watch live tonight at 9:00 eastern on c span, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. for background on each case while you watch, order your copy of the land mark cases companion book, available for $8.95 plus shipping and handling at c-span.org/landmarkcases. and there's a link on our website to national constitutional centers interactive constitution. >> this week on "q&a" politico manage seen contributing editor joshua zeit, he discusses his book "building the great society: inside lyndon johnson's white house." >> joshua zeitz, your new book "building the great society: inside lyndon johnson's white

house," but before i ask you a question, i want to show you on this network in 2014 talking about a previous book about two of the lincolns -- two of lincoln's staff members. >> they undertook a quarter century noigs create a definitive and enduring historical reputation for their slain leader. the culmination of this, an ex-tense i 10-volume biography -- that d between 1896 constitute wund of the singularly successful exercises in historical revisionism in all of american history. >> explain what you learned about staff in that? >> i wrote about john haye and john nikolai, abraham lincoln's presidential secretaries, that s a catch-all phrase for

secretary, chief of staff, press secretary. they knew him in springfield day they lived and worked in the white house. d they were party to everything we know about lincoln in the civil war years. writing that book intrigued me because it became clear that there's this component of presidential history which is the history of the men and women who staff these administrations which so critical, not only in terms of the contributions that these people make while they're working in the white house, but also the way in which they can help us to access you know, with historical retrospection and place in context all the events they witnessed. >> what did you think of the history they wrote? >> the 10 volumes they wrote don't pass muster today given all the scholarship and secondary literature we have on

the civil war but they played a vital role in placing slavery at the center of the conflict, the civil war which today seems intuitive but they were writing this late in the 19th century, decades after lincoln was assassinated when the country was going through a romance of reunion. it became popular and prevalent for most historians an political commentators to view the war as having been over -- having been about states' rights or other big constitutional issue bus not about slavery. they did something critically important they put the contest over slavery's expansion back at the cent or the narrative not only about the war but lincoln's career. in that way, i think they created the standard historical account that everybody would argue against afterwards. i think also when we're talking about presidents, they're the ones who kind of creethate prototype that lasts until this day, the way we think of lincoln

as having been a master of a fractious cabinet, first among equals in washington a master politician, the head of a team rivals who was able to play his cabinet and members of congress with and against each other, that was their interpretation and that one has lasted pretty long. >> how old were those two men we were they have staff for lynn condition? >> early 20's and mid 20's, they had no prior experience with washington, d.c. they grew up in illinois, in fact, i don't think haye had ever been to washington, d.c., nik o; lai had been once. it was a bit of a rude awakening. there were a lot of people who wanted that job who probably had better claim to it who were incredibly jealous of them. and they realized they were fish out of water when they came to d.c. but that's a common story over the decades. they became pretty establishment in not a lot of time.

>> in your bib leeography in the back, i counted at least nine books written by staff of lyndon johnson's, what did you think of their history? you quote a lot from those, how did you follow up to check it out and make sure you're telling the truth? >> you treat a memoir with a critical eye. -- even if you think these are apocryphal or self-serve, often time thers, they help to that staff ght into member he or she worked for.

>> i did try to heed some advice haye and nikolai said they consciously decided not to use the oral histories, they very self-consciously not to re-enter view people. they relied as much as they could on contemporary documentation. they found as people got older, they memories went or -- and/or they had a particular gudge to ply in their interview. the -- johnson is an interesting case in point. i privileged the ones done in 1968, 1969, 1970, when memories were fresh and when people were being candid because they knew they wouldn't be released to the

public for another quarter century, so they didn't have to position things just so. but at all times if i could corroborate or -- both the facts the sentiment by consulting contemporary source, memos they wrote back and forth to each other in the moment, letters, memoranda, that kind of thing, i would privilege those more, they were clearly not written with an ye toward history. >> there are only two of his staff members still hiing. i reached out to moyers and never heard back, i'm sure he gets these requests all the time, i did let calzano know i

was writing the book but i didn't interview them. i have literally pored through tens of thousands of their contemporary memos in the early 1960's and mid 1960's. i looked through scores of newspapers and i was able to consult oral histories for calzano, moyers never sat for an oral history series at the presidential library. i had plenty to go to. >> here's a photo that includes moyers, jack valenti and marvin watson. who are those people standing with lynn condition johnson? he was a very sincere and earnest theologian , he ended up working for johnson in johnson's

