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Johnson hoped that his Great Society would win him lasting fame and appreciation. In the most discerning part of her book, Kearns describes how the Great Society failed because of Johnson's lack of follow-through. All his energies were devoted to getting his programs passed by Congress; when that was done, he lost interest or his attention was diverted by the growing agony of Viet Nam. Johnson, writes Kearns, was surprisingly unaware of the implications of his Great Society. He simply assumed that it would appeal to rich and poor, black and white alike. It came as a shock when the programs sharpened rivalry and hostility among various ethnic groups who were battling for their share of the pie. Johnson seemed similarly oblivious to the most innovative feature of the Great Society program: the community action groups established as part of the antipoverty program. He had no intention, he told Kearns, of putting his programs in the hands of amateurs, who often wasted money and warred against elected officials. He assumed that the programs would be run by some ideal administrator, like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. In the case of the Great Society, Johnson was a father who did not know his own child.
The riots in Watts, coming the same week in 1965 that Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, were the beginning of his disillusionment. At first, he refused to take calls from generals urging him to send in the National Guard. "We needed decisions from him," said White House Aide Joseph Califano. "But he simply wouldn't respond." Events had confounded him. "How is it possible after all we've accomplished?" he kept asking. "How could it be? Is the world topsy-turvy?"
Tall Tale. Riots at home were followed by the growing Viet Nam War instead of the eternal peace Johnson had envisioned. As the attacks on him mounted, according to Kearns, he gradually drifted from reality. Not always scrupulous about separating fact -from fiction, he began to treat politics as a tall tale with villains lurking everywhere. "Two or three intellectuals started it all," he explained. "They produced all the doubt, they and the columnists in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek and LIFE." Then Bobby Kennedy joined the conspiracy, then Martin Luther King, then the Communists who "control the three networks and the 40 major outlets of communication." "And isn't it funny that you could always find Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin's car in front of Reston's house the night before [New York Times Columnist James] Reston delivered a blast on Viet Nam?"
Kearns says that L.B.J. might have been putting her on a bit, but his words carried conviction.
"This continual concentration on conspiracy," she writes, "squandered a large amount of energy."