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Leadership in Action
Three Essential Energies

Betty Sue Flowers

To illustrate what such transformational leadership looks like in practice, Betty Sue Flowers offers a lively and touching example of how President Lyndon B. Johnson collaborated with Martin Luther King Jr. and persuaded members of Congress to pass groundbreaking civil rights legislation. Flowers shows how LBJ, whom she acknowledges was in some ways a flawed leader, nevertheless fully utilized his power as president to transformational effect. At the same time, King ably led and collaborated with the multitudes of people (and leaders at many levels) within the civil rights movement—all of whom were essential to its success. Flowers’s essay is a wonderful vehicle for providing an image for us of what leadership as a complex, interactive process looks like. It also contributes to leadership thinking about how to free up energy to get worthy things done, even in situations where success requires cross-sector cooperation and collaboration. Finally, it shows us that transformational leaders can be tough as well as inspiring in the interest of socially desirable ends.

One of my greatest joys as director of the Johnson Presidential Library was the opportunity to understand more deeply how some of the most significant social transformations of the twentieth century were achieved. During those years, I continually pondered a number of questions, including: How is it that President Johnson was able to sign into law over 1,000 landmark bills in fewer than five years? These bills transformed America: Medicare, Medicaid, Clean Air, Clean Water, the bills founding the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts and what later became PBS, Job Corps, Head Start, forty bills connected with the War on Poverty, sixty education bills, including the student loan program, 300 conservation and beautification bills, the Immigration Act that removed quotas on non-European immigrants, bills supporting career opportunities for women, bills improving children’s health and safety, and the transformational Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Open Housing Act of 1968.

But I also had other, more troubling questions: How could this transformational president lead us more deeply into the tragedy that was Vietnam—a war that he hated and that his secretary of defense was unconvinced we could win? As early as May 1964, President Johnson said to his national security advisor, “I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and I don’t think we can get out…. What is Vietnam worth to me? … What is it worth to this country?” (Johnson, L. B., Bundy, M., 1964).

Over the years at the Johnson Library, I also developed questions about public discourse and public memory. Why is it a truism that Johnson’s War on Poverty failed? President Reagan (1988) famously quipped, “the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” And yet, during the Johnson administration, the poverty rate declined from 22.2 percent to 13 percent—“the greatest one-time reduction in poverty in our nation’s history” (Califano, 2008, p. 7).

In the decades following these achievements, it has seemed almost impossible to dream a big public dream. The ideal of a “Great Society” is inconceivable in our current public discourse—naive, grandiose, maybe even absurd. It is one of those conversations, like world peace or global citizenship or universal human rights, that serious policymakers would be embarrassed to sponsor. Yet President Johnson not only conceived such an ideal, he acted on it, and, in doing so, transformed our world.

As a poet and student of world religions and mythology, I pondered these questions not as a historian would but from what might be called “the subjective empirical” point of view. Historians use facts on which to build a story; poets use observations from inner life and from the wisdom literature that humans have treasured since before facts became our dominant foundation for truth. From this “poetic” perspective, I concluded that President Johnson worked effectively by evoking three significant energies:

• The energy of a big dream

• The energy of “inside-outside”

• The energy of working at every level

Perhaps the clearest example of how he worked with these energies can be seen in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Energy of a Big Dream

In 1963, racial equality was a very big dream indeed.

In response to increasing pressure from the civil rights movement, President Kennedy introduced a “carefully limited” bill (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003, p. 129) but had not pressed forward to pass the bill, being “a pragmatist who would not sacrifice his administration on the altar of civil rights” (p. 115). What he might have done had he not been assassinated, no one can know. But Martin Luther King once said, “I’m not sure that Kennedy could have done this for us” (Young, 2008).

Hours after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson was already talking to his inner circle about the need for civil rights, telling them “he would not compromise, for this was going to be a fight to the finish and he had no qualms about the outcome” (Valenti, 1975, p. 152). And when introducing his voting rights legislation to Congress in 1965, Johnson (1966) spoke about his experience teaching Hispanic schoolchildren on the Texas border:

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance—and I’ll let you in on a secret—I mean to use it.

The bigger the dream, the more energy it is capable of evoking. When a vision is large enough, it appeals to dimensions other than personal ambition. Johnson, whose personal ambition was certainly greater than most, understood that something larger had to be evoked. Almost all his major efforts were couched in visionary language, not in the partisan language of winning. In his “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty” in 1965, Johnson (1966) said:

Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man’s welfare but the dignity of man’s spirit.

