Ep 3: Lady Bird Johnson: Attaining Power By Being #2

[00:00:00] In the first few years of Lady Bird Johnson's marriage to Lyndon Johnson, everyone around them felt so bad for her. At parties, Lyndon, when Yota Lady Bird from across the room, Hey Bird, look how good someone's wife looks in that red dress.

[00:00:15] Why can't you look more like her? Or he'd bark at her. Bird, bring us more biscuits. At home, he ordered her around like a servant, and borrowed her night gown for other women to wear to bed with him.

[00:00:27] Lady Bird really didn't need to put up with Lyndon Johnson. She was a smart, ambitious and financially independent woman. She had two degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, which was highly unusual for a woman born in 1912. And her dad was a very wealthy businessman.

[00:00:45] But she clung to Lyndon Johnson and put up with his bullying like a saint. She completely devoted herself to meeting his every need and whim. When things got hard, he would remind herself of the wedding bows that he had made to him just three months after they met.

[00:00:59] Without thinking about whether he was upholding his end of his vows. As her reward, over the decades, she slowly became one of Lyndon's closest advisors in political campaigners. When he became president, he was probably his closest advisor as he navigated the

[00:01:16] Vietnam War, passed the Civil Rights Act and introduced the great society to combat poverty, crime, and environmental pollution. In his first lady, he also advocated for her own policies around early childhood education and highway beautification. And he represented the US at numerous diplomatic and political meetings.

[00:01:41] Welcome to Women of Power, a podcast where we analyze the lives of powerful women and learn from their stories and strategies. Today, we're going to do something a little different. Whereas our first two episodes were about women who gained a lot of power in their own rate.

[00:01:57] Today, we will discuss a woman whose power was almost entirely derived from her husband. Ladybird's story is one of how a cripply shy girl born in 1912 in rural Texas was able to reach her greatest ambition to become somebody in the world by attaching herself

[00:02:14] in a strategic way to a powerful man. I think her life is worth studying for a couple reasons. First, she had a lot of political power for a woman of her time. Second, her husband, Lyndon, was one of the most politically savvy people in American political history.

[00:02:32] And Ladybird played a pretty active role in eating his raised power. So we can learn from the strategies that they used to be. Third, like it or not, it's still a question for women today of whether to marry a

[00:02:45] powerful man and derive a lot of her power from his or to strike an out on her own. If we do choose to attack yourself, whether they're married or otherwise, to a very powerful person and choose to serve as their second in command, Ladybird's story shows

[00:03:01] us what it was like to be married to the most powerful and ambitious man of her time and what the costs were. Let's start by looking at where Ladybird came from. Like the other two women we've covered on this show, Ladybird had a stern, ambitious and

[00:03:16] powerful father who she greatly looked up to. Ladybird's father, Thomas Taylor, was the richest man in their small Texas town. Thomas Taylor was born into extreme poverty in Alabama. One day, he fell in love with the daughter of the richest and meanest man in his Alabama town.

[00:03:36] Her name was Minnie. Minnie's father laughed in his face. He said Thomas wasn't nearly good enough for Minnie. And Thomas said, I'm going away to Texas and when I come back, I'll be so rich you'll be begging me to marry your daughter.

[00:03:50] Indeed he didn't yet very rich and he did enough marrying Minnie. For the rest of his life, he was obsessed with getting richer than Minnie's father but not nearly as obsessed with being a kind or faithful husband to Minnie herself.

[00:04:05] By the time that Ladybird was born, Minnie and Thomas' relationship was rocky. Minnie was described as being emotionally and physically unwell. And she actually died when Ladybird was just five. The friend tried to comfort Thomas by saying that Minnie was better off in heaven.

[00:04:21] And Thomas stopped, how can you say that? What about this little girl who left behind? What am I supposed to do with her? In that moment, five-year-old Ladybird actually felt such sympathy for her dad for being

[00:04:33] burdened with a little girl to raise that he resolved to be as little of a burden to him as possible. So Ladybird grew up really isolated and her father's big house. And her second story by Jerome, Pine Tree's obscured the view out of her window.

[00:04:49] And she spent a lot of time reading the books that her dad mother had left behind or just wandering around the woods by herself. Her aunt Effie came to look after her and contributed to the isolated, creamy vibe of her childhood.

