university's law school and peter, an attorney and member of the commission on civil rights. onch landmark cases tonight c-span, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app and for background on each case while you watch, order your copy of the landmark cases book available for $8.95 plus shipping and handling. and for an additional resource, there is a link on our website to the national constitutional centers international -- interactive constitution. announcer: this week on "q&a," politico magazine contributing editor joshua zeitz discusses his book, "building the great society." brian: joshua zeitz, your new

book, "building the great society: inside lyndon johnson's white house." question, i ask you a i want to show you on this network in 2014, talking about a previous book about two of lincoln's staff members. [begin video clip] >> they undertook a quarter century mission to create a definitive and and during historical reputation for their leader. the culmination of their efforts was a 10-volume biography which was see her allies between 1886 and 1890 in the century magazine which at that time was america's leading mass circulation magazine. that effort constituted one of the singularly successful exercises in historical revisionism in all of american history. [end video clip] brian: explain about what you learned regarding the staff. joshua: who was that young guy? [laughter] joshua: yes, i wrote a book about hays and nicolay.

about these secretaries of lincoln. the term "secretary" was a catch all for chief of staff, press secretary political , director, the white house staff was miniscule in those days. they knew him from the springfield days. they came to washington with him when they were very young men and they lived in worked in the white house. they were party to everything we know about lincoln during the civil war years. they later became his biographers, or his first biographers. writing that book intrigued me because it became clear there is this component of residential -- of presidential history, which is the history of the men and women who staffed these administration's, which is s, which administration is so critical, not only in terms of such visions they make while they are in the white house, but the access with historical retrospection and place in context the events they witnessed. brian: what did you think of the history they wrote?

the 10 volumes? joshua: the 10 volumes don't pass muster given the secondary literature we have on the civil war. they played a vital role in placing slavery at the center of the conflict of the civil war, which today seems intuitive. they were writing this in the late 19th century, decades after lincoln had been assassinated, when the country was going through a romantic reunion. it became popular and prevalent for most historians and political commentators to view the war as having been about states' rights or other constitutional issues, but not slavery. they did something critically important. they put the context over slavery's expansion at the center of the narrative. not only about the war but about lincoln's career. in that way they created the standard historical account that everybody would argue against afterwards. but i think also, when we are talking about presidents, they are the one to

-- they are the ones to create the prototype that lasted until this day, the way we think of lincoln of having been a master of a fractious cabinet, a first among equals in washington, a master politician, the head of a team of rivals. perfectly against and with each other in order to achieve his ends. that was their interpretation. that lasted pretty long. brian: how old were those two men when they were staff for abraham lincoln? joshua: hey was in his 20's. nikolay was in his mid-20's. they had no prior experience. they grew up in illinois. i don't think hay had ever been to washington, d.c. it was a bit of a brood awakening. there were a lot of people who wanted that job, probably had a better claim to it, who are jealous of them. they realized they were a shot

-- they realized they were fish out of water when they came to d.c. but that is a common story over the decades. brian: in your bibliography, i count at least nine books written by the staff of lyndon johnson. what did you think of their history? and how did you -- because you quote a lot from those books. how did you follow up to make sure they were telling the truth? joshua: you treat a memoir, whether it is a staff memoir or a journalist, with a critical eye. the stories they tell can be very helpful to consult if they have been corroborated by other sources. but even if you suspect some of , these stories are apocryphal or self-serving, because oftentimes they are, they certainly help to provide insight between the staff and the president he or she worked for. so i think like any other primary source, you have to look at it critically.

that being said, i did try to bear in mind some advice they had written back and forth to each other. they consciously decided not to use all of the oral history nicolai took of people around lincoln from his springfield days to the white house. they self-consciously decided not to re-interview people. they were lied as much as they could on contemporary documentation. because they found as people get older, their memories went, and/or they had a particular grudge in their interview. johnson is an interesting case in point. there is a rich trove of oral histories taken in the late 60's all the way through the late 80's. i did use them. i did not follow nicolay and hay to the letter. but i privileged the ones done in 1968, 1970 when memories were

