Political Analysts Discuss Lady Bird Johnson, Iraq Debate

JIM LEHRER:

And finally tonight, the analysis of Brooks and Dionne, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. Mark Shields is off tonight.

David, your thoughts about Lady Bird Johnson?

DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times:

As Michael was speaking, I was thinking about how married couples affect each other. And you can imagine the crescendos that LBJ went through and, as he went through that, Lady Bird getting calmer and calmer in order to balance what he was. And it's a lesson that people don't have to be alike to have a long, successful marriage. They can sometimes just be opposite and complementary.

The second thing is, who today is really a champion of the built environment? People are environmentalists for the national parks, places where Michael is lucky enough to be today, but what about highways? What about the places we live every day? There actually is no one who's quite as prominent a champion of those places as she was of that time.

JIM LEHRER:

E.J.?

E.J. DIONNE, Columnist, Washington Post:

Very few Americans had as much effect on our physical environment as Lady Bird Johnson. I was listening to the news reports about her death driving from a baseball tournament in Delaware, went by a sea of billboards, and then all of a sudden you get to the federal highways, and all you've got is the beautiful land around you. She insisted on that. That was a very — LBJ did that for her, and that was a very hard thing to get passed.

JIM LEHRER:

To get the legislation that banned billboards.

E.J. DIONNE:

That banned billboards near federal highways. You know, she created a whole new ethic on litter. And then, also, on substantive policy in other areas, she was a huge proponent of Head Start within the Johnson circle, which, when you look at civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, is one of the real monuments of the great societies. So she was a really consequential woman and first lady.

JIM LEHRER:

So she deserves the attention of the country beyond the normal things, "Here is a former first lady dying at age 94."

E.J. DIONNE:

Oh, I absolutely think so. She was also very important in the Johnson financial empire. She was a tough, smart businesswoman on top of all of this.

JIM LEHRER:

Do you agree with that, too, David?

DAVID BROOKS:

Yes, she was also an avenue back into the past. And LBJ is a fascinating figure. And that time, not only the Vietnam parallels, which some people draw today, by the civil rights, it was a crucial time. And so she's an avenue for us to get back, think about those times.