[00:05:03] As Ladybird put it, Aunt Effie opened my spirit to beauty but she neglected to give me any insight into the practical matters of her or should know about, such as how to dress or choose one's friends. Socially, Ladybird was cripplingly shy, awkward and sort of plain looking.

[00:05:22] She was an excellent student but she always looked up to the girls who were more outgoing and beautiful. And she sometimes sabotaged her own grades because of her kindness. There was one girl who was blonde and outgoing and also a great student.

[00:05:35] And at some point, Ladybird realized that if she did better than the other girl in their exams, they would stop being friends. Clearly, the other girl was a bit jealous of her. So Ladybird intentionally did worse on her exam in order to preserve their friendship.

[00:05:51] Similarly, at the end of high school, she was so terrified by the idea of having to give a valid Victorian speech that she again sabotaged her own grades to avoid being a valid Torian. Despite being self-affirming and shy, Ladybird had an inner strength and boldness.

[00:06:08] She was insecure about how other people perceived her, but seemed confident in her own assessment of her own worth. From a young age, she was ambitious, adventurous and determined to make something of herself.

[00:06:21] She had strong convictions about what to do with her life, and she had the intelligence and family money to make her dreams happen. After high school, she was determined to attend college despite her not thinking it was useless for girls.

[00:06:36] Not only that, but she persuaded her dad to let her go to UT Austin instead of a small rose college. Instead of driving to Austin, she flew there just for the adventure of it and again got her dad to pay for it.

[00:06:49] Once he landed, he decided to put this being shy business behind her. She made a close group of friends she went out drinking and she made a bunch of men. One thing all of these men have in common is that they're super ambitious.

[00:07:04] She also earns two degrees in history and journalism, and decides to become a journalist. The four of us could come to fruition though, she met Lyndon Johnson. On their first date, as soon as he saw her, he jumped up, waived his hands up and down

[00:07:19] and proceeded to talk to her with a crazy amount of energy. He had dated a number of images men before, but she felt that he had never met anyone with Lyndon's energy or drive. He literally proposed to her on the first date, and she said, maybe not yet.

[00:07:36] Over the course of the next 10 weeks, he wrote her letters from Walking Nendisi. 10 weeks in, he made a surprise visit her house and he gave her an ultimatum. Mary Meow or Luzmy Forever. Obviously, Lyndon birds a bit taken aback, and she's still not completely ready to commit.

[00:07:54] But she says, okay, I'll marry you. Nearly, Lyndon's like, okay, great. Will be married tonight. So a few hours later, they are in a shirt. Lady Bird puts on an old silk dress that she dug up.

[00:08:08] Her best friend is there, having just jumped in a car and sped over to be her maid of honor. Lyndon's assistant presents them with a pair of 10-cent rings from Sears to serve as the wedding rings.

[00:08:20] Lady Bird is 22 years old, and he's given up her career to be Lyndon Johnson's housewife. What can we learn from her stories so far? If we live at the marriage, purely from a career perspective, you could say that, actually,

[00:08:36] you know, she thought he wanted to be a journalist. But, more importantly, he just wanted to be somebody period. And along came this man with great ambitions. She can clearly see he's going places.

[00:08:48] He trusts her intuition that says she's never met anyone with this amount of energy or drive. Basically, he sees an opportunity to join a raising star and decides to owe for it. The feminist icon, Haros Ann Berg once said,

[00:09:02] If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat. You just take it. Once they married, Lady Bird took on several roles to aid Lyndon's rise to power. First, she helped him cultivate important relationships and improved his public image.

[00:09:18] One of Lyndon's key strategies for gaining power was to cultivate relationships with older and powerful men. He would charm them and convince them to help him out. Starting at a very young age, Lyndon had been good at flattering older men and women.

[00:09:32] He would quite literally sit at their feet, look up at them intently, and listen with wrapped attention while they were speaking. And it worked wonders. In college, he sucked up to the Dean so successfully that he was able to get very rare housing,

[00:09:46] financial aid, and work opportunities that allowed him to finish school in spite of his extreme poverty. People started calling Lyndon a professional son because he was so good at inspiring paternal and maternal feelings toward him and other people.