fresh. i did use the ones when people were being candid because they had security in knowing these would not be released for another quarter-century. they did not necessarily have to position things just so. but at all times, if i could , corroborate the facts and the sentiment by consulting contemporary sources, memos they wrote to each other in the moment, i would always privilege those more because they were clearly not written with an eye toward history. brian: did you interview anybody who worked for lyndon b. johnson? joshua: i did not. most of the principles have passed on. there are only two senior staff members who are still alive. that is bill moyers, who went on to have a storied career in journalism and television. and joe califano who went on to become secretary of health and welfare for president carter and had a successful law practice in new york. i've reached out to moyers and

never heard anything back. which is fine. i'm sure he gets request like that all of the time. i did let califano knew that i was writing a book. he was pleased to hear it, but i did not interview him. i have poured through tens of thousands of their early contemporary memos in the early 1960's. i looked through scores of newspapers. i was able to consult oral histories. four califano. moyer has never sat for a session with the library. brian: here is a photo that includes moyers and watson. and horace busby. who are the people standing with lyndon johnson? joshua: most people know who bill moyers is. moyers was a young minister, -- was a young ordained baptist minister. he grew up in texas, a lot of the guys who worked for johnson were from texas. from very modest upbringings. he ended up, he did not take a pulpit. he was a brilliant student and

very sincere and earnest theologian. he ended up working for johnson and johnson's media business, a television station that lady bird owned. he worked his way up as an intern. jack was just a friend. jack valente was the youngest advertising and pr guy from texas who johnson knew. he ended up marrying one of johnson's secretaries. he is a fascinating character. he was advancing a leg of the of 1963ip in november and lbj and invited him him from houston to dallas. he ended up being 10 cars back in the motorcade monday president was assassinated. johnson put him on air force one immediately. and brought him back to d.c. if you look at the iconic photos of the swearing-in, you will see

plenty crouched in the back of the airliner. he was later say that he had no idea why he was there. and he became very close. brian: who of all the people you wrote about entry due the most. >> mcpherson. he was younger lawyer. also a texan. he was one of the few to go to -- he was one of the few that did not go to the university of texas at austin. he was a young lawyer who wrote a letter to lbj. when lbj was a senator. somehow that sort of spun into to washington. he actually got out from under johnson's thumb. johnson was a pretty hard guy to work for. johnson brought him into the white house in 1965 as chief counsel. he ended up serving a whole number of functions. most of johnson's guys were

utility players and could move back and forth through different functions. he was one of the few people who was not particularly afraid of lbj. he enjoyed his work and was committed to it but i think it think he would not view it as a tragedy if he had to leave the white house. he was not the sort of person to move or propeller from positions. yet a calm demeanor. the rest of the staff looked at him as an honest broker. brian: we will come back to that photo. but here you write about this in , your book. this was a contentious person. arthur schlesinger was historian for john f. kennedy. year 2000. in the here is what he had to say and i want you to break this down. [begin video clip]

>> if he were here, i think most of the legislative program that was lyndon johnson's, would've gone to completion and the great society and had its origins in kennedy's new frontier. he would've been able to do that. i think it would've been a very different country. joshua: arthur schlesinger was contemptuous of lbj in the extreme. he was never willing to credit johnson. he had been assigned to all of the good of jfk and all of the worst of lbj. there is a moment i talk about in the book in 1968, when valenti was already out of the white house, he was at a dinner party and schlesinger was

basically trashing the war policy. and says, if john kennedy had lived, this would not have happened. moyers was still in the white house. schlesinger says, what are you talking about? nobody from the kennedy-johnson administration very seriously doubted the way it was going in vietnam. it was a consensus opinion. johnson's administration was heavily populated by kennedy holders. -- by kennedy holdovers. it was clear that schlesinger who was the kennedy family's court historian, was never able to record johnson's place in history, which is not to minimize what a difficult man johnson was. brian: we have talked about lyndon johnson a lot on this network. how did you go about writing a book that was different than

others, not duplicating? joshua: i can't wait for the next volume of his book. you cannot understand lyndon johnson without reading those books. they are simply foundational. he is a biographer, and although i deal with elite actors, i don't view this as a biography, per se. it's really a history of political ideas, history of the way government administrated certain programs. it is a book about johnson, but it is not really a book about lyndon johnson. it is really a book about his staff. i wanted to take the focus off the well trodden story which is, lyndon as the great master legislator, and look at exactly how an administration within the space of four and half years built all these programs.

