runs in a space where it is best efforts and it is unlicensed and you're not guaranteed the same way a licensed spectrum carrier is guaranteed. a hardmission would have time explaining to american consumers if wi-fi stopped working in some significant measure. >> tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. c-span, "q&a" is next with author betty boyd caroli. at 7:00, we look at the morning's headlines on "washington journal." ♪ >> this week on "q&a," historian betty boyd caroli. she discusses her book "lady bird and lyndon," an inside look

at the marriage and political partnership between lady bird and lyndon johnson. brian: betty boyd caroli, your new book about lady bird and lyndon, you started in the prologue this way. "at exactly 4:00 p.m. on december 9, 1964, lady bird johnson started a slow, dignified descent down the wide stairway from the residential quarters of the white house to the state floor, where more than 600 guests were waiting." why did you start it that way, and what were you talking about? betty: well, i wanted to draw the reader into the story, because that was a very important day for the johnsons. remember, their older daughter was getting married, but it was also one of the worst periods in the presidency. you know, lady bird said that the first two years were wine and roses, and the last years were pure hell. and so, this was a happy family occasion, you could say, in the middle of what was really a devastating period for them. and i wanted to get the reader into the story before i began talking about her childhood, which was extremely troubled, as you know.

brian: what else was there about the wedding, that you said in the prologue, that was important? betty: well, i guess for me, what stood out was, she says in her unpublished diary, that as lyndon walked down the aisle, because they are in the big east room for the actual ceremony, with linda on his arm, lady bird wasn't looking at her daughter, she was looking at lyndon, and she said she noticed that his hair was grayer than before. that is an amazing statement for her to make, that when her daughter is being married, her eyes were not on the daughter, but the husband. brian: what was the symbolism for you that johnson left the reception to fly to texas? betty: i found that really hard to explain, how a father could leave his daughter's reception just a few minutes after it started. i mean, he did dance with lady bird, but he took off with some friends, and that left the bridal couple. can you imagine? a woman who has just been married and her father doesn't even stay around to see the

guests leave. it was for lady bird to see the guests and bridal couple off. brian: you've done a book on all the first ladies. in 1999, we talked about the nine roosevelt women. why did you spend all this time on lady bird johnson? betty: i always thought there was more to the story on lady bird. she's always been depicted as a plus one. i always thought that was wrong. partly because, she became, i think, the first modern first lady. in other words, she had a big staff, she had a very important project, she wrote her book as soon as she left the white

house. she really invented the modern first lady. so i thought, how could she be so insignificant and do all those things? and then there was the mystery about how her mother died. there were a lot of things about her story where i thought i just wanted to write about her. after she died, many of the papers became available, her unpublished diary. she published a big 800 page book. but she recorded eight times that much. i was dying to get my hands on that. i got the final segment this june. it was a very big help. brian: how did you find the diary? where did you have to go to read it? betty: remember, she did not keep a diary in the usual sense of writing everyday. she did not type. she recorded. she did not record everyday. the days she could not get to

it, she had a big brown envelope. she would throw in guest lists or menus. that had to be transcribed. the people who transcribed it did not always understand her accent. i was told i would have to wait until it was re-transcribed. it was told to me in the transcript that mrs. johnson looked at a picture and said, oh, it looks like a bowl of jelly. the person hearing this saturday did not sound like she would say a picture looked like a bowl of jelly. they went back to the picture and what she said was it looks like a "botticelli." those were the errors that needed to be corrected. i got the final segment this year. brian: did you ever meet her. betty: i did not.

i tried to get an interview and i got a kind note back saying she was ill. i did not follow up. i wish i had. her office was good to answer. if i said how many people worked job of, what was the this person, how many letters to your office received. she always made sure letters got answered. brian: her love letters were on the lbj library website. i went and looked and i do not remember whether you used this one, i'm going to read one from september 11, 1934. this comes from lyndon johnson. where were they both in september? betty: they met september 5, 1934. she had just graduated from in june.y of texas he was working in washington as an assistant to a congressman. he was back in texas and happened to go to the office of somebody they both knew.