[00:10:00] So once he arrived in DC, he got to work cultivating powerful men. At any hour, if he happened to manage to get ahold of someone important and weedle them into having a homemade dinner at his house, he would unexpectedly call Lady Bird and demand

[00:10:16] that he have both a delicious meal and a gracious smile ready to greet them. This continued especially on the weekends. Lyndon was particularly good at bonding with single older men who didn't have sons,

[00:10:29] and essentially becoming a surrogate son to them and getting them to be invested in his career the way that a father would be. A key part of this strategy was recognizing that while most politicians went home to their families

[00:10:41] on the weekends, these single men had nowhere to go, and they would happily accept an invitation to a homemade meal. Soon after their marriage, Lyndon started inviting Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, a single man in his 50s,

[00:10:55] to weekly Sunday branches at him and Lady Bird's new home. So Lady Bird had always been so shy and waited on by servants her whole life, learned to charm Speaker Sam Rayburn with her genuinen warmth, slight shyness, and so other

[00:11:09] and cooking. He became a big reason that Rayburn would come over so often to the Johnson's home, because Lyndon himself was, while Lyndon was known from a young age for being a liar, and just generally very much fulfilling the stereotype of the oily politician.

[00:11:26] And you know, Sam Rayburn is Speaker of the House. He's not Dean of some random small town hall like he sees through these things. So Lady Bird knew a lot to help build trust

[00:11:35] between Rayburn and the Johnson's. In addition to curming Rayburn herself, she got good at smoothing over 10-smolments. If Lyndon said something potentially offensive, she would say something to put the monies again. Rayburn ate in Lyndon's rise in the house

[00:11:49] and helped him get to the Senate. As a senator though, Lyndon started to cultivate a new single coyote list man, Richard Russell. Richard Russell of Georgia, proud descendant of Southern Plantaken owners, packing it believer in racial segregation, was the leader of the powerful Southern

[00:12:08] block in the Senate, which again and again voted down and filibustered any attempt by other politicians to pass civil rights legislation. For someone like Lyndon who desperately wanted to become president one day, but was also from the south, this presented a double-bond.

[00:12:25] Any Southern senator had to go in the Southern block and help it prevent civil rights legislation under Richard Russell's leadership, or else they would lose the support of their home state and thus be unable to even maintain their position in the Senate, let alone think about the

[00:12:39] presidency. But because the rest of the country was so passionate in favor of civil rights, any senator who opposed civil rights would inevitably lose on the national stage. So as long as this status quo held, everyone believed it was impossible for a Southerner

[00:12:57] to ever become president. But obviously Lyndon Johnson did it. Not only that, but he actually passed the civil rights act as a Southern president. And the way he did it was by cultivating such a strong

[00:13:10] relationship with Richard Russell that Russell essentially covered for him and allowed him to maintain plausible deniability on his civil rights stance, so I feel that he could keep growing his power both regionally in the south and nationally. Of course, this relationship involved much more than just

[00:13:28] inviting Russell over for dinner every Sunday. But still, Lady Bird didn't excellent job of playing the role of surrogate daughter and law to him. Lady Bird's quiet charm had a similarly positive effect on Lyndon's public image in front of voters. Once Lady Bird started appearing

[00:13:45] with Lyndon on the campaign trail, voters who met her would often say things like, oh I don't know if I agree with Johnson but I do anything for that sweet Lady Bird. She, the girl who was so terrified

[00:13:58] of giving a valid Victorian speak at her rural high school, became such an effective campaigner that eventually during Lyndon's 1964 presidential campaign, she did a bunch of solo campaigning without him. At one point, giving 45 speeches over four days. In the south, because she stood in

[00:14:17] favor of civil rights, people came to boo and heckle her. They would spit at her and try to ground out her voice while she was campaigning. Lady Bird dealt with each of these instances in a graceful

[00:14:28] way and even spun it in her favor. The south was really big on manners and courtesy toward women, and she was able to shame the anti civil rights people for violating southern manners toward

[00:14:40] her a woman in a way that was uniquely effective. On her own, Lady Bird was shy and sweet, unlikely to ever be the main character on a stage. But as Lyndon's ally and foil, she excelled.