after they passed congress and he signed them into law, how did they build medicare and medicaid from the ground up in one year? how did they create programs like head start, food stamps and nutritional programs for children, while desegregating the country and also fighting the war in vietnam and dissembling about it ? so, it is really about the administration, the staff. the way they disassembled the great society and the reassembled it. you can read the next volume. he will dwarf be in detail and insight about johnson the man and perhaps johnson the president. hopefully this book will help people place the great society itself in greater context. brian: is richard goodwin still alive? joshua: yes, he had a number of

roles under john kennedy. he is probably best remembered as a young congressional staff attorney during the 1960 tv television game show scandal hearings. he came into the johnson administration as a speechwriter. he is known for having coined the term "the great society." he wrote most of the text that survived that johnson delivered at the university of michigan when he launched the great society. good one was one of those who -- goodwin was one of those who work with the president, but then he broke with him over vietnam. brian: and you say he supported mccarthy in 1968?

joshua the hapless residential : -- the hapless presidential candidate, mccarthy, new hampshire in early january of 1968 was with good one in new hampshire. brian: this is about litton johnson. but you weaved this kind of thing throughout the book. let's watch. [begin video clip] >> he was in the presidential bedroom. "dick,d a voice saying, come here." i looked around. the voice was coming from the bathroom. i walked into the bathroom and there, seated on the toilet, was the president of the united states. [laughter] one time, he had george bundy in their and george bundy stood with his back to the president and walked out of the room afterwards with his back to him. johnson later remarked, you wonder how a man like that ever got so far in the world. [end video clip]

brian: how much of this did you find? joshua: enough to make you believe it was probably a common happenstance. devotionequired 24/7 from his staff. bill moyers had and also her for duringrs had an ulcer his tenure there. yet special direct telephone lines installed in bathrooms of his home so he can get a hold of them anytime. they had access to the presidential cars, fleet of cars. which sounds like a great perk, but the president would call to signal and get the car turned around. there is probably a good when clip somewhere where he tells the story when he first got the assignment to the great society speech. bill moyers asked him to come to the white house. the two of them went to the swimming pool which is where the press room is now.

johnson was swimming in the poll naked as was his want for his afternoon swim. he told them to join him. that is where he assigned him the task of writing the great society speech. they had to essentially get naked and swim the pool. this is just what you had to do if you work for lyndon johnson. if you could tolerate it, you did. we have watched donald trump run and use language in the public eye. brian: on page 142 u tell the number of sayings. if this is strong, i'll try not to read too many it these words. you say, "lbj said -- what that woman needs is you. take her out. give her a good dinner and a good f--." what is that? joshua: that is lyndon johnson

trying to make his aides uncomfortable. and realize who was in charge and who was not. he engaged in these sort of theatrics inh order to put people against the wall. to make them feel uneasy and uncomfortable. i think it is fair to say that lyndon johnson's personal behavior and conduct would even push limits today. brian: here's more. from the same page. harry has been taking out this reporter and screwing her. and i worry about his wife and children. talking about harry mcpherson. was at true? joshua: first, let us stipulate that is not true. johnson told mcpherson this particular reporter woman had been writing critically of the administration. i want you to take her out. mcpherson rolled his eyes and ignore this and hoped the

president would drop it. a few weeks later, the president is saying mcpherson is doing it. just to put mcpherson and a difficult situation. what is interesting about mcpherson as he refused to let it get to him. brian: this is about congresswoman edith green. lbj instructed califano to have him take her out, give for a couple of bloody mary's, and spend the afternoon in bed with her. then she will support any g.d. bill he wants. if you wants to help his president, that is what he will do instead of writing memos every night.