media business in texas, at the station lay by dirt -- lady bird owned. and on the senate staff. >> what about jack paleti? >> he was just a friend a young advertising and p.r. guy from texas who johnson knew. he ended up marrying one of johnson's secretaries and he's a fascinating character. the fact that he's there is happenstance. he was advancing a leg of the texas trip in november of 1963 l.b.j. invited him on from houston to dallas, he happened to be five cars back in the motorcade or 10 cars back when the president was assassinated. johnson put him on air force one immediately and brought him back o d.c.

>> of all the people you wrote about who intrigued you most? >> mcfeverson. he was one of the few that didn't go to university of texas in austin. he wrote a letter to l.b.j. and that spun into him coming to washington on the staff he got out from under johnson's thumb, because johnson was a pretty hard guy to work for, and during the kennedy administration he had positions at the department of state. but johnson brought him into the white house in 1965 as chief counsel.

he wasn't particularly afraid of l.b.j. he enjoyed his work but didn't view it as a tragedy if he had to move the white house. he had a sort of native intelligence and calm commeern and the rest of the staff looked at him, particularly when they had their own battles, as an honest broker. ,> we'll come back to the photo but here you write about this in your book, this was a contentious person, arthur schlesinger, historian forjohn f. kennedy in the white house. he was in in 2000, he's now deceased. >> the 1960's would have been different if he live. i don't think he would have americanized the war in vietnam. i think he would have found a ay to withdraw from vietnam.

>> he was contempts you of l.b.j. in the extreme of he was said he -- one of the white house colleagues said he declared war on johnson the minute they put kennedy in the ground. he never was willing to credit johnson for his accomplishments. there's a moment in the book, lenti is at a party,

schlesinger is trashing johnson, valenti said what are you talking about? there's nobody from our circle, nobody from the kennedy-johnson administration who before 1966 very seriously doubted the wisdom of being in vietnam. it was a consensus opinion and johnson's administration was heavily populated by kennedy holdovers. it's an interesting, you know, very clear that schlesinger who was the kennedy family's court historian was never able to accord johnson his place in history, which is not to minimize what a complex man an difficult man lyndon johnson was.

>> i can't wait for those books you cannot understand lyndon johnson without reading those books, they are foundational. but he's a biographer and although i deal with people, you know, i deal with elite actor, i don't view this as a biography per se. it's a history of political ideas a history of kind of the way that government admrtive -- administered certain programs. it's a book about johnson but it's not really a book about lyndon johnson. tick nickly speaking it's a book about his staff. but more to the point i wanted to take the focus off the well-trodden story which is lyndon johnson as the great master legislateor and look at exactly how an administration within the space of 4 1/2 years, five years, you know, built all these programs. after they passed congress and he signed them into law, how did

they built medicare and medicaid up in a year, how did they create head start or food stamps, the anti-seedents of food stamps and nutritional programs for children and how did they do this while desegregating a third of the country, hospitals and nursing homes and schools an places of public acome decision and also fighting a war in vietnam and dissembling about it. it's really kind of more about the administration, the staff, the ideas that drove the great society and the ways in which they executed it. and i think that you can read this book and expect to read the next caro volume, i imagine he'll dwarf me in detail and insight about johnson's -- johnson the man and perhaps even johnson the president but will help his book people place it in context. >> richard goodwin, is he still alye?

>> yeah, he was a kennedy aide and then a johnson aide. he's probably best remembered for having been the young congressional staff attorney in the 1959-1960 television game show scandal, the hearings. but he came into the johnson administration at moyers' beck and call as a speech writer. he's most famously 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 in 1964, in which he launched the great society. goodwin was a kennedy-ite, one of several that stayed to work with johnson. he later broke with the montana over vietnam. >> and you say he supported jew yeen -- eugene mccarthy in 1968? >> mccarthy was a hapless presidential candidate. they had to bring in goodwin in new hampshire in early january of 1968 in order to save the campaign.