lady bird happened to be there. that was september 5. they spent the next five days, he introduced lady bird to his family, to his boss, some friends. then, she took him back on monday to meet her father. wednesday to monday, they spent those days together, and he was already asking her to marry him. he left tuesday morning to drive back to washington. september 11 must be nearly the first letter he wrote her. the first night from the memphis how hehe wrote about wished she had come with him to marry him and so forth. maybe that's the letter? all interesting. anyone can get on the website and read it. he said, "it was hard to leave you. it is always hard to feel that you have not quite won. there may be some hope left in tomorrow. i hope to feel when i left you that you would want to go with me. if you did, i did not understand

it that way." he goes on to say, "you mean everything to me. i hope i may mean as much to you." "it is hard to tell you through the medium of words how satisfying and gratifying it was to be with you in your home." there is more, of course. that is five days after they met? betty: yes. the letters are an incredible source for understanding the sort of man he was. we now know his insistence on secrecy. he would write, "something's happening, but i can't tell you what it is." she would write, "oh please tell me." he would write, "no, no, i fear the outcome so much." the letters tell you a lot about his needs. "i need someone like you to nurse me and help me climb." the letters are a wonderful source. i could never figure out why a woman as cautious as lady bird would marry someone just a few weeks after she met him.

she was not even with him for most of that time. it is hard to figure out how many days they knew each other and work together before they married. they met september 5. they spent a few days together. he left, came back on halloween, that is the end of october. but she had already planned to take a trip to visit her aunt in atlanta, georgia. she went off on a trip. during that time they are also writing hot and heavy letters. he is sending her flowers. she comes back, fed up with people telling her to wait, and she marries him. they get into a car starting towards san antonio. it is not clear. she says i always figured i could get out in austin before we got to san antonio. she didn't even unpack before she got back from her aunt. theest -- she just threw suitcase in lyndon's car and they went off. it always amazes me that a woman

who was cautious about everything and sought advice on every single topic before she acted, she married him in a hurry. brian: here's kirk douglas and helen hayes reading these letters. [video clip] helen: we walked through the woods to an old colonial mansion. not quite dilapidated end-all for looking. it always gives me a very poignant feeling to go over there. it must have been a lovely place. there were the tallest magnolias andads of craig myrtle, flags in the spring. bird this morning , i am ambitious, proud, energetic in madly in love with you. i want to see people, i want to walk through the throngs, i want to do things with the drive. if i had a box, i would make a speech this minute. plans, ideas, hopes. i am bubbling over.

lyndon, tell me as soon as you helen: -- helen: lyndon, tell me as soon as you can what the deal is. [laughter] i'm afraid it's politics. i know i have not any business, not any proprietary interest. but i would hate for you to go into politics. [laughter] betty: well, i think that letter about not wanting him to go into politics, i think that line has been taken out of context. she was very political as a young woman. in the same letters, she's writing, do you like to debate economics and socialism, the way i do religion? , as a student at the university of texas, she would go to the legislature to listen to debate. i think that was taken out of context. i think she was interested in ambitious young men. she saw lyndon as one. if it was politics that he would take her to come she was willing to go.

brian: the thing that baffles a lot of people is her reaction to his womanizing. i'm going to pull out, we've got some videos of this. sayes from your book, you lyndon needed a "bevy of beauties around him, and bird made room for all of them." betty: yes, that doesn't surprise many people. but i think when you look at her background, her father, you look at the letter in which he tells her right off in washington about how he's out dancing with another woman, and later, he is dining with that same woman. i looked for lady bird's response to that. she doesn't reply to anything about this. later, she says she knew the relationship was not platonic. there's a very complicated history of why she wanted beautiful women around lyndon.

