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Download a Pdf of the Intro Conversation Between Ed Ayers and Melody Barnes Here Speaker 1: Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, from Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory. Ed Ayers: Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Ed Ayers. If you're new to the podcast, each week along with my colleagues Joanne Freeman, Nathan Connolly and Brian Balogh, we explore a different aspect of American history. Since Backstory started 12 years ago, there had been quite a few incredible podcasts come out centered around history. We wanted to introduce you to some of the great work folks are doing in the world of history podcasting. You might've heard some recent episodes featuring shows like American Hysteria or What's Ray Saying. Or if you haven't, I definitely encourage you to check them out. Today we're excited to showcase the podcast LBJ and The Great Society hosted by Melody Barnes who was chief domestic policy advisor to Barack Obama and is now the co-head of the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia. I'm pleased to have Melody here with me to help set this episode up. Melody, welcome to Backstory. Melody Barnes: Ed, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. Ed Ayers: Now LBJ is a president, I'm sorry to say we don't hear a lot about these days. So what brought you to the project? What do you think a series about LBJ would really bring to our conversation right now? Melody Barnes: I think that LBJ was a fascinating president. He died, I was born in 1964 so the year some of the big first civil rights legislation and Great Society legislation started to be passed. And I remember the day he died, I was still a kid, but his work and the legislation that he guided through the White House and worked with the civil rights movement and others to pass has had such a significant impact on not only my life, but also on the way that we think about our country, the relationship between citizens and government programs that we live with today and people don't even think about, but shape our daily lives. And I think that because of the war, because of the Vietnam War, in particular, and the demise of The Great Society, LBJ left office under a dark, dark cloud and people have critiqued The Great Society. But at this moment when we're debating healthcare, when we are thinking about the impact of voting and the Voting Rights Act and so many other issues, that we have to talk about LBJ and we have to talk about that period to understand how they came to be and why it's so important to us to it today. Ed Ayers: You know, I can remember it, I'm seven years older than you and I can remember LBJ just being vilified by young people. We look back on it and go, Oh look at all these great things that he did. But as you said, we have that memory of LBJ saying he will not run again and just how far he fell. But it seems that we don't so much have those negative memories as no memories at all of LBJ. It just seems that he's sort of been, if not erased, he certainly faded in the historical record. Why would you think that might be? Melody Barnes: Well, I think particularly the way that his administration came to an end, it was a painful period for the country. We were immersed in what felt like for many, an endless war. There were massive protests in Washington, DC. I'm actually teaching a class on The Great Society right now with a UVA colleague, Sid Milkis and yesterday I was giving a lecture and we were discussing these massive protests at the Pentagon and 250,000 people in 1969 in Washington, DC. And then LBJ did what most presidents would never dream of, which is to say, I'm not going to run again. Melody Barnes: And so I think he left in many ways feeling as though he failed. And the American people felt as though he failed. And so when you combine the war with the reality that much of this very important legislation that he passed wasn't being funded at the level, I think, that he wanted or certainly its advocates had hoped for. And there were significant challenges, not only in the deep South, but also in the urban north that were making these issues very, very difficult to confront and very painful for the American people. And I think part of the problem in the same way that we skip over LBJ in our memory is that we haven't confronted those issues and wrestled them to the ground so that we can move forward. Ed Ayers: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And the full arc of the story will be really important for people to understand sort of the remarkable rise and the great triumphs and then that decline. So as I mentioned in the introduction, you've worked with a lot of politicians and were an advisor to President Obama. How did that experience, particularly working within the White House influence how you're telling the story about Johnson? Melody Barnes: Oh, in it's very, very significant way. It was one of the reasons that I was anxious to work on this podcast and to teach the class that I'm teaching right now. Once you have the opportunity to work in the West Wing of the White House, to sit in the Oval Office, to watch a president, to work with colleagues, to support a president as he has to make these life altering decisions for the country and for the world, you have a deep appreciation. I have a deep appreciation for just how challenging it is and just how challenging it is to move a single piece of big legislation, see the Affordable Care Act, not to mention the numerous pieces of legislation that LBJ was able to push through under the banner of The Great Society. So that was fascinating to me and certainly even his period as the majority leader in the Senate, having worked for Ted Kennedy for almost eight years, understanding that institution and the relationship between Congress and the White House and how complicated it is. So I was eager to dive into this body of work. Ed Ayers: Yeah. Because Johnson was unusual in being a success sort of every level of federal government, right. He was able to succeed in the collaborative body of the Senate, but then in the administrative role as well. So I can see why somebody who's seen behind the door would be fascinated by this. But we talk about leadership a lot right now in various ways. What do you think that we could learn from LBJ's style and the way he actually got things done? Melody Barnes: Well, I think a couple of things. One, the way that he worked with outside organizations and in fact the credit that he puts at the feet of the civil rights movement, of Martin Luther King, of so many activists around the country. And also I think it's important to understand that for all of the mythology that surrounds LBJ, the master of the Senate as he was called, someone who would get nose to nose, who would grab people by their lapels. The reality is that yes, he used that set of skills, but at the same time he was someone who studied and understood the institutions in which he worked, who as an FDR new deal Democrat, understood the importance of government. And he used the window that he had when he had power, particularly after he won election in 1964, to move quickly and aggressively to drive an agenda forward. Melody Barnes: So understanding the collaborative nature of leadership, also understanding how to use a moment in time for the country with a tragic moment after the assassination of President Kennedy. But to use that moment in time to move forward an agenda, I think those things are certainly important. And LBJ was also someone, much to the consternation often of civil rights leaders and others, he was quite pragmatic, but he at the same time I think was an idealist, someone who was driving towards something much larger than he and with an eye toward what that would mean for the country for generations come. Ed Ayers: So in the episode we're about to hear you tell the story of the battle to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was, according to Johnson himself, his greatest achievement. What inspired this topic and what are the main takeaways? Melody Barnes: Well, voting obviously is central to a democracy and central to who we are as citizens of a democracy. We talk about it as a right. We talk about it as a responsibility, but as we know in 1965 and the years prior for African-Americans and other people of color, it wasn't a right that they could actually exercise. And interestingly, President Johnson believed, and he said this to Hubert Humphrey, that while we were debating and fighting about and trying to pass legislation for access to accommodations, public accommodations, so that people could move to the front of the bus, so that people could go into a store and or a restaurant and sit down.
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