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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Texan with a sense of humor, December 20, 2005
Complaining bitterly to Dean Acheson about the public affection that had surrounded John Kennedy and the coolness toward him, Lyndon B. Johnson wondered aloud why people didn't like him. "Mr. President," Acheson replied, "you're not a very likeable man."
Contrary to Acheson's opinion, shared by most contemporaries and by many subsequent historians, Johnson emerges from this thoroughly researched and well-crafted study, not only as a shrewd politician, an able negotiator and a skillful foreign-policy leader, but also as an almost likeable person.
Schwartz finds that LBJ, after he settled into office, became "an astute and able practitioner of alliance politics," one who developed a keen understanding of the perspectives and preoccupations of European leaders and who dominated the foreign policy process. His policy toward Europe, the author writes, was "one of the most important achievements of his presidency." Schwartz unravels a series of complex negotiations-over arms control, the future of NATO, a Multilateral Force, and international economic issues-, and asserts that LBJ, determined to combat nationalism and unilateralism, effectively pursued his vision of a further integration of Europe and a relaxation of cold war tensions.
What makes Johnson an engaging character are the many quips and axioms of popular wisdom that he brought to a foreign policy realm traditionally dominated by soft-spoken diplomats and cosmopolitan personalities. When his advisors reminded him that America was committed to the creation of a Multilateral Force and had to find a compromise even though the Europeans didn't really want it, Johnson proposed to drop the idea altogether by remarking: "While you're trying to save face, you'll lose your ass." This Texan brought up in a German-American community developed a good friendship with Chancellor Eckard but advocated the following course of action toward his ally: "There's only one way to deal with the Germans. You keep patting them on the head and then every once in a while you kick them in the balls".
He resisted the advice to react strongly to the public attacks by de Gaulle by remarking that he didn't want to get into a "pissing match with the French" and, commenting on de Gaulle's decision to exit NATO's integrated defense system and have American troops evacuate France, noted soberly: "When a man asks you to leave his house, you don't argue; you get your hat and go." He also brought fresh ideas to international economic policy debates, bringing the Kennedy Round to completion and salvaging the Bretton Woods system, although he rarely talked publicly about those issues - he once told John Kenneth Galbraith that "making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg: it seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else."
Indeed, Schwartz makes the case that LBJ's gut feelings and instinctive understanding of power politics often trumped the judgment of more experienced foreign policy experts and made him a natural leader of the Atlantic alliance. The book opens with a reference to Lyndon Johnson as "the Ugly American" and concludes with a quote from Charles de Gaulle, who once said that "Roosevelt and Kennedy were masks over the real face of America. Johnson is the very portrait of America. He reveals the country to us as it is, rough and raw." The quote wasn't intended as a compliment, but may be taken as one.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An Academic History with Surprising Contemporary Relevance, May 17, 2003
This history focuses on LBJ's policies toward Western Europe (primarily Germany, France and Britain) during his presidency, and seeks to overturn the prevailing academic view that the Johnson administration failed to make progress on key issues with the Europeans. Schwartz claims that Johnson's troubles in Vietnam as well as his preference for domestic policy have overshadowed his very real accomplishments in this area of foreign policy. LBJ was faced with several overlapping problems in Europe. Britain was enduring an economic crunch that hurt its ability to maintain military forces in Germany, the Middle East and SE Asia, and thus help the U.S. provide security for the Cold War; Under De Gaulle, France was actively challenging U.S. hegemony in Western Europe; meanwhile, Germany's self-confidence was reviving, allowing it to push for more say on the alliance's nuclear weapons and on German reunification. As a whole, Europe was moving towards more economic and political integration -- a process that the U.S. both encouraged and hoped to manage. Schwartz does a fine job explaining the different European issues and how they interacted. He is also good at explaining the motivations and constraints LBJ faced when making European policy. I thought his reassessment of Johnson's performance at the end of the book, however, a little too glowing. There doesn't seem to be anything about Johnson's policies that Schwartz finds fault with. A reassessment should be a reassessment, not a whitewash. While neither George W. Bush nor Jacques Chirac nor Gerhard Schroeder is mentioned one time in this history, the book still has a surprising contemporary relevance. As a professional historian, Schwartz maintains his focus on LBJ and the Europe of the mid-60s. But for the general reader, it is hard not to see the similarities between that time and today's cross-Atlantic relationships. Like Bush, Johnson faced a Europe unsympathetic to one of his primary foreign policy goals (the war in Vietnam for Johnson; the war in Iraq for Bush). Like Bush, Johnson's main European challenger was France, and that challenge was vigorous. Like Bush, Johnson's style was perceived by Europeans as too crude (both were unfortunate to follow presidents who were very popular in Europe, and who were considered bright and sophisticated men). Some events and rhetoric from the 1960s look as if you could just change the dates and names and insert them into an article today. When the U.S. escalates the war in Vietnam, De Gaulle calls American foreign policy "more and more threatening for the peace of the world". The Vietnam War is also among the chief causes for a precipitous drop in German public opinion towards the U.S.: when asked if the basic interests of their country are in agreement with the U.S., only 16% of Germans in 1966 answered yes, compared to 70% just a year earlier. Some in the German leadership were also upset with what they felt was a lack of consultation on the part of Johnson. There are numerous examples like this in the book. Even if you have no interest in LBJ's foreign policy, you still might find this book valuable in looking at Bush's foreign policy by way of comparison.
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