>> this is not substantive. this is richard goodwin making a speech back in 1997 about lyndon johnson but you weave this kind of thing through the book. let's watch. >> one day i was up and the -- i was summoned to the presidential quarters, the presidential bedroom, i heard a voice say, dick come here. i looked around. the voice was undoubtedly coming from the bathroom. [laughter] i walked into the bathroom and there, seated on the toilet was the president of the united states. [laughter] one time he had george bun diin there, george bun distood with his back to the president and walked out of the room afterwards with his back to him and johnson late eremarked, you wonder how a man like that ever got so far in the world. >> how much of this kind of stuff did you find? >> plenty of it. there was enough of it to make

you believe it probably was common, happenstance. johnson was -- he required, you know, 24-7 devotion from his staff. moyers had an ulcer for a good year during the middle of the administration, his tenure there he had special direct telephone lines installed in their hems and bathrooms so he could get ahold of them at any time of the day. they had access to the presidential car the fleet of cars which sounds like a great perk, it's not. if the president is able to call the signal office and have the car turned around to get the staff member back home. there's probably a good one somewhere that could still the -- tell the story of when he was first given the assignment to write the great society speech, moyers asked him to come to the white house they went over to the swimming pool, which was an indoor pool, exactly where the press office is now, the pressdz room is now. and you know, johnson was

swimming in the pool, jaked and as was his wont for his afternoon swim. told moyers and goodwin to joan him. that's when they assigned them great society speech. they had to strip naked and swim in the pool to do it. if you could tolerate that, you were good, if not, you didn't last. >> you tell a number of things, this is strong, i'll try not to read too many of these words but you say here, l.b.j. informed harry mcfehrson, quote, that that woman needs -- what that woman needs is you, take her out, give her a good dinner, and a good f. period. what's that? >> that's lyndon johnson making his aides or attempting to make his aides uncomfortable and realize who was in charge and who wasn't.

he engaged in these sort of brash theatrics in order to put people, you know, against the wall. to make them feel somewhat uneasy and unstable. there's no way somebody like -- donald trump has lasted just fine so far but i think it's fair to say that lyndon johnson, his personal behavior and conduct would even push the limits today. >> here's some more from that same page. harry has been taking out this bitch remedical reporter and screwing her and i worry about his wife and children. talking about harry mcpherson. was that true? >> let's stipulate that harry mcfearson was doing no such thing. johnson told mcfearson this particular reporter woman who had been writing critically of the administration and say, i want you to take her out and to what you described. rolled his eyes and ignored

it, hoping johnson would drop it. what's interesting about mcfearson , he refused to let it phase him. >> one more from this page, this is about congresswoman edith green. l.b.j. instructed calfano to have him quote take her out, give her a couple of bloody mary's and spend the afternoon in bed with her and she'll support any g-d bill he wants. if he wants to help the president that's what he should do instead of writing those whiny memos every night. he was talking about one of calfano's young office assistants. he's telling him, tell the guy on your staff this is what you can do. >> where does this come from? books or oral histories? >> oral histories, that came directly from califano. i saw it in the memoirs and also in an oral history done years

earlier, so it's probably reliable. even if the dialogue, you have -- nobody can recount a conversation verbatim a day later let alone two or three years later. this is pure lyndon johnson. you find stories like this that pervade the volumes about johnson when he was a younger guy. this is simply the way he operated. he, you know , he liked to assert his dominance in a room and he did it in ways that were -- it's not hard to understand why somebody like arthur schlesinger found unappealing. >> how long was jack in the white house? >> he became the appointment secretary, which doesn't sound like an important job but it was he decided not only who did and did not see the president, he decided what the president actually saw in terms of staff mem ran d and staff work.

that was critical. johnson kept what he called a two-day day. he would get up very early, put in about six or even hours, he would go for a swim, take about an hour nap and then get back at it in the oval office until about 8:00, go up for dinner and then spend hours reading thru stacks and stabs of memoranda. those were policy memos that re deeply, deeply intricate, detailed, granular and he'd read tell through them until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. he'd write and put instructions in there for staff members and jack lindsey was the first guy he saw in the morning. he'd go through the mem lows -- memos, if you wanted something in the night read, you had to give it too him and he'd decide if it went in there he'd pick up the memos and disperse the instructions. it was estimated johnson was reading 300,000 words a week in policy papers which meants