she says he did better work, his ego needed that. in the book, i talk about how she says lyndon always wants the most beautiful women beside him, and tonight it is, and then she names a woman. her unpublished diary is full of mentions of that. i know people have trouble understanding that what i think when you read her early history, you understand it. brian: another quote from you in the book. although you're telling a story from horace busby. he was an aide to lyndon johnson for years. "lyndon drove with one hand and used the other hand go under the skirt of the woman seated between him and bird." betty: i think busby was in the backseat and he observed this. there are many examples of that. people were just -- some people say, and i quote a woman reporter in the book who said this that in a way, lyndon made , a show of affection in order to rile lady bird.

in other words, it was almost, what this woman reporter said whenever they were walking side-by-side, lyndon would take her hand, if lady bird was in view, as though he was having some sort of sexual relation with the woman reporter. he flaunted his sexual attractivness. brian: helen copenhagen douglas married melvyn douglas, he was an actor, she was a congresswoman. i want to show you some video of helen douglas who ran against dick nixon and lost. so we can see what she look like and sounded like. clip] >> she condemned the fear of internal communism as irrational existenced the very of the house committee on un-american activities. politicians in both parties

called the former actress a "bleeding heart liberal," a "do-gooder," a hollywood pink. john f. kennedy quietly gave nixon $1000 to defeat her. saying it will not break my heart if you can turn the senate's loss into hollywood's gain. mrs. douglas was the perfect target for nixon's style of campaigning. >> richard nixon ran for the house of representatives. it was the same kind of campaign in 1950.against me the essence of that kind of campaign is this, to avoid the issues, you work up bogus issues. brian: that is from "american experience" on pbs. tell us the background on her. betty: she's talking about the senate campaign in 1950 when she lost to richard nixon. the relationship with lyndon goes back to their days together in the house.

lyndon was younger than she by about seven years. when she came in the house of representatives from california in 1945, she was, i say in the book, gorgeous, hollywood-smart, and glamorous. all the men in the house of the representatives, she was not the only woman, but she was the most glamorous. i said she stands out like a birthday cake on the salad bar. of course lyndon was going to make a play for her. he appears in her office almost first day she is there and offers to show her around. he stood up for her when she was attacked on the house floor by congressman rankin for the same thing said in the 1950's, being a communist. she stood up and said, "are you referring to me?" there was a scene. lyndon goes and gets the speaker of the house, rayburn, to come

back and get rankin to answer helen's question. rankin says no, i was not referring to the congresswoman from california, which of course is not true. it is an interesting case of how in public lyndon came to her rescue. there are many stories about how often they were seen around washington walking hand-in-hand, his car would stay parked overnight at her house. brian: he was married at the time? betty: yes, he had been married for 11 years. they already had one daughter. he was very much married. you also read in lady bird's diary how much she liked helen gahagan douglas. she heardied in 1945, it on the radio. where do they go to commiserate?

this was shocking to many people. we think of fdr as being sick for quite all out before he died. evidently people in washington knew he did not look good. lady bird went to the in january and she thought he looked tired, she thought it was just the weight of the office. there was shock. the war was not over yet. this was the only president many people had ever known, certainly in the johnson case. lyndon said he "was like a daddy to me." the death came as a huge shock. where do they go to commiserate? to talk with people who felt the same way. they went to the house of helen gahagan douglas. brian: on our radio station, we run almost all the phone conversation from the oval office with lyndon johnson. i want to run one with helen gahagan douglas. this is 1964, january 1. lady bird is on the phone.