Johnson worked incessantly to pass the bills that would make up the Great Society—and he overworked his staff in the process. Yet, in spite of the brutal demands, those who worked for Johnson remained loyal and committed because they felt that both he and they were engaged in a great cause.

Small dreams are often bounded by the egos of their creators. But a big dream is larger than any one leader, so the flaws or weaknesses of the leader do not obscure the dream. The light shines on the dream, not the leader, allowing followers to use the dream as their major guide and to continue to pursue the dream even if their leader fails or disappoints them.

At the same time that President Johnson was pursuing the big dream of racial equality, another transformational leader was dreaming the same dream.

The Energy of “Inside-Outside”

During the early 1960s, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. led marches and protests to highlight the need for a transformation that would make real the equality that African Americans supposedly enjoyed under the U.S. Constitution. “I have a dream,” he famously said—but such a dream needed federal legislation before it could begin to be realized. King needed Johnson—and Johnson also needed King.

The degree to which Johnson used King’s actions on the “outside” to pressure lawmakers on the “inside” is clearly seen in the telephone conversations that Johnson secretly taped from both the Oval Office and the LBJ ranch. In May 1964, Johnson called Republican Senator Everett Dirksen, who was the Senate minority leader, and asked him to persuade Republicans to vote for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Alluding indirectly to the young protesters, he warned Dirksen that the schools were “coming out at the end of this month, and if they’re out, and we haven’t got a bill, we’re in a hell of a shape” (Johnson & Dirksen, 1964).

To some extent, Johnson and King collaborated in this inside-outside strategy. Johnson urged a moratorium on mass demonstrations until after the 1964 elections—and King agreed (Kotz, 2005, p. 185). Johnson talked to King of getting “our heads together on the things that are ahead” (Kotz, 2005, p. 228), and he consulted with King on judicial appointments (p. 231). During the delicate negotiations, the “two men were careful not to embarrass each other. King did not criticize the president for inaction, and Johnson was careful to deny that King had made a deal with federal authorities regarding the [march on Pettus bridge]” (p. 300), in which King had agreed to halt the second march and turn it into a kind of prayer service—thus giving time for a judicial ruling on the legality of what would become the third, successful march to Birmingham the following Sunday.

Like Johnson and King, transformational leaders use the energy aroused by those who oppose them or who are outside to forward the realization of their own dream. The use of energy in this way is a little like aikido, in which the master uses the aggressive energy of the opponent to actually help propel the opponent’s fall. You take the energy and move it in the direction you want it to go. Johnson took the energy of the protests and the outrage aroused by pictures of dogs and fire hoses being unleashed on well-dressed and apparently well-behaved young protestors in Birmingham and turned it into pressure on individual lawmakers to vote in favor of his civil rights legislation. Without the energy of King’s movement, it is unlikely that the civil rights bills ever could have passed. In this way, both Johnson and King were right about each other when King told the president, “You have created a Second Emancipation,” and Johnson replied, “The real hero is the American Negro” (Kotz, 2005, p. xi).

Sometimes Johnson made explicit the necessity of the inside to join the outside. Introducing his voting rights legislation to a joint session of the Congress, the president alluded to “Bloody Sunday,” when the marchers attempting to cross the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, had been tear-gassed and many of them had been brutally beaten. The president said, “Their cause must be our cause too.” Embedded in his speech were the words of the rallying song of the marchers—“we shall overcome”—to which he added an emphatic “And we shall overcome” (Johnson, 1966). In using this adopted phrase, Johnson turned the “we” of protest into the “we” of “all of us”—the ultimate inside-outside aikido. And in Alabama, where civil rights leaders were watching the newscast of the speech, tears streamed down the face of Martin Luther King. (For John Lewis’s moving account of his and others’ reaction to the speech, see the video, “Media and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”)

The Energy of Working at Every Level

We sometimes assume that leaders effect a transformation through simply inspiring it. They are so charismatic or speak so eloquently that they inspire us to do the right thing. But we forget that transformations are not the automatic by-products of charismatic leadership, but the result of continuous discipline and incredibly hard work.

When working on a big dream, Johnson pressed every argument and inducement he could muster on every lawmaker who could possibly influence the outcome. As his young aide, Tom Johnson (2010), would later recall, the president would constantly be on the phone with congressional members (“not just the leaders”) as well as key staffers, arguing that the bill would be good for the country—and not only the country but “good for your wife, your children, and your grandchildren. They will be so proud that their granddaddy voted for this, because it will mean a better life for them.”