valenci was reading more. he was also a part-time speech writer. he was a utility player like all of them. that was a critical role. he was tissue he was really broad and open-minded for a guy who was really a texan who had never really worked -- he went to harvard for his m.b.a., he was a man of the world but he didn't know washington. and this is the mid 1960's when there were a lot of ideas fomenting. he was seen as a friend of the oddball. he would let staff members and folks from cabinet agencies who had strange or innovative ideas put stuff in the night readings. >> correct me if i'm wrong but i think he left the white house and went to work for the motion picture association of america but he was the first lobbyist to make $1 million a year. >> i've heard that story, i don't know if that's true. maybe tom milana court did it first. >> we had an interview with him

back in 1990, it was a profile. one of the -- we don't ever let anybody call us and edit anything out that anybody said in one of these interviews, he called me after the interview asked me to edit it out. it was when i asked him who are the five best texans in politics. he said you have to edit that out. here's the end of the interview and then what happened right after that. it's only a minute and a half. >> i thank the good lord every day for letting me do things all my life, it's been a hell of a lot of fun. >> jack valenti contacted c-span following this interview he felt

strongly he needed additional time for remarks he failed to make. here are those comments. >> when brian asked me about preeminent political figures in texas, of course the two probably most influential in that state whose whole arena is the national arena would be james baker of houston, the secretary of state. and of course the senior senator from texas, lloyd bentsen of houston. both these men are singularly powerful and i think the future is cheerful for both of them. as you know, lloyd bent sen. was a the vice presidentful tissue vice-presidential candidate in 19 8 and i think all observers believe he accounted himself with great skill and knowledge and grace. i think you'll be hearing more bout them in the future.

jz what does that say about jack? >> he was the a tipe of a lobbyist. d.c. insider, he clearly realized five minutes after his initial interview with you that he was -- chief lobbyist for a major industry and he had just potentially pissed off two people of some importance, right? so baker was white house -- was chief of staff at the time. that's not the valenti who comes through in the early to mid 1960's. he was very new to washington. by accident and he had a nate i intelligence , he quickly came to understand this town, and came to know everyone as you would as a presidential aide. there was a certain humility you had to demonstrate if working

for johnson. there was a sense at the beginning of his tenure in the white house that he was aware, there were plenty of people asked who he was and why exactly he was working for the president of the united states in a senior role. i think he developed that kind of swagger after a decade or two in washington. but it's a sort of almost more fun valenti who comes through in contemporary sources in the early years. >> what year did you write about lincoln's boys? >> it was published in 2014, so i must have written it around, around 2012, 2013. >> where do you live? >> i live in the new york area in hoboken. >> when did you start on this book? >> this one i think i began work on it six months after lincoln's boys came out. poking around. i began work on it more seriously probably a year later. i had two little girls around the house so it had to take -- i had to take this one slower. >> what led you to being interested in this staff? >> i found, when i wrote

"lincoln's boys" i became fascinated by the dynamic between staff and the presidents, i thought about doing this or doing one on the new dealers. but it became, the young men who roosevelt brought to washington in the 1930's. to me it became clear that there's a missing piece of the story about lyndon johnson and the great society that needed some telling. particularly, just -- there's been a lots of writing and some films on johnson recently. they all sort of rehash and really -- in really entertaining fashion the same story. but 34e the accomplishment of having been a able to built these programs, get them stood up and make them last a half century and do it in the space of a few years is a remarkable achievement they never got credited for. that might have been influenced by the obama's -- obama administration's troubles of getting the a.c.a. off the ground they did it in the face

of much more stalwart opposition in most cases but to think they had sooch trouble building one critical program when the johnson administration stood up dozens. >> let's go back to two people we didn't talk about. you can see next to jack is horace busby and next to him, marvin watson. what role did those two play? >> i'll start with watson who just passed away recently. he was a sort of loner on the staff in the sense that he was a very conservative business executive and political operative from texas who johnson brought in to basically replace valeti at some point as appointment secretary, they're there on the same page they overlap some. watson was there for really the second half ojohnson's tenure. very conservative, very tough. he was sort of the guy who said no. wasn't involved deeply in policy. was not at his heart, in his heart a kind of great society or new frontier liberal.