let's listen and see what you think. [audio clip] >> the other night -- he suddenly looked at me. he never knew you the way i did. i said he might be one of the really great ones. >> hello. >> melvyn, how are you. >> that is what i said. this man might turn out to be one hell of a present. >> well, i hope i am good as a president as you are in your profession. >> i ran into your friends, right and left, and liked them all so much. >> tell lyndon that evelyn's out here. she's running the big law office for wyman. >> i know them. i like them. >> i asked her to keep her ear to the ground. california is a messy place, worse than texas. >> what was that? >> i asked her to keep her ear

to the ground. anything that you would need to know. >> tell her to report to us every now and then. linden sent you the staffing message. i guess i'm used to it. i like for women to like him, and i like him to like them. hit it he and roz wyman off very well indeed partly , because of you. >> there are complications, but it's going very well. betty: that is so typical for her to get on the phone and ooze charm. there's a later case where helen stays over at the white house. she comes to a dinner and they invite her to stay. ladybird has breakfast with her the next morning and is so enthusiastic about what a great person she is. this is 15 years after all of washington was talking about lyndon's affair with helen. know: did melvyn douglas

that his wife had an affair with lyndon johnson? that he: did -- betty: the biographer says it was a fairly open marriage at that point. brian: we might come back to that point. i want to go on to another part of the book, where you talk about lady bird johnson's business experience. you even had figures on how much money was dispensed to her and the children. let's start with this. a man named a.w. morrison was a trustee of the business. i want to quote this from you. "the two men did not speak for the remainder of lyndon's life." after this guy had been his trustee. betty: a.w. was a rancher, a neighbor. that was the first stop on most of their trips back to texas during the white house years. when it came time to appoint a trustee to look after their holdings, when lyndon became

president in november 1963, a.w. was one of the people they could trust to do that. his family had lent money to lyndon to go to college in the this was a relationship 1920's. that went way back. it became complicated. a.w. was buying ranches and thanks and businesses -- and banks and businesses in the names of different people. it very complicated. when it came time to end the relationship, to settle the property after the presidency ended, lyndon said they decided to "split the blanket." in other words they never spoke , again. he had a record of doing things like that. i was going to ask you about that. bill moyers, he cut them off. betty: lady bird cap the relationship going. who spoke at lady bird's funeral, bill moyers.

brian and tom johnson, who was : his press secretary. he cut him off? i talked to tom johnson about that. after the presidency ended, tom johnson wanted to give a book party for bill moyers. the first person they called was lyndon johnson and said we would like you to come to the party. the phone went dead. tom johnson said he could not just sever the relationship. he was involved in the johnson business. they went to lady bird, which so many people did. and she talked to lyndon. according to tom johnson, she said to lyndon just because tom , is loyal to bill moyers doesn't mean he isn't also loyal to you. and so it was mended, a little. brian: back to business. how did their business start, and what was it? betty: lady bird had a journalism degree. she was the first first lady to

have 2 degrees, and the only one up to hillary clinton. although now they all have two degrees. she said she always wanted to own a newspaper, but it was too expensive. they could not afford to buy one. in 1942, a station in austin came up for sale. a station that was losing money. she had money inherited from her mother, who had died a long time ago. and partly from her uncle claude, whom she was named for. claudia was her real name. out and buyjust go that without doing research. she went to a member of the fcc who had been a johnson friend. she said, do you think it is a good idea? he says yes. she buys the station and goes down there in 1943.

i have evidence she washed the windows and dealt with programming and got into it. of course, that little station gradually became the basis of an empire. it didn't make money. her first money was in august of 1943, and the profit was $17. she probably reported. she said she used the entire amount to pay a dental bill. she turned that around and then they add stations. of course, when television became an option, that, i found interesting. one of the interpretations given to the broadcasting history of the johnson family is that lady bird had nothing to do with it. she was just sort of the name. there is so much evidence to the contrary. the communications lawyer talks about a meeting, where they had to decide whether to go into television or not.