[00:14:54] Lyndon's brashness brought them both into the spotlight, and once there, she made sure that they could stay. In addition to smoothing over his relationships and his public image, Lady Bird became a savvy business partner to Lyndon. Three years into their marriage,

[00:15:10] Lyndon wanted to run for Congress, but he was super poor and did not have the money to launch a campaign. So, Lyndon even called her father and convinced him to let her use a big chunk of her own

[00:15:22] inheritance money to finance Lyndon's campaign. And Lyndon won. A couple years into his term, World War II broke out, and Lyndon had to go serve in the army for a year. During that year,

[00:15:35] Lady Bird ran his entire congressional office. This was no mean feat. Lyndon was extremely demanding with the way that he ran his office. His motto was that if you do absolutely everything possible,

[00:15:47] then you will succeed and Lyndon could not stand failure. He was one of the most hard-working people on Capitol Hill. Even as a congressional assistant, he would literally sprint to his office

[00:15:59] on Capitol Hill every morning at the crack of dawn, eager to get to work as soon as possible. And he'd be the last person in the office long after the sun had set. He had a policy

[00:16:10] that his office must answer every single letter that a constituent sent in and try to do them any favor that it possibly could. For example, a Mexican-American woman once complained that her husband had died fighting in World War II, but that the local funeral home wouldn't

[00:16:27] conduct his funeral due to racism. Johnson's office arranged for her husband to instead be buried as a veteran in Arlington National Cemetery. This kind of thing obviously took a lot of time and it really endeared him to voters. Of course, he was also really demanding that his assistance

[00:16:45] work around the clock to make this all happen and bullying them into ensuring that the executed every task perfectly. On top of this, to grow his power and ensure that he had the leverage to do all these favors for his constituents, he cultivated close relationships with rich

[00:17:01] political donors. He personally got them to donate huge sums of money to the party, and then he would distribute that money to his fellow congressmen who were running for real action. That way, once these politicians were reelected, they would owe Lyndon favors.

[00:17:17] So, Lady Bird, at age 29, with almost no work experience, had a step into Lyndon's shoes and take over all of this while he was away out more. And she proved extremely competent at it.

[00:17:30] As Lyndon's housewife, he had quietly absorbed a lot of his ways of thinking and his strategies for running his office, and of course had spent a lot of time around him and his fellow politicians.

[00:17:41] He didn't have Lyndon's style of bullying his employees per se, but he had a lot of determination and a strong willpower underneath her softer manners as she always has. Lyndon's employees and colleagues quickly learned to respect her. Increasingly, when he and Lyndon discussed his office,

[00:17:58] he would ask her for her input and defer to her opinions. A year later, the guns enspotted an investment opportunity in the forum of a radio station in Austin. They felt that they could purchase

[00:18:09] the radio station and make it more profitable. Once again, Lady Bird used a big chunk of her inheritance, $17,000, which was a lot back then, to purchase the station. And he personally took over all the day-to-day operations and management of the station. With her hard work and Lyndon's

[00:18:27] political connections, the station made the millionaires within a couple years. On her own part, Lady Bird had to do some polytaking at home. Lyndon Johnson was not a faithful husband. He had affairs with many women, and occasionally he would really fall for one of them.

[00:18:46] In particular, there was this one woman Alice Glass who Lyndon fell deeply in love with. He had talked seriously about divorcing Lady Bird, Tamari Alice, and Alice was, well, where do I begin? The photographer, Arnold Gamthay, who photographed the world's most effective women for vanity

[00:19:03] fair, described Alice as the most beautiful woman he had ever met. He was six feet tall, slim, with scram-ary blonde hair, reaching down her waist. The multi-millionaire Charles March fell in love with her at first sight and abandoned his wife and kids to build her a gorgeous mansion.

[00:19:22] Alice hosted these incredible dinner parties of intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen, at this beautiful mansion, and she always sparkled at the center of the conversations. He was incredibly intelligent, witty, and very well read. I can't even begin to imagine how

[00:19:38] her and this must have been on Lady Bird. Lady Bird had always felt insecure about her looks and social skills. Alice had that in spades. At least Lady Bird could always take pride in her

[00:19:48] intelligence. But Alice was really smart, and even more well-read than he was. And of course, Alice was having this intense emotional and physical affair with her husband. But Lady Bird was determined to hang on her seat. The way that Lady Bird responded to their affair was by working

[00:20:05] on herself while pretending to him that she didn't notice the affair happening right in front of her eyes. She lost 15 pounds, she read more books, he became a more gracious host, and she doubled

[00:20:16] down on serving London in all his needs and demands. Also, she overcame some year-hose difficulties to become pregnant with the Lyndon's children. Perhaps the biggest sacrifice she made for Lyndon though was prioritizing his career in his needs over the needs of her two daughters once they

[00:20:33] were born. When her daughters were growing up, she often left them at home to go campaigning or attend political events with Lyndon. On occasions that they didn't come home for dinner, the household staff would dress the girls and bold colorful dresses to please their father.