he, you know , he kind of touched the other staff members sometimes a bit rough. >> let me inject this from your page 2 where you talk about horace busby. i'm going to read it, in johnson's house and senate offices busby served as minister without portfolio. his principal mandate was to generate ideas. quote, the most successful politicians, l.b.j. told buzzby -- did this come from buzzby's book? >> finish the quote, i'll tell you. >> the most successful politicians have some little fellow in their office who sitz 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, typical johnson, running on at this, nicotine stains on their finger, no coat, all that. but they'll sit back in the cone, don't meet any of the people who come in the office. >> that's from an oral history with buzzby. we were talking about watson,

buzzby was an interesting guy a young reporter in texas, in his early 20's, a political junkie, consumed national political news from the age of 10. johnson brought him on to his house staff and then senate staff. he was johnson's ideas guys. in the same way mcfeverson was unrattled by johnson, busby was. busby left his staff and then came back on as staff then left the staff as well. he could only subordinate his personality to johnson for a year or two at a time. they remained close. busby went out and made money in the private sect and came back to the white house, in 1964, left around 1966, back in the fold in 1968, not formally on staff. they had a contentious but long around warm relationship. busby, that was busby's role for johnson. >> who did he not get along with on the white house staff? >> johnson? >> busby. >> busby and bill moyers had very little love lost between them.

there was two kind of cliques. there was bill moyers, and richard goodwin, some extent mcfearson and calfano who were smart enough to accommodate the moyers faction, on the other side there were people like horace busby, to some extent jack valenti, 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 factions. particularly between i would say busby and moyers. >> you mentioned bill moyers. here's some video of bill moyers alking back in 1990. >> it seemed to me as i looked back, in every respect except one he had a better eye for the horizon than anyone else around, except on vietnam.

that's a fwaff, a blank, an enigma that again i haven't figured out yet. >> so bill moyers. you suggest in the book that he wouldn't talk to you. >> i reached out, he didn't -- >> but he hasn't written about these years much. >> no. >> and that's unusual to see him on television talking about hit. >> he's done it occasionally. he did sit for some interviews with robert da elect a few years ago. there's some transcripts of sim missouri posea he's spoken at. i wouldn't say he refused to speak with me, i didn't ask to speak with him, i reached out to lit him know i was writing it. he's an enigma. he didn't sit for oral histories with the l.b.j. library. he had been for a time johnson's closest aide. people called him, johnson said he was like a son to him. people realized that moyers was the de facto chief of staff in 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 break, you know, fallout in 1966 and 1967. they tnt speak to each other again after moyers left the white house as far as anyone knows. ostensibly it's about vietnam but i think in the book -- and the book gets into this, i think it's because moyers was developing his own reputation and he had staked out a reputation with the reporters that he was more doubtful of the president's policies. >> you write, this overstated moyer's independence from the consensus. at a dinner party, jack valeti and his wife shared a table with

schlesinger who grovele -- roveled that johnson had not listened to him. jack said he was as much in favor of the massive intervention as the president, if he wasn't, he never let anyone know his true feelings. the president made it clear with the exception of george ball, undersecretary of state new york higher official in the government was opposed to our position and that includes every white house aide. >> i mean i believe valeti 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 in the white house and administration before he left. i'm not entirely -- it's -- by no means did he leave in protest. i think he and the president had come to an end of the road on their relationship. but moyers at that point was very much in bobby kennedy's camp, so i think that conversation reflects a desire on the part of the kennedy-ites

to cast moyers as the good ain yell in the -- angel in the white house who ultimately had to leave because he was cast aside which i think vastly overplays it. the book is not about vietnam and i'm sure other people have delved more closely into where some of the aides were on that question. but the idea that he left in protest because of vietnam is one i think that was manufactured by a lot of kennedy partisans. >> just your own personal view on that, given you spent a lot of time with these people who do you think he would not like working? >> i think i would have found marvin watson to be unpleasant and george reedy, who i have great administration for -- >> hold it right there. i've got video of george reedy so everyone can see him. this was done in 1996. he's no longer with us. >> when it comes to