it was very expensive. lots of equipment and programming. it was going to be a bigger deal than radio. lyndon was holding back. but lady bird says it's a risk she wanted to take even if it takes everything we have. i think he said it is your money. so they went into tv. the rest is history. brian: there was a time when the one television station in austin was ktbc. belonged to lyndon johnson. networks,ll three nbc, abc and cbs. why did that happen? betty: it's impossible to think about a senator being on the commerce committee, in charge of communications, the fcc, not having influence with the people making decisions. to what extent he actually, it has never been shown, any concrete evidence that he influenced people. it seems to me to be absolutely

clear that just being in that job was an influence. i compared it to the obama daughters getting into college. i bet they both get into their first choice. when you are the daughter of the president, you have clout. lady bird johnson, one of the people said in the case of , getting a license for tv, he said, "i didn't apply." said i knew the wife of senator johnson was applying and i did not have a chance. undue influence on those people not to apply? perhaps. even if they did not exit any influence, just the fact that lyndon was on the committee in the senate that was in charge of the fcc, that was making decisions we don't have to say , anything more. brian: later in the book you talk about how the station was sold to "times mirror," at one point, johnson worked for the

los angeles times as publisher. the amount of money that was distributed, how did you find that? both to lady bird and hurt daughters? -- her daughters. betty: i use printed sources. there were some subjects that became too complicated to follow up individually, like certain gifts lyndon had given to staff members. i relied on other sources, like "the wall street journal" who reported the amounts. i've never heard those amounts were wrong. brian: you talk about president johnson having a falling out, after he had been out of the white house with walter , cronkite. you say it walter cronkite and cbs paid him $300,000 for an interview. what was the falling out about? betty: when lyndon johnson left the white house, both johnson's, i think they were the first couple to do this, they signed contracts to write books. you notice that lady bird turned in 1970.

lyndon had a little more trouble and gets his out by 1971. that money from those contracts was to go to the lbj library. lyndon had signed to do interviews with walter cronkite. it was several hours and that these were to be edited into shorter segments to show the johnson presidency. lyndon johnson he felt it was not a fair presentation of his handling of and presentation of his handling of subjects like vietnam. you will notice i have a picture in the book of lady bird and walter cronkite, after lyndon died. they were boating together off of martha's vineyard. remember, he was a classmate of lady bird. they were both in the journalism school. it is interesting to see the way she keeps this friendship.

morrison, cronkite, johnson, after lyndon has broken off. it is a very important role she plays in his life while he is alive, to mend the fences. he could be crude, cruel, make fun of them because of their weight or what they were wearing. there's a famous story of how he criticized jill kelley sondra. he would say he did not like the he said -- he would say he did not like the way someone's tie was tied. lady bird would say, maybe he likes his tie that way. she would say, you've been delivering bad messages. sometimes, you confuse the

message with the messenger. she was good when it came to mending problems. brian: these are your words. with the- it fits in walter cronkite interviews. "he went on and on about how communist controlled the three major networks and dozens of other communication outlets. according to richard goodwin, he even named names. 'walter lippmann is a communist.' you would be shocked by the things revealed by the fbi." and he accused cronkite. betty: you are reading from the description of the ranch. richard goodwin let loose with all these names. it was lady bird who said, now lyndon, don't you think you

should think twice? some of those reports might not be correct. the crisis that was averted, she would never confront him, but to say, "now, lyndon." she called it "infiltration." brian: the interview we did with her in 1999, the first question was about a taping system. the answer was a surprise. i want you to watch this and fill in. >> did it bother you when you heard you were recorded? lady bird: no. he did not, as a matter of fact about -- fact. not that i recall.

it would not have bothered me. it happened. i knew vaguely that it was happening. i let it happen. someone had been under the bed with a microphone. those things happened, so no, i wasn't hurt or shocked. mostly, i just knew this was the real, raw stuff of what went on. betty: she was amazingly courageous to let those tapes be opened. remember, his recording system was created so he knew he would quote someone correctly. the recording system would be left on, because it always

shocked me a bit to see he was recording his own wife. secretaries told me other people could turn that on. there were, i think, 800 hours of recorded conversations. some of them were blank, just talking in the office because the recorder was left on. he gave them to his most trusted secretary, and he asked him not -- asked her not to open them until 50 years after his death. that would've been 2023. harry middleton knew about the tapes and went to lady bird in 1990. he asked if they should open them. she said, yes. now, you can hear her telling him how bad his press conference was.

