Landslide (4 page)

And the vision Reagan articulated in his inaugural address was, in fact, a vision born in the midsixties, a vision made possible by the Johnson years. The ideas he articulated—virulent anticommunism abroad, freeing the individual from the shackles of the state at home—were not new. They had been guiding principles of the right since the Roosevelt administration; they were the ideas Goldwater ran on in 1964. But for a long time, those ideas had been too fantastic
and ridiculous for the mainstream. To most Americans, it was self-evident that a modern state facing the complex problems of the modern world needed a robust national government to guide it through.

But as Johnson’s promises for America’s utopian future moved into the realm of fantasy, the fantasies of limited government on the radical right suddenly became legitimate, too. Reagan, whose career had given him a healthy respect for the mercurial nature of public mood, waited for the right moment—when public trust in Johnson’s promises first began to falter—to unleash his own competing myth. Johnson promised that his government would soon deliver the nation from all troubles, but the nation grew more troubled by the day. Only then did the conservative case against government begin to seem not so crazy after all. Or, at least, no more crazy than the other side. Once the formerly reasonable people took their rhetoric into a new realm of fantasy, politics became about choosing: which fantasy sounded best?

Is a new world coming? We welcome it and we will bend it to the hopes of man
.

Government is not the solution to our problem. Government
is
the problem
.

Reagan and Johnson were speaking in different eras. But they were speaking to each other.

Both were telling stories of America and its future. In these stories, the country was facing a historic moment of choice, the consequences of which would be felt for generations. The stakes were high: “
Abundance or annihilation,” said Johnson at the dedication of the 1964 World’s Fair, “development or desolation, that is in your hands.” Later that same year, Reagan gave his “Time for Choosing” speech: “
We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Yet while the consequences of making the wrong choice were severe, to Johnson and Reagan, the right and wrong paths were clear.
And each man assured Americans that all they had to do was choose the right path—his path—and they would be delivered from harm, ready for their future of ecstatic possibility. They were confident that the country would make the right choice. After all, there would be someone there to guide them.

That was what drove them to tell their stories in the first place; each man needed a story in which he could play the hero’s part. For despite all their differences, Reagan and Johnson were at heart driven by the same fundamental need: to be the hero and receive the world’s admiration and acclaim. One was a rancher down in the muck, the other was a cowboy riding along the ridge. But at the end of the day, each of them was a man on horseback, commanding the attention of the world.

That driving need shaped both of their lives. It propelled them up from lonely childhoods in obscure regions of the country and compelled them to work harder than all their peers. In both of them, it was a need born early, nursed by the love of ambitious, adoring mothers. As they grew older, it was shaped by the cautionary example of their fathers, Jack Reagan and Sam Ealey Johnson, Jr., two men who had also had dreams of being a hero but who had instead chosen paths that led to ruin and disgrace.

As young adults, their shared need brought them both acclaim and attention. “
Heady wine,” Reagan called it, and Johnson would have known exactly what he meant—it tasted so sweet. Each found successively larger stages so that by their late twenties, Johnson and Reagan had become, respectively, a United States congressman and a Hollywood actor with a million-dollar studio contract. Settled in their businesses’ respective capitals on opposite coasts, each spent much of the next two decades in his rightful place, as one of the most recognizable men in town.

Then, sometime in middle age, the wine dried up and the eyes of the world drifted away, leaving Reagan and Johnson each to contemplate the same future, one in which his purpose for living was gone.

That was the future that lay ahead of both of them the day that
John F. Kennedy went to Dallas. On November 22, 1963, when the story of their thousand days begins, Reagan and Johnson were both well into middle age and far from the limelight. Reagan was working on a troubled movie set, playing the part of a cuckolded gangster in a dark, violent drama—the kind of work he hated but the only work he could get. Johnson was wasting away in the miserable obscurity of the vice presidency. Excluded from the circles of influence, a figure of ridicule in the capital he had once ruled, he had descended into deep depression, convinced he would never hold real power again.

Then shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza and everything changed. The sudden, shocking death of President Kennedy left the nation stunned and uncertain how to go on. Americans needed a story to believe in. In the thousand days that followed, Johnson and Reagan would each seize the chance to offer a new way forward. It was a risky proposition—in mythology, a hero who seeks greatness must tempt fate and the wrath of the gods. For Johnson, the bill would come due even before the thousand days were up. Still, it was an opportunity each of them would die to take. For each of them it was one last chance at greatness. One last chance to be the man on the horse.

