit the What Gore saw in the Tennessee campaign trail as surrogates. Valley, Johnson saw when rural His time in Germany convinced electrification came to the Hill him of the value of the autobahns. Both represented a new style of Country and when he could see And at the end of the war there issue-oriented politics heralded by what the great projects on the was a dramatic increase in car the New Deal and an activist Lower Colorado River could ownership. As Al Gore recalled: federal government. The Tennessee achieve. Whereas, for southern Valley Authority (TVA) and cheap conservatives, the federal I remember seeing as a child the public power were the key factor in government was the problem, for long, long, long lines of red tail this new politics. To a new southern New Dealers like Johnson lights stretching out of highway generation of southern politicians and Gore the federal government 70 at night and the equally long the TVA was a model for what the was the solution. Federal aid, they line of headlights coming in the federal government might do for believed, was essential to solve the opposite direction. And at that the poorest region in the country. region's health care and educational time with only one, two-lane They became, in north Alabaman problems. Cheap credit from the road going representing the John Sparkman's words, TVA Reconstruction Finance main east-west corridor for liberals. Just as the federal Corporation would liberate the Tennessee but also nationally. government had rejuvenated a region's entrepreneurs. In the battle Highway 70 north was the whole valley, so the federal to develop the region's principal east-west route for the government could rejuvenate a infrastructure, Johnson and Gore whole midsection of the country. whole region. Federal assistance would be allies from the late 1930s through flood control, cheap power to the Great Society: most notably, Al Gore remembered that the six to and water resource development on interstate highways, federal aid eight round trips a year between could be the engine of economic to education, and Medicare. Carthage and Washington became growth modernizing agriculture 'a much longer ordeal.' The lesson and stimulating industry. Aid to Gore, with Johnson's backing, was his father learnt from those regular education could transform the the main congressional sponsor of trips was that these two lane roads schools. Federal assistance could the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. were no longer adequate. The Historian / Winter 2005 ...9 historian_88.qxp 20/12/2005 12:54 Page 10 Feature Albert Gore Sr. and Lyndon B. Johnson at the Democratic Convention, Chicago, 1956. Photo by Hank Walker Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Gore took great pride in his leadership of Senate forces in support of the Interstate Highway system, what he and his House co- sponsor called 'the greatest construction program in the history of the world.' As chair of the Subcommittee of Public Roads of the Senate Public Works Committee he followed up on Eisenhower's initiative and, even before General Clay's task force reported, introduced legislation for federal funding over the next six years of an interstate system. He believed that, without it, 'national economic development would be seriously impaired'. Given his head by the alcoholic chair of the Committee, Dennis Chavez, Gore For LBJ it was the space For Gore it was atomic power. He secured Senate passage of his bill in programme which brought such had been made privy by FDR to the 1955. In 1956 the House tackled the spectacular benefits to Alabama developments at Oak Ridge. He was source of funding – user taxes paid and Florida but above all Houston. as enthusiastic about the peaceful into a Highway Trust fund – and The powerful Houston use of atomic power as he was for the Interstate Highway Act passed congressman, Albert Thomas, the the TVA. In his senate campaign in that summer. Gore consistently led only congressman LBJ was 1952 he vowed to make Tennessee the fight to ensure that there was no allegedly afraid of, actually the 'atomic capital' of the nation. 'stretch-out' of the programme, to opposed the space programme as Despairing of the slowness of ensure that spending on the chair of the Appropriations private industry to develop nuclear program was not cut back in the subcommittee that controlled reactors on the scale of the British, late Eisenhower administration and space spending. But once the he secured passage with Johnson's throughout the 60s. Soviets launched Sputnik, LBJ saw help of a Senate bill in 1956 for the potential to embarrass the government financing of reactor The South led the nation in Eisenhower administration and construction. The bill floundered in securing federal funds for interstate rally Democrats. He and Sam the House. construction and led the nation in Rayburn got Thomas onside devoting their state budgets to together with another Texan, Olin But Johnson and Gore did not highway construction. In 1965 'Tiger' Teague, chair of the House merely want to see economic every southern state but North Space Committee, and led the fight growth in the South, they also Carolina exceeded the US level of to establish NASA. NASA awarded wanted to help the region's poor. highway spending per thousand 50 of its 130 research grants and LBJ's Great Society produced a dollars of personal income. Mississippi contracts to southern universities. welfare explosion in the South in spent twice the national ratio. When it was announced that the the 1960s. It increased transfer Manned Spacecraft Center would payments through the War on Johnson and Gore had particular be built in Houston, 29 companies Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid. It enthusiasms for special aspects of had located there within a year, gave access to educational federal investment in the South. even before construction started. opportunity that facilitated the 10... The Historian / Winter 2005 historian_88.qxp 20/12/2005 12:55 Page 11 Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One following the assassination of John Kennedy, Dallas, Texas, 22 November 1963.
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