you can hear her argue with him about how to treat the walter jenkins matter. brian: keep in mind, she does not know she's recorded. what happened to walter jenkins? betty: their top aide since 1939, 25-years or so, the families were close. the johnsons went to the jenkins home. they were like relatives. he was arrested on a morals charge one month before the biggest election of lyndon's life, in a public restroom. when the johnsons heard about it, lady bird was in the white house, and lyndon was in new york campaigning for bobby kennedy. she called him to say what they should do.

brian: let's listen. lady bird: i would like to do two things about walter. i would like to offer him the number two job at the radio station. lyndon: i would not do anything on that line. [inaudible] lady bird: i don't think that's right. i think if we don't express support to him, i think we will lose the entire love and devotion of all of the people who have been with us. or so drain them.

lyndon: well, you can imagine what state i am in. i don't want to create any more problems. betty: of course, what she did do, she wrote a letter supporting jenkins. she said, my heart goes out to this man. this nervous breakdown deserves our prayers and attention. his whole family deserves -- she called in the editor of the washington post to print it. remember, she did not know she was being recorded. she took the right stand, and lyndon was really backing off. she says it was close to the election.

we are talking mid-october. the election was in early november. he felt, any indication that his top aide was vulnerable to blackmail would be a death sentence for the election. that's the way she explained it. she sort of defended lyndon. at least, she did not attack him. brian: did they get him a job? betty: lady bird went to see the family about a month after that. she talks about it being a very hard visit. he continues to work for them and does their taxes right up until, as long as he was alive. brian: i am going to ask you about robert carroll. how did he help you at all, and how many sources like that did you go to? people that spend time writing books on lbj.

betty: i tried to talk to his biographers, for example, bob carol. i asked him if he had changed his opinion because he was working on the i/o's for a long time.- bios for a long there is a letter, saying in 1976, i want to come to the library to do a book on lyndon. here it is, 40 years later. we're still waiting for the volume. he said to me, he does think lady bird was a mood stabilizer. lyndon had extreme mood swings. george -- it was the press secretary that said -- "lyndon could start down the

stairs in a good mood, and arrive at the bottom in a bad mood." lady bird would say, in her diary, "he's in the dumps today. it's all doom and gloom." then, "he's all better." many people talked about those mood swings. i talked to bob doll like. bob had interviews with lady bird. i tried to get interviews with historians who had talked to her, which i could not. brian: i wanted to get your take on this other affair. >> about alice, i had to write at length about. i don't think the johnson people, they have never forgiven me. you could not write an honest book about him without making her a rather major figure. he was close to her for years.

i think the sex part was over in like three or four years. he always was driving down to virginia, to her estate. betty: i think betty: the relationship with alice glass was greatly exaggerated. it is true, in the late 30's, she was a glamorous figure. lady bird talks about going to their home, the home she shared with charles marsh, and thinking these were the most sophisticated people around. in the research i did, i could not follow a relationship and a close relationship between lyndon and alice after the early 40's. things did not line up. we may never know what happened. it's true she went and married five times after that. i make the point in my book that

it's a good thing lyndon johnson did not divorce lady bird. it's a thing a lot of people thought he would do in 1939. i don't think we would've heard of him again. he needed lady bird. brian: here's the roughest one. you write about a woman named madeline duncan brown. she supposedly had a child by lyndon johnson. i want to run a video. >> i get to the driskill hotel, and he's crying. he said, oh you missed me. did, and hees i said what was wrong, and i blurted out that i was pregnant. he had a fit. >> he had a temper, no telling what he might do.

