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This module contains three parts along with a conclusion; you should complete only those sections requested by your instructor.
| Part One | In-class assignment: LBJ tapes at 1964 Atlantic City Convention |
| Part Two | Blackboard assignment |
| Part Three | Out-of-class writing assignment |
| Part Four | Conclusion |
Overview
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During his 5-year tenure as president, Lyndon Johnson secretly recorded around 642 hours of phone conversations and (in 1968) cabinet meetings. He inherited this tactic from his predecessor, John Kennedy, who secretly recorded approximately 260 hours of phone conversations and meetings. This unit uses clips from these recordings to glimpse inside the White House at a time when JFK and LBJ made some of their key decisions regarding the Cold War. |
Prerequisite: Cold War timeline
This timeline gives a sense of some of the key events in US policy toward the Cold War, 1946-1963.
Activity One: (Blackboard assignment)
In 1947, the journalist and commentator Walter Lippmann penned an article describing the developing US-USSR confrontation as a "Cold War." The term came to describe the state of superpower relations for the next four decades. These maps portray how Europe and the rest of the world became divided into two camps.
For this Blackboard assignment, read three of the critical document of U.S. Cold War grand strategy:
Text Questions:
To what extent did these three documents envision a similar threat posed by the Soviet Union? Did Eisenhower's call for taking into account the economic limitations of the United States really differ from Truman's general approach?
Source Questions:
Do you notice any difference between the X Article--which was written for public consumption--and the two NSC documents, which were classified?
You should post at least twice, with the second post at least 12 hours after the first, and to include responses to the arguments of the other posters.
Activity Two: (In-class assignment)
After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cold War in Europe stabilized. The superpowers' focus turned to Latin American and Asian affairs. In 1962, the U.S. discovery of a planned Soviet nuclear missile base in Cuba prompted the Cuban Missile Crisis; after 13 days of tension, the Soviets pulled out their missiles. Forcefulness proved a less appropriate response to events in Vietnam. U.S. troop levels in the Southeast Asian country dramatically increased after John Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Discussion Questions:
Activity Three: (Writing assignment)
How did the two Democratic administrations of the 1960s address the emerging problem of Vietnam. Compare and contrast the recording of this meeting on Vietnam between President Kennedy and his key national security advisors with President Johnson's March 1964 conversation with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (mp3 file). Be sure to consider the following issues:
How Kennedy and Johnson viewed the main issue facing the United States in the region;
The role of the President's personality in his approach to foreign affairs;
How the situation on the ground in Vietnam limited the options available to U.S. policymakers.
Presidential biographies are among the most common, and popular, type of political history, and presidential historians have to balance the sometimes competing needs of presenting a faithful portrayal of the President's personal life with an understanding of his public policies. Striking this balance can be especially difficult when dealing with the tapes, since the recording systems often picked up unusual and perhaps atypical moments in a President's life that under any other circumstances never would have been retained.
How much attention should historians devote to the private traits of 1960s chief executives? Keep this question in mind when listening to the following two calls: the first, between Lyndon Johnson and Joseph Haggar, in which the President ordered some slacks, giving some very specific tailoring advice; the second, between Richard Nixon and the late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time US ambassador to the UN, in which Nixon discussed his theories on the capacities of different races for effective governance.
Resources