[00:20:49] Their older daughter, Lyndon took all this to heart. She herself and her allies that her father's career came above everything else. She developed a strong interest in politics and she gave a perforator to become the housewife of another ambitious politician.

[00:21:05] The way that Lady Bird responded to their affair was by working on herself while pretending to him that he didn't notice the affair happening right in front of her eyes. She lost 15 pounds,

[00:21:16] she read more books, he became a more gracious host and she doubled down on serving Lyndon in all his needs and demands. Also, she overcame severe health difficulties to become pregnant with Lyndon's children. Perhaps the biggest sacrifice she made for Lyndon was prioritizing

[00:21:33] his career and his needs over the needs of her two daughters once they were born. When her daughters were growing up, she often left them at home to go campaigning or attend political events with Lyndon. On occasions that they didn't come home for dinner,

[00:21:49] the household staff would dress the girls and bold colorful dresses to please their father. Their older daughter, Lyndon took all this to heart. She internalized that her father's career truly came above everything else. He developed a strong

[00:22:03] interest in politics and law and then gave up going to law school to become the housewife of another ambitious politician. Their younger daughter, Lucy, revealed more. He would have used Lady Bird of Not Being a Real Mother. She provoked her by converting

[00:22:17] to Catholicism. If you go at Mariana as soon as she could, at age 19, to run away from them all. But things to all of Lady Bird's sacrifices, Lyndon realized at some point that he simply could not live without her. The incident that really illustrated that for me was.

[00:22:35] Lyndon really really wanted a son and Lady Bird finally became pregnant with a boy. Once he went into labor, however, he started bleeding profusely. The doctor is called Lyndon to the hospital and told him that they could either save his baby son or

[00:22:50] save Lady Bird. He would have to decide. Lyndon chose to save Lady Bird, even knowing that her health was too weak for her to ever give him another son. So, Lady Bird won. Lyndon continued having affairs but never seriously considered leaving her again.

[00:23:06] Lady Bird became first Lady. Alice Glass had a string of five husbands, never fully committed to anyone and doesn't even have a Wikipedia page now. Lady Bird achieved more in her life by committing, strongly to one path as imperfect and

[00:23:21] difficult as it was than Alice achieved with all her natural talent and beauty. One lesson here is that Lady Bird did a great job of not letting her you go get in the way

[00:23:32] of going after what she wanted. If you really care about something and Lady Bird really did care about her marriage, you should put your ego aside and do whatever it takes to preserve

[00:23:43] it. Another lesson is that in men, a lust for power often goes hand in hand with a lust for women. If you're going to go for a super powerful husband, you should probably also accept and remain

[00:23:56] clear headed about the likelihood of other women appearing in his life. I am absolutely not saying that everyone should put up with their cutingspouse the way that Lady Bird did or that you could

[00:24:07] always be some servant to your powerful husband or anything like that. I'm just saying that Lady Bird admittedly and especially back in her day, this was just the price that Lady Bird had

[00:24:18] to pay to become first Lady. To wrap it all up, here are some great things that Lady Bird did. She committed to her decisions. One of these decisions was accepting that she wasn't going to be

[00:24:30] the main character and picking out the right person to play a supporting role too. She was clear sighted about what this commitment entailed, and she didn't let her ego get in the way of following through on her commitment to Lyndon. As Lyndon's supporting figure,

[00:24:46] she served as a softer, more trustworthy and more personable counterpart as he cultivated pseudo-father son relationships with various powerful men and amassed more and more power with their help. She grew from a shy girl into a confident campaigner and public speaker on the

[00:25:04] national stage. She embodied his work ethic of doing everything possible to succeed, and she accepted and tolerated his infidelity as part of the price she paid to be his first lady. We are now three or four generations out from Lady Bird, but I think these lessons are still

[00:25:21] applicable. It's not much easier for a woman to be a main character than it was back then, but if you still aren't a main character kind of person today, that's okay. I think there's no shame

[00:25:33] in acknowledging that your best suited to be a supporting figure, as long as you're honest about it to yourself. And of course, if you do choose to be a supporting figure, you don't necessarily have

[00:25:44] to be supporting your husband. You can also work for a boss or a company that's ambitious, but whether you're a main character or a supporting one, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Stay tuned!