>> he broke a lamp. it was a really ugly experience. finally when he he calmed down and he said, "it takes two to tango." i was relieved he said that. brian: is that true? betty: she wrote a book. madeline duncan brown is the only woman with whom lyndon's name is associated for an affair. she worked for a publicity company in the late 40's and that is how she met lyndon johnson and she says the affair began in 1948 and resulted in a son. she says she continued to see him. there is documentation that many historians have accepted as true.

she says that lyndon set her up in a house with credit cards and servants. he arranged for that to continue after his death. lady bird not believe that. the son sued, but he died before the case was settled. you have all these books about women who had affairs with john kennedy. on the lyndon johnson side, it is a sparse record. madeline brown was involved in all these conspiracies. she said she heard lyndon johnson say i'm not going to have a kennedy sticking me around much longer just for the assassination of john kennedy in dallas. she is a part of that, and that has discredited her.

so far, people have not been able to discredit her on this. brian: what papers were you able to find? betty: there are a couple of interesting files. when she was running the office. remember, at pearl harbor, she was in alabama going over financial papers. she knew she would inherit land and money from her uncle. she heard about the pearl harbor report and the fdr speech. when she was back in washington, lyndon had signed up for active service. she took over his office for six months in 1942. she ran it extremely well. i loved looking at her correction.

the office had cointreau or five secretaries, and -- had cointreau or five -- had four or five secretaries, and she went over every letter, and there was one in which a person wrote to a constituent in texas, saying he was off fighting the war, where the president wants him to be. lady bird said that was not true. the president wanted him back, doing legislative work. lyndon certainly came back by the middle of 1942. the letters she was writing, "please send me any news you can." she told everybody that had a baby in that district that they were getting a congratulations letter. she was one thorough person. that was good, i learned a lot about how she operated. she was an authentic person.

when she invited the women reporters upstairs at the white house, she said, "i enjoyed the visit." people had not done that before and jackie kennedy would never have invited anybody out there. most of the first ladies, if you go back in the 20's century, they did not want reporters seeing what happened upstairs. she would invite them up and afterwards they would say "i feel good about it. i'm an open person, but next time i will put away the books i'm reading." i don't think she was embarrassed about reading them, but she was embarrassed about which authors got mentioned. i heard she was a great reader, but in her diary, she does not say she likes this book because of that. i realized later that she felt later that would favor a writer over another. in that way she kept quiet. brian: is the unpublished diary

available for anybody to read? betty: yes. as of june, the last segment is out. brian: was that tough on you, the new information or your book -- for your book? betty: nothing changed my view. there were a few comments. the unpublished diary fills in a few things left out of the published one. she talks about going to bobby kennedy's funeral. she said jackie kennedy looked at her as if from a veil at a distance. in the unpublished diary, what she really wrote was that jackie kennedy looked at her from a distance with hostility. it makes it different, to add hostility. there are some places i was able to fill in from blanks.

-- fill in some blanks. brian: what year did you write your first book? betty: 1987. i was teaching women's history. i did not want to write a book about women who became famous because of the men they married. my editor had to talk me into it . i had said i wanted to write a little about eleanor roosevelt. she said if you knew more, you might be able to write a book. i was working at cambridge. every time i had to wait for a box of papers, i would pull down an encyclopedia and read about sarah polk or some of the first ladies. it struck me that they all married down, almost all of them. they married into families that

were economically below theirs. sometimes less education, and i wondered why did the women marry down? i came back from that trip and i told my editor i would write the book in two years. it took four or five. lady bird johnson is the perfect example of the conclusion i came to, which is that these women saw something in those men, ambition, opportunity to really climb and make a mark in the world. lady bird's father, he liked lyndon. he was not opposed to the marriage. he thought it was too fast. just those few weeks knowing her. she's a good example of that. as i said, that is why i decided why had i not more about her. -- had to find out more about her.