joshua: that is pure johnson. he is telling califano, tell the guy and your staff that is what he will do if he wants to be helpful. that particular story came directly from califano, who remembered it. this is oral history that was done years earlier which suggests to me was probably reliable. even if the dialogue, you have to take it directionally. nobody can remember that conversation verbatim two or three years later. but, this is pure lyndon johnson. you'll find stories like that this pervades volumes about johnson when he was younger guy. this is simply the way he operated. he liked to assert his dominance in a room. and he did it in ways that were crude. it is not hard to understand why somebody like arthur schlesinger found it completely unappealing. brian: you mentioned earlier. joshua: he became the appointment secretary. which doesn't sound like an important job but in fact, it was. he was the gatekeeper. he decided not only who did and

did not see the president, he decided what the president saw in terms of staff memoranda. and staff work. that was critical. johnson kept what he called a two-day day. he would get up very early, put in six or seven hours. go for a swim. take an hour nap and go back to the oval office until about 8:00. then he would spend hours reading through stacks of memoranda. those were probably policy memos that word detailed, granular. -- that were deeply intricate detailed, granular. , you would read through of them until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. he would write marginalia. he would put instructions and their through four staff members. then he would see jack valenti in the morning. he would go through the memos, which he had curated. if you wanted something in the night reading, you gave it to valenti. valenti read it and decided whether he got in there. the next morning he would pick up the memos and dispersed the instructions. valenti later estimated johnson

was reading 300,000 words a week in policy papers which meant the lengths he was reading more. he was incredibly important. he was also a speech writer. he was a utility player like all of them. that was a critical role. he was really broad and open minded for a texan who had never really worked. he went to harvard and whatnot for his mba. he was a man of the world but he did not know washington. this was the mid-1960's when a lot of ideas were fomenting. he was seen as an oddball. he would let staff members and folks in the cabin agencies put -- in the cabinet agencies put stuff in the night reading. ryan: correct me if i was wrong -- brian: correct me if i was wrong but i believe he left the white house and went to work for the motion pictures association of america. i think it was the first -- he was the first lobbyists to make $1 million a year.

joshua: i heard that story but i do not know if it is true. brian: we had an interview with him back in 1990. it was a profile. we don't let anybody call us and edit anything out from these interviews. he called me after the interview and asked very strongly that he wanted us to cut something out. i said, we're not going to do it. that was the question asking him who are the five best texans he knew in politics. later he called and said, you have to changes. i could tell he was really upset. i ask you this because i want to show you what happened. i ask you this to see how much it describes what jack valenti was like. here is the end of the interview and then what happened after that. it is only a minute and a [video half. clip] >> i thank the good lord every day for letting me do this. it has been one hell of a lot of fun. >> thank you.

>> jack valenti contacted c-span right after this interview. he felt very strongly he needed additional time or remarks you feel to make. here are his comments. >> when brian asked me about preeminent political figures in texas, of course the two most influential in that state whose whole arena though is the national arena would be james baker of houston, the secretary of state, of course the scene to senatorurse the senior from texas, lloyd bentsen of houston. both of these men are singularly powerful. i think the future is cheerful for both of them. as you know, lloyd bentsen was the vice presidential candidate in 1988. all observers, both democrats and republicans believed he found himself with great skill, -- he accounted himself with great skill, knowledge, and grace. i think you will be hearing more about him in the future.

[end video clip] brian: what does that say about : joshua: he clearly realized five minutes after the interview that the chief lobbyist for a major industry he pissed offtentially to people with great importance. baker was secretary of state at the time, right? it is funny, though, that is not the jack valenti that comes through in contemporary sources from the mid-60's. he was very new to washington. he was thereby complete accident. he had an incredible native intelligence, he very quickly figured this town out, came to understand it, and came to know everyone. there was a certain humility

about him, which you had to demonstrate if you were working for lyndon johnson. there was a sense of the beginning of his tenure that he was aware there were plenty of people asking who jack valenti was and why he was working for the president of the united states in his senior role. i think he later developed that kind of the swagger after a decade or two when washington. that it is sort of a more fun jack valenti who comes through in these earlier sources. brian: what year did you write about lincoln? joshua: around 2012 or 2013. brian: where do you live? joshua: hoboken. brian: when did you start on this book? joshua: i began six months after "lincoln's boys." poking around. i think i began more serious work about a year later. i had two little girls around the house.