Before it [was] over, he would have completed a phone call or would have an in-person visit with every member individually or in a small group. He would use charts, graphs, coffee, tea. He would keep the coffee and tea flowing without giving anybody a chance to get up to go to the bathroom before they gave him their support….

They would get “the Johnson treatment” like nobody else could give it. If he knew something about a sick wife, a secret girlfriend, a long ago embarrassing moment, he likely would use it individually to remind a congressman that he would do anything “to help.”

He would be willing to horse-trade with every member. A “yes” vote for a post office, for example….

He would have Dr. Billy Graham calling Baptists, Cardinal Cushing calling Catholics, Dr. King calling blacks, Congressman Henry Gonzales of San Antonio calling Hispanics, George Brown and Perry Bass calling oilmen and construction company executives, and George Meany and Lane Kirkland calling all AFL-CIO and union leaders….

He would walk around the South Lawn of The White House with a flock of reporters—telling them why this bill was important to them and to their families….

He would flatter, threaten, cajole, flirt, hug, and get the bill passed. (Johnson, 2009)

In his telephone conversation with Senator Everett Dirksen, Johnson not only warned about what might happen (protests and unrest) when school was out (the energy of “inside-outside”), but also argued for Dirksen as party leader to support the bill because “we don’t want it to be a Democratic bill, we want it to be an American bill.” And then he piled on the flattery, saying, “I saw your exhibit at the World’s Fair, and it said ‘Land of Lincoln.’ You’re worthy of the Land of Lincoln, and a man from Illinois is going to pass the bill, and I’ll see that you get proper attention and credit” (Johnson & Dirksen, 1964).

He kept the promise, handing over the first signing pen for the Civil Rights Act not to Dr. King but to Senator Dirksen. And later, at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, he gave the second pen to Dirksen. When his daughter, Luci Johnson, asked him why he had given the pen to Dirksen instead of to “one of the great civil rights leaders who was there,” he told her:

Because all of those great civil rights leaders were already for that legislation. They had already made that commitment. We could stand in our corner and espouse the righteousness of doing it, but if we hadn’t been able to get Everett Dirksen to step across the aisle and bring our foes with us, we would have had a great bill, but we wouldn’t have had a great law. (as quoted in Smith, 2008)

Johnson’s conversation with his daughter illustrates the point that “working at every level” includes working with the outside forces that are part of one’s own inside world. Just as Dr. King had to work with those in his own movement, such as Stokely Carmichael, who thought he was focusing too much on integration and not enough on black power, President Johnson had to work not only with his own party but also with the opposition party—and not only with the opposition party but with the opposition (the Southern Democrats) within his own party. Every inside has its own outside.

Within a few days after Bloody Sunday, Johnson met with George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, in the Oval Office—a meeting that Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach characterized as “the most amazing conversation.” One of Johnson’s speechwriters, Richard Goodwin, also was there and described how Johnson seated the 5-foot 7-inch Wallace on a low sofa, “so he’s now about three feet tall,” while Johnson sat on the edge of a rocking chair “leaning over him.” (Young, 2008)

Johnson suggested that he and Wallace could end the demonstrations by simply going out in front of the television reporters and announcing that every schoolhouse in Alabama would be integrated:

George, you and I shouldn’t be thinking about 1964, we should be thinking about 1984. We’ll both be dead and gone then…. Now in 1984, George, what do you want left behind? You want a great big marble monument that says “George Wallace—He built?” Or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine laying there on that harsh caliche soil that says “George Wallace—He hated?” (Young, 2008)

Wallace agreed to ask for help in protecting the Selma marchers, and when he did, the president was able to federalize the Alabama National Guard without provoking a states’ rights crisis.

A few days later, President Johnson spoke to Congress, saying:

Rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.

The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.

For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Johnson, 1966)

At the end of my term as director of the LBJ Library, I still had not solved the conundrum of how such a transformational leader, who dared so much, had not dared to walk away from a war he didn’t want. But I am haunted by a little piece of paper in the library archives—a note from Ho Chi Minh, leader of North Vietnam, with whom we were at war. It had been sent indirectly, through France. The note simply thanked President Johnson for a picture of the earth rising over the moon—Earthrise, it was called. The picture had been taken in December 1968 by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the first humans to escape earth’s gravitational field, and the first to see the dark side of the moon. As one of his last acts as president, Johnson had sent Earthrise to all the world’s leaders—even to those, such as Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh, with whom we had no diplomatic relations. From the transformational perspective of the earth as seen from space, all of us, even our enemies, travel together.