brian: what would you have thought of lyndon? betty: everybody says he is the most complicated person you could imagine. sylvia porter after a trip to the ranch told another guest as they were going to the airport "he is a crude and cruel man, but he will make a great president." when i tried that line on people who work for him, they said he could be the cruelest person you could imagine, but also that he was the most loving and supportive person. if he heard that a parent or relative had never been into an airplane, he'd arrange it. he would on the spot stage a birthday party for his staffers. lady bird loved that. she was a gracious person, but she did not have the spontaneous generosity he did. have -- i would have felt really angry when he was crew at -- crude and cruel,

then thought he was great when he was not. brian: we've got a home movie of lady bird from camp david. we will throw it up on the screen. there's john steinbeck on the right. there's mrs. johnson and the president with someone's baby. the reason i show this is, how much did you watch? betty: it's all online. if you go to their website and look at the home movies, maybe there are 35, i would suggest to watch the one of the 1941 campaign. that is her first and lyndon gave her the movie camera, and she goes around doing opposition research. recording what the other candidates are saying, giving

her own impressions and so forth. they lost the election for senate in 1941. but she said it was her favorite campaign. brian: you wrote, "vacations made him testy." betty:, after his heart attack in 19 -- 1955, they went to disneyland, and the girls, vacations were not on his list of his favorite things. that is one thing lady bird did do after his death, she traveled the world. brian: you write, "as much as she loved him, she continued to be shocked by his acting out. she was not alone in failing to see how a grown man could throw such childish tantrums." betty: when he throws food or spits in a plate.

she said, "i'm bewildered by his behavior, but no more than he is himself." there was a part of him that was not understandable. brian: was he bipolar? buty: he was not diagnosed, several staff said he would be in a manic stage. she never used those terms. they were going through a bad period in 1965. that was the year of the higher education act, medicare, the voting rights act, the beautification act. it was a rich period.

the president had real highs and lows. so much so that bill moyers became alarmed and went to lady bird to see what could be done. she said she'd already acted. she called in his doctors, who examined him to see if there was something wrong. they called it the stress of hard work. he was never diagnosed as bipolar. many people have come to the conclusion that he was. brian: you said you live in new york and vienna? betty: new york and venice. we spend about half of halftime in both places. brian: why venice? husband grew up in venice and so we decided we needed our own home and venice. -- in venice. brian: do you teach?

betty: not for 20 years. brian: where did you grow up? betty: ohio, in the center of the state on a farm, north of mount vernon, south of mansfield. i went to overland college. that is up near cleveland, more or less. i went to penn state for a masters in communication. i have not lived in ohio for some years. brian: will you do another book? betty: i promised my husband not to sign another contract. i have three in the basement. one is something i was working on in 1982. she's an important figure in the settlement house movement. she has a name my editor said would be too hard for people to pronounce. i would like to finish it.

i started a book about my great-grandfather, a historical fiction book. he was a captain in the virginia cavalry. i would like to do a book about venice. brian: here's the cover. explain to us, who chose the cover? betty: i can't take credit for choosing that photograph, but the person who chose it knew what the book was about because you have lady bird with her left hand on his back. the wedding ring is very visible. you would not say she is pushing, but she is supportive. i think the photograph captures the sense of the book well. brian: our guest has been betty caroli. the book is "lady bird and lyndon." we thank you. betty: thank you very much.

♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> for free transcripts or to give your comments about this program, visit us at human day.org --q&a.org. if you enjoyed this week's q and a interview, here are some other programs you might like. a two-part interview with robert caro talking about his biography of lyndon johnson.

discusses being nixon, his book in the life and career of richard nixon. you can watch season a time search our the library at -- you can watch these at any time or search our video library at c-span.org. >> washington journal is next, then like this afternoon, mexico's prime minister talks about the state of us-mexico relations in her first public visit to washington. on today's washington journal, we take a look at congressional efforts to tighten visa requirements and other steps the u.s. is taking to counter threats from isis. we are joined by frank salute go -- cilluffo. -- talked about a recent poll of

how blood meals you the campaign of 2016, the fight against isis and other topics. -- low performing schools get better through school improvement grants. ♪ host: no spending deal has yet been reached to keep the government-funded past wednesday at midnight. text could be released later today. president obama has to the pentagon to discuss current u.s. strategy against isis. you can hear his remarks at 12:25 this afternoon on c-span. next 45 minutes, we want to get your reaction to the u.s. committee for the global climate deal that was finalized in paris over the weekend. it also commits at least a par