“A sad time for all people”: Lyndon B. Johnson addresses the nation from Andrews Air Force Base while his wife, Lady Bird, looks on, November 22, 1963.
©
AP Photo

At the beginning, the worst part is the uncertainty. Later, after the mourning dignitaries have come and gone, after the black crape has been taken down from the chandeliers and the funeral geldings have been put out to pasture, people will remember this weekend as a time of great sadness. For years and then decades, they’ll look back and remember their sorrow. They’ll say they knew, instantly, that life would never be the same again. But that will be memory doing memory’s ruthless work, obliterating any discordant details, imposing order where once there was none. In these first hours, there is sadness, but mostly there is chaos and the dreadful unknown: What has happened to America? And what is going to happen next?

So everyone turns on their television sets, hoping to find out. On NBC’s
Today
show, the clocks on a wall are comfortingly definitive. On the East Coast, it is just after seven o’clock in the morning. The date is November 23, 1963. Millions of Americans are waking up after a night of troubled sleep. Watching the program, they see the host’s face contort in sudden pain as he speaks the words:

“
The president of the United States is dead.”

Ah, yes, that is certain, too.

By now there are agreed-upon facts: At lunchtime the previous day, President John F. Kennedy, on a political trip to Texas, rode in
an open limousine toward the center of Dallas. At 12:30 Central Time, shots struck his motorcade as it moved through the city’s Dealey Plaza. By 12:45
P.M.
, CBS, NBC, and ABC had interrupted their programming to bring word of the shooting.
At 1:35
P.M.
, the network Teletypes carried a wire from UPI: “Flash: President Kennedy Dead.” Now, nearly eighteen hours after the shooting, it is impossible to find an American who does not already know the news the host has just delivered—that the president of the United States is dead.

Still, he says it. It is the first line in a script he must read, timed to a movie montage with carefully selected background music. It is the starting point of an elaborate story he is about to tell, the summary of what is known.

He goes on:

“
The body of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is at this moment in the White House. And it is a much saddened nation and world that greets this day …”

The screen switches to scenes from the day. There is the dead president at Dallas’s Love Field, very much alive, gracefully descending from Air Force One. And there is his beautiful wife, Jacqueline, wearing a pink suit and a pillbox hat, brushing the hair out of her face. He smiles and nods at local dignitaries on the tarmac. She clutches a bouquet of red roses to her breast. They climb into an open-topped limousine.

“At about 12:30 the motorcade turned the corner and approached the triple underpass feeding the Stemons expressway …”

The smiling Kennedys turn a corner and disappear from view.

“… and then three shots rang out in quick succession and the pleasant day turned into a nightmare of confusion and horror.”

The camera jolts and drops to the ground. The narration goes silent and the music is gone.

“The president died at about one
P.M
.… Meanwhile Dallas police had captured twenty-four-year-old Lee Oswald, an acknowledged left-wing supporter of Fidel Castro …”

“He was later charged with the murder of the president … he has thus far admitted nothing.”

Then a quick cut. Now, onscreen, we see a blurry shot of two large airplane tails, parked on a runway, behind a high fence.

“Vice President Lyndon Johnson recited the oath of office and assumed the presidency …”

But we do not see the oath taking. We do not see any pictures of Johnson. All we see is more of the airplane tails and the fence.

“At 6:05 Eastern Time, the presidential plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. The bronze coffin carrying the thirty-fifth president was taken from it and loaded into a Navy ambulance.”

Onscreen it is now nighttime on another tarmac. From the back of the airplane, Air Force One, we see men emerge, carrying a coffin.

“Then, a still blood-spattered Mrs. Kennedy was taken down. She seemed still in a state of shock as she was taken to the ambulance.”

A solid mass of men in uniforms and dark suits parts for Jacqueline Kennedy. She does look dazed, but also regal and poised. The shot lingers on her, beautiful and tragic, as she waits to get into the ambulance. The narration has stopped again, as if out of respect.

Then there is a quick, disorienting cut to a far less pretty picture. On a nondescript slab of concrete, Kennedy’s vice president stands with his wife. He looks tired and old.

“A few minutes later, the waiting crowd and the nation at large heard their new president, Lyndon Johnson.”

Johnson seems confused. Before speaking he looks to both sides and then down at his notes, exposing a balding head. He is speaking but we can’t hear him, there is too much background noise. We hear principally the roar of airplane engines. Only when they deign to pause can we catch Johnson, midsentence—

“… time for all people.”