“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. . . . But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation as an appeaser. . .”
“Do you have a lot of energy?" the thirtysixth President of the United States asked a young winner of the White House Fellowship. “It’s important for me to know.”LBJ was looking for a confidante with the endurance to hear and interpret some of his deepest secrets, fiercest convictions, and haunting dreams as he came to the lonesome end of a career that changed history. That confidante was Doris Kearns, twenty-four when she went to work at the White House in 1968. and now a professor of government at Harvard. “Who Was Lyndon Baines Johnson?" will appear in this and next month’s Atlantics. It is drawn from Ms. Kearns’s forthcoming book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.