Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."

Lessons from the past were revisited by former White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers during an address Friday morning marking the 96th birthday of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Johnson Family Cemetery near Stonewall



Lessons from the past were revisited by former White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers during an address Friday morning marking the 96th birthday of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Johnson Family Cemetery near Stonewall

Lesson From LBJ
Posted: Wednesday, Sep 01, 2004 - 03:31:16 pm CDT


Caption: LADY BIRD JOHNSON greets Bill Moyers after the former White House press secretary addressed a gathering of family and friends attending Friday morning's 31st annual wreath laying and birthday commemoration at the LBJ Ranch honoring President Lyndon B. Johnson. Standard-Radio Post Photo by Terry Collier

Lessons from the past were revisited by former White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers during an address Friday morning marking the 96th birthday of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Johnson Family Cemetery near Stonewall.

Speaking at the LBJ Ranch before a gathering of park visitors, Johnson family members and friends, including Lady Bird Johnson, Moyers recalled that he was drawn to LBJ early.

"To a generation of ambitious Texans, Lyndon Johnson was as big as the state itself and as promising," he said after helping place a wreath at the grave of the former president.

A veteran of three decades in journalism and broadcasting since his days as a Special Assistant to LBJ, Moyers read from an essay he had written for the New York Times the day after LBJ was buried in 1973, noting, "Power had a purpose for Lyndon Johnson."

"If you do good, you'll make good," he quoted the former president at the LBJ National Historic Park's 31st annual wreath laying ceremony. "The folks were always the winners. ‘The greatest good for the greatest numbers,' he preached."

Moyers said that Americans could learn much from LBJ's years of public service, especially those from 1963-69 when he was the 37th U.S. president.

"He taught us that the country is people with names, faces and dreams," Moyers said, "and he taught us that there's no progress without some giving up, that a nation of 200 million will stagnate without compromise.

Moyers said that some people scoffed as LBJ reached for consensus, charging him with trying to please all the people all of the time.

"But, to him, politics meant inclusion. ‘Noah wanted some of all animals aboard n not just critters with four legs,'" Moyers quoted LBJ.

Moyers suggested that if LBJ had been born at another time, he would have made his living as a horse trader.

"Instead, he bent this remarkable talent for getting agreement from disparate men to making things happen," he said.

Moyers said that LBJ also taught that, after years of stalemate, that the legislative process can function, that democracy can work.

"Why, then, was he unwilling to compromise in Vietnam?" Moyers asked. "The irony is: He thought he was!"

Recounting LBJ's frustrations, for example, when Ho Chi Minh rejected his efforts in 1965 to propose a multi-billion dollar rehabilitation program for Indochina, Moyers suggested that therein may have been the biggest lesson LBJ may have inadvertently taught Americans:

"We think of ourselves as broad-minded, good-intentioned, generous people, pursuing worthy goals in a world that we assume is aching to copy us," he said. "Surely, the logic goes, all we have to do is offer them what we would want if we were in their place."

But Moyers said LBJ knew better than most the fragile nature of power, its shortcomings, the counter-tides that it inevitably invokes.

"What he had to learn the hard way and teach us as he went along was something about the limits of perception," he said. "What made Lyndon Johnson such a unique and authentic figure n half-Texas Hill Country and half-Washington n may also have been his undoing."

Moyers suggested that LBJ was so much a creature of those two places that he may have shaped the world in their image.

"And this image would hem him in, causing him to see others as he saw himself," Moyer said. "It was this that made him such an American man when the world was, in reality, reaching for other models."

Moyers conceded that this point may be only conjecture but he added that he did know that LBJ "was cut ten sizes larger than any of us."

"This made him coarser, more intemperate, more ambitious, more cunning and more devious than ordinary people," he said. "But it also made him more generous, more intelligent, more progressive and more hopeful for the country."

Moyers remembered that LBJ was inside a soft man.

"Inside, I don't think he had what it took to prosecute a war wholeheartedly," Moyers said of LBJ's struggle with the war in Vietnam. "And, in the end, he may yet teach us that democracy just doesn't have the heart for those dirty, little wars."

Moyers concluded by noting that his and LBJ's relationship was "strained" toward the end of their association.

"And he died before the prodigal came home," he said. "But he touched me more than any man, taught me more than any man, and I loved him."

Also addressing Friday's gathering on behalf of President Bush and the U.S. Armed Forces was Col. John W. Hestermann III of Randolph Air Force Base.

"Our armed forces hold President Johnson dear because he was one of us," Hesterman said. "When the U.S. joined the Second World War, he was the first member of Congress to enlist. As a member of the U.S. Navy, he received a Silver Star for heroism in the South Pacific."

Hestermann, who had assisted Moyers on Friday in placing the wreath at LBJ's gravesite, also referred to a speech LBJ once made in which he answered the question of why the U.S. tries to help other countries in distress.

"His answer was perhaps as appropriate then as it is now. He said, ‘We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny and only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secured,'" he said.

Hesterman said that "this kind of world will never be built by bombs and bullets. I wish this were not so, but we must deal with the world as it is if we are to ever have it as we wish it would be."

Referring to ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hesterman said, "The sons and daughters of another generation of Americans are carrying on President Johnson's example of making a difference in the world."

Among those in attendance for the program, in addition to Mrs. Johnson, were her and President Johnson's daughters, Luci Johnson and Lynda Robb, along with other family members Ian Turpin (Luci Johnson's husband), Lyndon Nugent, Nicole Nugent Covert, Catherine Robb and Claudia Nugent Covert.

Johnny Ray Watson of Bastrop began and closed the program by singing "America The Beautiful" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

When this story was prepared, here was the front page of PCOL magazine:

This Month's Issue: August 2004 Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and who can come up with the funniest caption for our Current Events Funny? Exclusive: Director Vasquez speaks out in an op-ed published exclusively on the web by Peace Corps Online saying the Dayton Daily News' portrayal of Peace Corps "doesn't jibe with facts." In other news, the NPCA makes the case for improving governance and explains the challenges facing the organization, RPCV Bob Shaconis says Peace Corps has been a "sacred cow", RPCV Shaun McNally picks up support for his Aug 10 primary and has a plan to win in Connecticut, and the movie "Open Water" based on the negligent deaths of two RPCVs in Australia opens August 6. Op-ed's by RPCVs: Cops of the World is not a good goal and Peace Corps must emphasize community development.

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