organization, lyndon johnson's -- he was positively chaotic. you never really quite knew who was running things. quite often you had to step in when you didn't feel you should simply because nobody else was going to step in and somebody had to do something. >> reedy has been longtime aide in the house and senate, no, the senate. and then he was on vice-presidential staff, presidential staff, he was press secretary for a while before he got moved out and moyers became press secretary. reedy despised moyers. although i used some of his remembrances to talk about moyers, you have to put a big ast risk nest to all of them. johnson once said of reedy he's a knowledgeable guy. i'm sort of making this up a bit if you ask him about the histrir of the weather for 10 minutes that'll tell you what the weather is. seemed like he was insufferable to work with. i think other colleagues found

him so as well. >> we haven't used any of this in this program but did you listen to oval office conversations? >> i read the transcripts, they're difficult unless you know who is speaking. if i found a fun one i'd listen to it. most of them have been troon scribed. they're incredibly useful. they give you quite a look, in fact, exactly the transcript of what's being said at all times. lyndon johnson you have to be carefulful. he was a political actor and understood that different contexts and different conversations have to say ifferent things.

there was no need to provide anything but unvan niched truth. >> he was also unpleasant to george reid. >> he would torture him. reedy had health issues, struggled with weight and drinking. johnson would disparage him yet at the same time he could be incredibly generous and pay for his hospitalization when he needed to go on a weight loss regime or buy him a new car after having, you know, humiliated him in front of other staff hebb -- members. he was a great one for giving out expensive gifts. it was -- he was a very complicated guy to work with. reedy soured on johnson. they'd been close for 0 years but in the 1970's he became extremely critical of johnsonened most of his writings. while in later oral histories an interswrues he would go out of his way to acknowledge the finer

points about johnson and particularly i think reedy thought that johnson's sincerity on civil rights was unassailable he came a johnson skeptic in many ways in his later years. >> somebody we've not talked about, there's not much video on him, i couldn't find any even still picture, jay can beson who you quote as saying some very strong things about some of the people, staff in the white house. who was he and what role did he play and why did you use his oral history? >> so he doesn't factor in too much in the book. he was a texas political and business operative. he was born in new jersey but grew up in texas, he was a texan. johnson brought him toward the last year and a half, two years the administration into the white house where he was a utility player. i didn't look at him too much. he was -- i think he was mostly useful for my mind in providing a lens to examine some of the characters who were instrumental in building the great society

programs. e didn't think highly of califano. even califano's supporters in the white house acknowledged he was an empire builder. he built a policy empire in the basement floor of the west wing where he'd commandeer secretaries and young aides. he was a power house. jacobson sort of didn't think highly of him. jacobson also didn't like moyers as well. i think he was a bemused insider who didn't have a great affinity for most of the actors and was there because of his relationship with johnson but not deeply part of that great society project. >> you grew up where? >> i grew up in new jersey a little town called bordentown in central new jersey. >> what were your parents doing? >> my dad was a political reporter, my mom was a social woker. my dad covered trenton, the new jersey state house. i remember as a kid in the late 1970's and early 1980's living and breathing state politics in the same way that horace busby

and this crew grew up sort of living and breathing austin state politics but you know, probably the age of 4 could name more state legislators than i can today oddly enough. >> where did you go to college? >> i went to swathmore outside of philadelphia. >> studying what? >> i did history and minored in literature and did a ph.d. at brown university, studied with jim patterson who is one of the giants of post-war 0th century american history and it was a privilege to work with gordon wood a great historian of early america. >> he was just here a couple of weeks ago. lynn ton johnson left the presidency in january of 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 and all that. how did you try to get to know him and these aides? >> johnson i find as inscrutable as most of the presidents. i find them all to be incredibly

difficult. john hay had a great line about lincoln and that kind of totally inscrutable, weary look of his. like as in, you couldn't really know him even if you knew the man. the aides i found to be much easier to access, although i used their contemporary memos to an 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, to be helpful. these are transcripts of people just talking. you could understand their style, the way they frame things, their sense of humor. these transcripts would go on for hundreds, sometimes thousands of pages. you could almost hear the voice of the person speaking or sometimes you could actually hear the voice if you wanted to listen to the tape. so you could know them a little bit better. but it was fascinating as you read contemporary newspaper coverage of them. it doesn't particularly wring --

