Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 Book

[3.5 stars]

The legacy of Lyndon Johnson gets murkier in Flawed Giant, Dallek's concluding second book of his biography of LBJ. It begins with Johnson in the shadow of John F. Kennedy, and quickly assuming command after tragedy in Dallas. Johnson's domestic whirlwind draws comparison to the visionary efforts of FDR and Woodrow Wilson, with ambitions to cure the nation of its most serious ills and injustices.

But Vietnam takes over the volume, as it did Johnson's presidency, with a detailed review of the battles in Washington and within Johnson himself. It feels extraordinarily redundant after two hundred pages, as the strategy resembles a wash sequence: NVN is faithless - SVN is useless in its own cause - US bombs the North - US sends more troops - negotiations attempted - rinse - repeat.

Johnson comes off as a Jekyll and Hyde of politics, fighting a heroic battle for civil rights and education, while being a bastard to the people closest to him, and unable to escape his ego in the face of a conflict thousands of miles away. As the costs of undeclared war buried his ambitious programs at home, Dallek demonstrates the toll it took on Johnson, and shaped his decision not to run for reelection in 1968, even as he struggled with the choice until the very last minute.

Johnson's short post-presidency is presented swiftly, and a brief afterword recaps Johnson's legacy at the time of publication and into today. Ultimately the reader is left with the image of a bull-headed man who propelled himself to history's peak, and then was consumed by a story'and a war'that belonged to someone else. The life of LBJ'a man who craved the spotlight he believed he earned'is summarized by his attendance at the launch of Apollo XI: An mere observer of someone else's vision, someone else's success, on someone else's watch.