Was Lyndon Johnson Unstable?

By Hugh Sidey

| Even before the Viet Nam War consumed Lyndon Johnson, his dark rantings sometimes shocked the White House press corps. The first serious criticism of his conduct of foreign policy came in 1965, when he sent 20,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to quell domestic violence. Stung, Johnson summoned a small group of reporters to an off-the-record lunch that began at 1:30 p.m. and did not end until 5:30. The four hours were taken up by the President's pacing, raving, justifying his action. When it was over, the numbed newsmen hurried to a nearby bar for a stiff drink. The most experienced of the group stared into his double martini and muttered, "That was really frightening."

Now Richard Goodwin, a former speechwriter and aide to L.B.J., has taken such recollections several steps further. In his memoir of the 1960s, Remembering America (Little, Brown; $19.95), Goodwin writes that Johnson was at times literally crazed and that his episodic madness helped propel the U.S. into "a needless tragedy of such immense consequences ((Viet Nam)) that, even now, the prospects for a restorative return remain in doubt." He brazenly diagnoses Johnson's large eccentricities as "incursions of paranoia," which led to leaps "into unreason" that "infected the entire presidential institution."

Whether or not Goodwin's amateur psychiatry is clinically correct, he has dared probe a dim corner of Washington history, a suppressed repository of whispered stories and yellowing memos written in shocked disbelief, describing Johnson's stalking the back corridors of the White House and fulminating about the enemies he saw surrounding him. Nor is such speculation confined to Johnson. In the final throes of Watergate, the tortured Richard Nixon could not focus on meetings, wandered the White House halls at night and sank to his knees in prayer with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, behavior that suggested to some that he had lost all touch with reality.

Goodwin experienced the standard Johnson outrages: an interview with L.B.J. as the President sat on the toilet, a nude policy council in the superheated White House swimming pool. But from his diary of the crucial years 1964 to 1967 and from the shadows of his memory, the writer reconstructs the larger pattern of behavior that disturbed him. Goodwin did not speak up sooner, he writes, because of "misplaced loyalty or personal cowardice." An angry swarm of Johnson intimates now attacking Goodwin suggest more basic motives: money and notoriety.

Yet Goodwin, who helped name and fashion so much of the policy of that era (John Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, L.B.J.'s Great Society, Eugene McCarthy's crusade of dissent, Bobby Kennedy's glowing visions so tragically destroyed), cannot be dismissed. His controversial assessment of Johnson is embedded in the longer narrative of Goodwin's journey into power and out again. The book is a velvety recitation of being at the center but never of it, the brilliant crafter of ideas and words, too arrogant and defiant to last in any job very long but always sought by those scaling the heights. A lawyer by training, Goodwin read books on psychiatry and recounted the episodes of his diary to friends who were psychiatrists. Goodwin claims that another Johnson aide, Bill Moyers, had the same misgivings and also consulted practicing psychiatrists. "In all cases," writes Goodwin, "the diagnosis was the same: we were describing a textbook case of paranoid disintegration, the eruption of long-suppressed irrationalities." Moyers has refused comment on Goodwin's account.

Goodwin's case is built on Johnson's obsession that the world was being swept by Communists. L.B.J.'s enemies of all stripes included not only guerrilla leaders in distant countries but "those Kennedys" or "those Harvards." According to Goodwin, Johnson once told him, " 'You know, Dick, the Communists are taking over the country. Look here,' and he lifted a manila folder from his desk. 'It's Teddy White's FBI file. He's a Communist sympathizer.' " At another time: "The Communists already control the three major networks and the 40 major outlets of communication." Thus, by Goodwin's account, did L.B.J.'s fantasies propel the country into Viet Nam.

Walt Rostow, Johnson's National Security Adviser, last week scoffed at the assertions. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk called the account "utter nonsense." Jack Valenti, a loyal friend who served Johnson in the White House for three years, suggested that almost anything written about Johnson, including Goodwin's story, was true at one time or another. "He was the same as Lincoln, Napoleon, Churchill and other notable leaders," Valenti retorted. "He was an elemental force. He was eccentric. He used words and body language as weapons. He kept people off guard. But he knew what he was doing all the time."

George Reedy, Johnson's onetime press secretary and a wise counselor for years, said L.B.J. did have paranoid tendencies at times. "Goodwin is reporting accurately," said Reedy. "But I don't think Dick really knew Johnson." Horace Busby, another of Johnson's old-timers, declared, "If you did not know Johnson, you would think he was nuts."

Goodwin's postpublication rebuttal is that the Johnson loyalists were too close. They became hardened to his dangerous behavior, denying the reality of what was happening to the man. "Johnson's excessive secrecy and lying, his suspicion, fit into a pattern that made it hard for him to make proper decisions," said Goodwin last week. "The final irony is that the only guy who saw how disastrous the Viet Nam War could be was Johnson himself." In the book, Goodwin quotes a gloomy Johnson proclaiming, "I'm going to be known as the President who lost Southeast Asia." Paranoid or not, Johnson was painfully aware of the tragedy unfolding at his hands.