you can tell there was a lot of sort of presentation of who they were. it doesn't -- who they really were doesn't come through in contemporary kverage. >> did you read every one of those nine books? nine of the staff? >> johnson's staff, absolutely. >> which of those books were good in your opinion and which weren't? >> reedies are tough so i take them less seriously. i thought valenti's were -- there's a lot in there i would scrutinize, i'm not sure -- i think it was entertaining but he was already the you show me in that clip. i think he was posturing for history at that point. i think califano, a bit of the same but gives you a much nicer look at some of the policy development in that period. the one i found the best though, and i'm not the only one is

harry mcfearson's book, "political education" which has become something of a classic in people -- for people in washington who come to washington, d.c. to work in politics. it is not just about the white house years. mcfearson strikes you as what his contemporaries said he was a deeply thoughtful and serious individual who could take johnson for good and bad. >> i don't know brian: 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? >> califano -- later went into private practice of law. >> lobbying? >> maybe a little bit. it's hard -- the line between -- jack.talked about moyers, ed out bill

sorenson, we haven't 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 , quote, 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 is 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 or something like that and obviously they struck that line from his speech. he fought unnecessarily with johnson and valiante and with abe fortis and -- 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. joshua: that was probably the best line of the book. that is for my daughters, 7 in

april, and one 4. 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. 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. brian: define your own politics. joshua: i am 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. brian: you, on page 314, you say --

brian: great society. the list is enormous. voting rights act, immigration, economic activity, civil rights, medicare, medicaid. there's a lot more. we're now $20 trillion in debt. joshua: right. 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. so one of the questions the books raises, 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. brian: 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? joshua: some of these programs i don't think they've realized would grofmente 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 in a means tested way for medicaid. 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 you had then. rather than assign blame, i would say the structural elements, the structure of today's economy actually created many of these ballooning costs. it was never perceive that we -- perceived that we would have the kind of inequality that we do today. brian: did we pay for the vietnam war at the time? joshua: 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. brian: have we paid for the iraq war? joshua: we're deeply in hock so i don't think we've paid for anything. brian: did we pay for the afghanistan war? joshua: absolutely not. my kids will be paying for it.

brian: where is the money going to come from? joshua: 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 ork. 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 -- whereas liberals in the 1960's rejected the distribution of wealth in the form of minimum family income and the like. i think you will see liberals today calling for it. brian: go back and this is in your book, the first year of food staffers, 500,000 on food stamps. today it's about 45 million.

do you think they ever thought it would be 45 million people? joshua: 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. the other way to look at it, the original architects of this never anticipated a need for it because they 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. brian: you say you have a -- you have a ph.d.

[laughter] what do you do on a full-time basis to take care of your family? joshua: sure. 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 come upist for "politico." i write with a number of other people, write a column called "history department," for the magazine where 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. brian: why did you leave academia? joshua: 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. it's worse. universities are moving from tenured and tenured track professors to adjuncts. teaching loads are quadrupling. the universities themselves are under financial strain.

and i think i realize 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. brian: didn't mean to cut you off. but who did you work for? joshua: i worked for jon corzine when he was governor of new jersey and worked on marriage equality campaigns. brian: so the future writing of yourself, what are you -- what's your next book? joshua: i'm still working that out. i don't want to surprise and shock my editor. -- thinking rking 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. brian: only you have 30 seconds but now that you look back on john hay and john nicolay -- and all the people that worked for johnson, how big a difference in the end is there between those two eras? joshua: strip away all the superficialalityed but working between those presidents is very much the same experience. they spent their lives after trying to explain it and yet they were never able to adequately convey what it was like to be there. brian: our guest has been joshua zeitz. the book is called "building the great society: inside the lyndon johnson's white house." there's a lot more in here about the people that worked for lyndon johnson. thanks, joshua. joshua: thanks, brian. [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. -- a-and-a.org. it's also available as a podcast. >> take you live now to the white house daily briefing. started about 10 minutes ago. press secretary sarah sanders joined at the podium by two veterans who served in iraq and afghanistan. sarah: we're still finalizing what the deal will look like and i won't get ahead of the president's announcement. reporter: thanks a lot, sarah. it seems many republicans, including the house speaker, re caught offguard about the -- by the president's decision about the terrorist. should they have [inaudible] sarah: they should