CHIEF OF STAFF: Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency
W. Marvin Watson, . . St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.95 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-312-28504-3
Watson served as chief of staff to President Lyndon Johnson, which would have given him unique access to, and insight into, a controversial president. But in this memoir, coauthored with former LBJ special assistant Markman, Watson sheds little new light on the inner workings of the Johnson White House and a little too much on his own nondescript career in Texas politics and business before being recruited by LBJ. The few good anecdotal nuggets Watson provides regarding Johnson's White House—among them a rather gleeful account of why and how he fired speechwriter and Kennedy family loyalist Richard Goodwin—are suspect, for Watson is himself, judging from this account, a thoroughgoing Johnson loyalist and apologist. He paints the swear-a-minute, famously cynical Johnson as a deeply religious man. Watson also endorses Johnson's vision of himself as the victim of plots hatched by numerous goblins in the employ of a bitter and vindictive Robert Kennedy. He likewise attempts to debunk—not quite successfully—assertions made by Michael Beschloss in
Reviewed on: 06/07/2004
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 368 pages - 978-1-4668-6576-1