joshua: i became fascinated by the dynamic between staff and their presidents. i thought about doing this or doing one on the new dealers. it became, the young men who roosevelt brought to washington in the 1930's, to me it became clear that there was a missing piece of the story about lyndon johnson and the great society that needed telling. particularly, there has been a lot of writing and films about johnson recently. also, to rehash and entertaining fashion the same stories. the accomplishment of having to build these programs and make them last half a century. to do it in a space of just a few years, it is remarkable achievement. i don't think his staff got credit for it. granted, they did it in the face

of much more stalwart opposition in those cases it nevertheless, to think the answer much trouble building one critical program on the johnson administration stood up dozens. brian: let's go back to the photographs of two people we did not talk about. you can see next to jack horace busby and next to him watson. joshua: i will start with watson. he just passed away recently. he was sort of a loner on the aaff in the sense that he was very conservative and business politicaland operative from texas. jackson brought him into replace valenti as the secretary. they were on the same page. watson was there for this and

cap of johnson's tenure. very conservative, very tough. he was the guy who said no. he was not involved deeply and policy. he was not in his heart kind of a deep society. he kind of touched the other staff members sometimes. brian: let me inject this. from your page 22 where you talk about horace busby. the most successful politicians have some little fellow in their office who sits back in the corner, he doesn't have to have any personality, doesn't have to know how to dress, usually they don't have their tie tied right a button off their shirt. nicotine stains on their fingers, no coat, all of that but they will sit back in the corner, they don't meet any of the people that come into the office.

>> that is from a -- that is from an oral history. he left his staff and then came back on the staff and left the staff again, he could only kind of subordinate his personality to johnson for a year or two at a time but they remained close, they came back into the white house since 1964, and then again left right around 1966, and then was back in the fold in 1968, not formally on staff. had kind of a contentious but long and kind of a warm relationship, that was busby's role. >> who did he got get along with?

>> busby and bill moyers and richard goodwin to some extent, mcpherson, to accommodate the moyers' faction and be nominally part of it. on the other side there were people like busby, to some extent, jack fuentes, watson, they didn't share the same politics, watson was much more conservative than they were, but there was a great tension between the two factors and in particular between busby and bill moyers. here's some video by bill moyers talking in 1990. >> as i look back in those years and the time i spent briefly with him in 1954 and 1960, in every respect except one, he

always had a better eye for the horizon than anyone else around except on vietnam. and that's a gap, a blank, an enigma that i haven't figured out yet. >> you suggested in the book he wouldn't talk to you. he hasn't written much about those years. >> no. he has occasionally, it's been a long time, he did sit for some interviews when there was a two volume biography a few years ago. there were transcripts that he spoke at, i wouldn't say he refused to speak with me, i didn't ask to speak with them. i just reached out to let them now i was writing it. he's an enigma. he didn't sit for oral histories in the lbj library. he had been for a time johnson's closest aide. people called him like, you know, john said he was like a son to him and people realized that moyers was the de facto

chief-of-staff from late 1964 onward, and he was the press secretary and he was always at johnson's side and beck and call but they had this mysterious kind of fallout in 1966 and 1967. they didn't speak to each other after moyers left the white house. extensively it was about -- ostensibly it was about vietnam. in the book it gets into it a bit. it was in some part because moyers was developing his own public persona and reputation and had established out a reputation, at least with reporters, as being more doubtful of the administration's vietnam policy than other people in the white house and the president took poorly to it. you write this narrative -- >> yeah, i mean, i believe him

on that i think moyers did come to have serious reservations about the policy by the end of 1966. at the same time, he was jockeying for other jobs before he left. by no means did he leave in protest. i think he and the president had just come to the end of the road on the relationship. moyers at that point was very much in bobby kennedy's camp. i think that conversation reflects a desire to cast moyers as the good angel in the white house who ultimately had to leave because he was cast aside. i think people have delved more deeply into vietnam but the idea he left in protest because of vietnam is one that was manufactured by a lot of the kennedy partisans. >> your own personal view on this, you spent a lot of time with these people.

who do you think you would not have liked working with?

