When did burning down the house become the preferred solution for sorting out its various problems?
In the best of times persuading someone to do or believe something is difficult. And these are definitely not the best of times. One could be forgiven for assuming that self-destruction is not in our nature: that it doesn’t need to be proved or argued. But watch enough Youtube videos of people engaging in behaviors that can only end badly, or Britons willingly separating their nation from its European neighbors, or voters who seem comfortable channeling their free-floating anger into a political movement, and you begin to wonder. When did burning down the house become the preferred solution for sorting out its various problems?
A common theme on this site is that we are distracted and over-committed. It’s harder to be thoughtful when time and fatigue overtake solid values like risk avoidance and forbearance. The exasperation we all feel at times when incrementalism and caution seem too tepid sets us up to accept non-incremental change, even if adopting it means trashing rational impulses like fact-finding and circumspection. Both are tools for informed change that can seem too slow to deal with the wounds of class, ethnic resentments, or the sloppy machinery of self-government. They are easily vanquished by the incendiary language of a demagogue.
If we are lucky, this phase of seeking big change with little understanding is only one moment in a political cycle that will change. That’s the conventional wisdom. But a better case can be made that we are steadily moving toward a new kind of American politics where many in Congress and those seeking the presidency are motivated more by expressive opportunities than the actual work of governance. In the parlance of older members of the Senate, these folks are “show horses” rather than “work horses.” Even shutting down the government–a draconian step taken by Ted Cruz in 2013 to deny a vote for the Affordable Care Act–was done with more defiance than shame. Governing through compromise and cooperation seems to not be in their nature, leading to outcomes where the spotlight on the successful conciliators would have to be shared. By contrast, demagogues inclined to use bumper-sticker solutions that resonate with an angry electorate may know that their methods are at odds with the deliberative nature of their work, but they also know that throwing rhetorical grenades will mean that they can have the spotlight to themselves.
This is a pattern that great writers on American democracy like Walter Lippmann worried about. The public, he noted, can be dangerously out of step with national needs, converting trumped up fantasies into the urge to push for too much too soon, or too little too late. Such it was with the Communist witch-hunts of the 30s and 40s, or the current fashion for deprecating diplomacy in favor of the raw application of military power.
The questions that are white-hot right now are part of the same maelstrom: Should we block entry to the U.S. based on a visitor’s religious beliefs? Will it help us in the long-run to strong-arm China, which owns so much of American debt? Should we deport the mostly hard-working undocumented families woven into the American fabric? These are blunt proposals, better written into the third acts of revenge films than ginned up to be the policy positions of a great nation.
There’s a Tom Cheney cartoon in the New Yorker of a frustrated office worker standing over his computer with his desk chair in his raised arms. He’s ready to bring it crashing down on the non-functioning device, with its innocent screen command to “Strike any key to continue.” We know the feeling, and there are times when we would give anything for the shortcut a grand unilateral gesture. But the current preference for trashing caution will fill us with regrets later.
If it doesn’t seem quite fair to be an earwitness to the unraveling of one man’s perfectly ordered world, the compensation of hearing the “Johnson Treatment” first hand is justification enough.
From a communications perspective President Lyndon Johnson was a fascinating figure. Most political communication scholars mention his speeches, particularly the disastrous ones defending the Vietnam War and the successful ones on civil rights. Indeed, his address to a joint session of Congress arguing for voter rights legislation in March of 1965, is one of the towering achievements of the presidency. He virtually shamed his southern colleagues into relinquishing their stranglehold on voter access, especially in the south. Johnson’s rhetoric could be lumbering and labored. And he could be terribly insensitive. But in that speech the angels sang, and the nation finally got a Voting Rights Act that would enfranchise millions.
Johnson the communicator is also remembered for another reason that can be summed up in three words: the Johnson Treatment. To put it simply, the former Senate Minority Leader was an incredibly persuasive man in one-to-one meetings with his colleagues. To go through the experience was to be subjected to a nonstop barrage of arguments, pleadings, commands, threats and intimidation until the target could take no more. Some of what he did was genuine persuasion. Some was simply hammer-lock coercion building off Johnson’s power in the Senate, and later, as the accidental president.
We know this from first-hand accounts of those who faced the Johnson gauntlet. But we can also hear what the treatment sounded like.
It wasn’t just Richard Nixon who recorded many of his White House conversations. Johnson taped many of his own phone calls. And so we have a record of endless day and late night conversations, sometimes with Johnson just thinking out loud (especially with his Senate mentor, Richard Russell). But among the calls are a number where Johnson is demanding compliance from a cabinet member, a senator, or some other victim in the far-flung federal establishment. We can hear the insistent gale force pressure of his words overwhelming a surprised minion, some of whom were not happy to be strong-armed.
“Sarge was reluctant to accept the post; LBJ refused to take “no” for an answer.”
Sargent Shriver
Such was the case with a fateful 1964 call to Sargent Shriver, who was then living his dream job as head of the Peace Corps. Shriver loved the agency, with its mission of humanitarian work performed by a growing cadre of the young and idealistic Americans. But Johnson had bigger plans for the Marylander and former Kennedy administration official. He wanted Shriver to head up the ambitious but unbelievably complicated effort of the administration to wage a full-scale “War on Poverty.” If the idea itself was inspiring, Shriver surely knew that it would be a hornet’s nest of overlapping and competing federal programs. It promised all the organizational headaches that were mostly avoided in the much smaller Peace Corps program.
Here’s the call, which starts with a pause while White House operators bring the two together:
If it doesn’t seem quite fair to be an earwitness to the unraveling of one man’s perfectly ordered world, the compensation of hearing the Johnson treatment first hand is justification enough. The call is reminder that persuasion is not always polite, fair, or pretty. But fascinating?
Yes.
By the way, by most accounts, Shriver brought credit and success to the mammoth undertaking of the administration’s War on Poverty.