>> who would i not have liked working with? i think i would have found marvin watson to be unpleasant. >> george, i had great admiration for. >> hold on, i've got some video. this was done in 1996. he's no longer with us. >> when it comes to organization, lyndon johnson was quite chaotic. you never knew who was running things and quite often you had to step in because no one else would and somebody had to do something. >> he had been a long time aide. he was press secretary for a while before he got moved out and moyers became press secretary. he despised moyers, when you talk about him you have to put a big asterisk next to all of them. he had a personal ax to grind. he once said he was a very knowledgeable guy, i'm making

this up a bit but if you asked him about the weather he would give you the history of the weather for 10 minutes and then tell you what the weather is. he seemed like he was a bit insufferable to work with and i think other colleagues found him so as well. >> did you listen to any of the oval office conversations? >> they are difficult to listen to, to make heads or tails out of them. most of them have been transcribed. they are incredibly useful, they give you the transcript of what's being said at all times. lyndon johnson was a political actor and understood different contexts and different conversations, he had to say different things and deploy different language, if you just take a conversation between him and his aides and a third party and think that's the history of what just happened, you better go back and listen to the other conversations because he could be speaking about a particular piece of legislation with a labor leader in a much different context than he did 10 minutes

later, than with a c.e.o. of a major airline and then 15 minutes later with a liberal legislator. i found his conversations with staff members to be the most illuminating, because there was no need to provide anything but truth as to what he wanted. >> he was often not very pleasant to george? >> that's right. as with all of his staff he would torture them. reedy had health issues, struggled with weight and drinking and johnson would be merciless with him, and at the same time, pay for his hospitalization when he needed to go on a weight-loss regime or buy him a new car after having humiliated him in front of a bunch of staff members. he was a great one for giving out expensive gifts. he was a very complicated guy to work with and reedy soured on johnson. they had been close for 20 years, but in the 1970s he became critical of johnson and his writings and later in oral

histories and interviews he would go out of his way to acknowledge -- finer points about johnson and i think he thought his thoughts on rights were unassailable >> jacobson, who you quote in here as saying some very strong things about some of the staff in the white house. who was he and why did you use his oral history? >> he wasn't a factor too much in the book. jacobson was a political and business operative. actually born in new jersey but he grew up in texas. he was a texan. johnson brought him the last year and a half to the white house, where, again he was a utility player. i didn't look at him too much. i think he was mostly useful from my mind in providing a lens

to examine some of the characters who were instrumental in building great society programs. he didn't think very highly of -- even califano's supporter in the white house would acknowledge that he was an empire builder. he had literally built a policy empire on the basic floor of the west wing where he commandeered secretaries and young aides and clerks, and he was a powerhouse jacobson didn't think highly of him and he didn't particularly like moyers. he was sort of an insider who didn't have a great affinity for most of these actors and was there because of his relationship with johnson but not deeply part of that great society project. >> you grew up where? >> a little town in central new jersey. >> what did your parents do? >> my dad was a political reporter and my mom a social worker. but he covered trenton, new jersey statehouse, so i remember

as a kid in the late 1970s and 1980s, living and breathing state politics in the same way that horace busby and this crew grew up living and breathing austin state politics but at the age of four i could probably name more state legislators than i can today. >> where did you go to college? >> outside of philadelphia. >> studying -- >> studied history, minored in literature and did a ph.d. at brown university, studied with jim patterson, one of the greats of american history. it was also a privilege to work with gordon wood, a great historian of early america. >> he was just here a couple of weeks ago. >> he's got a new book. >> lyndon johnson left the presidency in january 1969. were you alive? >> no, i was born in 1974. >> as someone who was alive i want to ask you this question

because you never saw him in person. how did you try to get to know him and these aides? >> johnson was -- inscrutable. the aides i found easier to access. although i used their contemporary memos to and from each other to write the policy pieces of the book. i found the oral histories, even if you take it with a grain of salt, i found the oral histories to be really helpful because these are transcripts of people just talking. you could understand their style, the way they framed things, their sense of humor. these transcripts can go on for hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages. you could almost hear the voice of the person or sometimes you could hear the voice if you wanted to listen to the tape. you could know them a little bit better but what's fascinating if

you read contemporary newspaper coverage, you can tell there was a lot of sort of presentation of who they were. who they really were doesn't come through in contemporary coverage. >> did you read every one of those nine books? >> which nine books? >> of staff? >> johnson staff, absolutely. >> which of those books were good, in your opinion, and which weren't? >> reedy's was pretty tough so i took them less. >> a lot of them i would scrutinize. i think it was entertaining but

i think -- the jack-- of the guy -- the guy you showed me in that clip, he was posturing for history at that point. i think califano, a bit of the same but he gives you a much nicer kind of look at some of the policy development in that period. the one that i found the best is mcpherson, which has become somewhat of a classic for people who come to washington, d.c. to work in the white house. mcpherson strikes you as what all his contemporaries said he was, he could take johnson for good and bad and not need -- >> i don't know if we can do this but we have to do it fast because we haven't got much time. after the white house, what did marvin watson do? he went back to texas. >> califano -- >> we talked about bill moyers, ed sorenson, we haven't -- ted sorensen, we have not

mentioned. >> i don't know a great deal about his career after he left the white house. >> how long did he stay around? >> not very long, just for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. he was just grief-stricken by president kennedy's assassination. >> got to read this because you took this quote from graham who owned the "washington post." >> who called johnson and said, you've got 80% of your stuff in there, he insisted, days later, the publisher of the "washington post" advised to show sorenson a little love. he was "marvelous" but also very hurt, and i know the mood he was in and i don't forgive him for that but we all have to just imagine how he feels in that he's a man who instead of crying, did this really naughty trick of being cantankerous and hurt. what is she doing telling johnson this? >> this is in the days right after the assassination. sorenson could barely come into the office at that point but he helped to write johnson's first speech before congress.

the one where he famously calls for the civil rights act, but sorenson, i mean, to give you a sense of how hurt he was, he had some line in there, i, who cannot, you know, fill -- i who cannot stand in -- fill his shoes cannot sit in his seat and obviously they struck that line from the speech. he just, he fought unnecessarily with johnson and valiante and with the man who helped to write that speech. he basically imparted a complete noninterest in working at the white house. johnson wanted him there but it was very clear it wasn't going to work out. >> at the very end of your book you say this. we shared their disappointment that they did not get to see a woman ascend to the presidency. >> that's probably the best line of the book.

that was for my daughters. they watched me write this book for a few years but they were also avidly interested in politics. they were and are big hillary clinton supporters. they were extremely sad when she lost because of what she stood for but also because there were excited to see a woman run for the presidency. but we've talked to them about it and they know you lose once that doesn't mean you lose the next time. >> define your own politics. >> i'm left of center. i'm a democrat, a liberal one at that but i kind of like this era because the parties weren't as ideologically polarized at that point, and there were a number of just tremendous moderate and even liberal republicans who worked with the johnson administration, to get these programs passed. by the same token there were a lot of southern democrats today who would essentially classify them as deeply conservative retrogressive. >> you, on page 314, you say --

>> great society, list is enormous. voting rights act, immigration, economic activity, civil rights, medicare, medicaid. a lot more, we're now $20 trillion in debt. >> the framers of the great society, they did this in the context of a post war economy that was booming. growth seemed to be boundless so they assumed you didn't need to divide the pie up more. you simply needed to grow the pie and provide people with the tools they needed to help themselves and get their fair share. many years later, putting the debt aside, many years later, inequality is growing, real wages have stagnated since the 1970s, manufacturing and related

industries have ground to a halt and are receding. fewer people have access to employer-based healthcare or defined benefits pensions. despite my admiration for the great society, the great society itself, is it enough of a stopgap in the 21st century economy, one which is, in many ways, more bleak than the economy that we had when johnson was in the white house. >> how much can you assign to lyndon johnson and everybody that followed him saying we will enact this now and somebody else will have to pay for it later? >> some of these programs, i don't think they realized. medicaid is a great example. medicaid was supposed to be a kind of program to capture, to help those who simply weren't going to be able to help them. poor children, people who had fallen out of the workplace. people who were very sick and uninsurable. that was a small population in 1965.

it's become larger, it's become larger because many employers no longer provide their employees with healthcare and they pay them so little that they actually qualify, more children are growing up, 31% now in single parent households, and when wages stagnate you need two wage earners to keep above the poverty line. more children in poverty than we had then. rather than assign blame, i would say the structure of today's economy actually created many of these ballooning costs. it was never perceived that we would have the kind of inequality that we do today. >> did we pay for the vietnam war at the time? >> did we pay for it at the time? no. the johnson administration, they effectively had to borrow the money because they couldn't ask for a tax increase. >> have we paid for the iraq war? >> we're deeply in hock so i don't think we've paid for anything. >> did we pay for the afghanistan war? >> absolutely not. my kids will be paying for it. >> in 2017, inequality, whether measured by household income,

wealth or retirement security has achieved levels unseen since the 1920s. if many conservatives regard the great society as an exercise in unbridled liberalism on the left there is growing consensus that the new political economy demands more, not less, state intervention. where is the money going to come from? >> that's a good question, where is the money going to come from? hillary clinton's campaign briefly toyed with the idea of having universal guaranteed family income but they couldn't make the economics on it work. so the question is, i think, your question is a good one and a fair one but politically i guess the question is, are we going to actually create an economy in which you don't have this kind of inequality because if you don't there is going to be a demand for some sort of redistribution where as in the liberals rejected the distribution of wealth in the form of minimum family income and the like. you will see liberals today calling for it. >> go back, and this is in your

book, the first year of food stamps passed 500,000 on food , stamps. today it's about 45 million. do you think they ever thought it would be 45 million people? >> no, they never thought it would be but if you ask somebody like paul ryan, he'll say, these programs got way out of control. they created a culture of entitlement, generations of dependency, they never -- the other way to look at it is the original architects never anticipated a world in which workers who were being paid good union wages with defined benefits, pensions and healthcare while their kids and grandkids are now working the equivalent jobs which pay minimum wage with no healthcare, with no pensions, and yet, the cost of everything from healthcare to food has gone up, and so, you know, is it the programs that grew out of whack or is it the economy that left all of these people behind and somehow perversely left them under the means tested line, you know to qualify?

i obviously lean toward the latter interpretation. >> you have a ph.d. -- >> you say -- >> not fake news. >> what do you do on a full-time basis to take care of your family? >> i left academia a couple of years ago and now i'm lucky that i actually worked in politics for a number of years and now i work in corporate communications for a tech company but i'm lucky that i'm also, i sort of sideline as a columnist for politico, i write with a number of other people, write a column called history department, for the magazine, where we get -- we try to basically take really good academic history and distill it for a broader audience, a general audience and it's been one of the magazine's more successful columns. >> why did you leave academia? >> you know, it's become a pretty brutal profession. i think a lot of folks i know -- it was bad when i was getting out of grad school. universities are moving from tenured and tenured track professors to adjuncts.

teaching loads are quadrupling. the universities themselves are under financial strain. night think i realized on some level that this was probably not long term viable, but more to the point, i wanted to go work in politics and, i enjoy writing about it an reading about it. >> i didn't mean to cut you off but who did you work for? >> i worked for a number of democrats, bob tauris l.a. -- icelli and jon corzine and some campaigns. >> future writing, what's your next book? >> i'm still working that out. i don't want to surprise and shock my editor but i am thinking of looking at something, taking a couple of stories, weaving them together to look at the decline of unions, particularly in coal and steel. everybody is fascinated by some of these states and these regions of the country that have been left behind and i want to look at how different institutions like unions and

government sort of let them down in many ways, probably taking it from the 1960s through the present. >> only have 30 seconds, but now that you look back on john hay and john nicolay -- and looked at all of these people that worked for johnson, how big a difference in the end is there between those two eras >> they spent their lives trying . to explain it and yet they were never able to adequately convey what it was like to be there. >> our guest has been joshua zeitz, "building the great society. inside the lyndon johnson white house." there is a lot more in here about the people that worked for lyndon johnson. thank you very much for joining us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.

visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available at c-span podcast. -- podcasts. >> if you enjoyed this week's it q&a interview, here are some other programs you may like. our two-part interview with robert caro on his multivolume biography of lyndon johnson and agent ofe former press robert kennedy talks about his life in politics. you can watch them anytime or search our entire video library on c-span.org.

here is a look at our live coverage today. on c-span, the house meets at noon eastern. legislative business starts at 2:00. at 9:00 p.m., our landmark cases continues with a look at civil rights cases from 1883. on c-span2, we join aipac for their annual policy conference. cottons amy -- and tom will be among the speakers. p.m., we look at a discussion of financial regulations at the heritage conference. on c-span3, top state education officials gather for a conference ending with a speech by betsy devos. from roomd to aipac -- for remarks from secretary pence and u.n. ambassador nikki haley. communicators the , democratcc