President Obama and the Johnson Paradox

Barack Obama’s agenda is global and complex: an enourmous economic crisis, domestic policies which many fear are redestributive, changing many points of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and solving two foreign wars. His situation is very similar to Lyndon Johnson’s when he took office for his first full term as president (January 20th, 1965). His agenda was the “Great Society.” He sent more than one-hundred civil rights projects to Congress and gave African-americans the right to vote (which made the election of Obama 43 years later possible).

Despite the agenda and his victory over Republican Barry Goldwater (the greatest Democratic landslide since 1820—61% of the popular vote and 44 out of the 50 states in the electoral college), Johnson was not able to escape the beaurocratic walls surrounding him. He was beaurocratically distanced from his agenda. He became famous for the disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War.

Despite wanting to implement his policies, he became engulfed (left without options in the Gulf of Tonkin incident) by beaurocrats who exasperatingly defended the point of view of their beaurocracies (very well analyzed by Graham Allison in his book about the Cuban Missil Crisis, Essence of Decision). He ended up sending half a million soldiers (more than 50 thousand died, along with 2 million Vietnamese) to a distant war, based on false premises.

He was a victim of the beaurocrats, who were more interested in preserving their power and brought absurd arguments to the discussion table. He ended up cornered. In 1968 he gave up running for re-election, confused by his failure impulsed by belligerent beurocratic interests. He died embittered in 1973, because all the credit for civil rights was given to John Kennedy.

Obama moved rapidly and competently in the days following his victory and inauguration. He filled in all the empty spaces to avoid a vacuum of power which was dangerously likely in the melancholic end of the Bush government.

It is curious how easy it is for a president to fall into a beaurocratic trap: the first formal meeting between Obama and beaurocrats, which occurred in the FBI offices in Chicago on Friday, November 6th, was with the security organizations. This in the midst of the most serious world economic crisis since 1929. The meeting was no coincidence. It reflects the power of the security beaurocracy in immediately capturing the priorities of the new president, before he could even officially worry about the economic crisis.

Focusing the attention of the elected president on foreign policy problems makes things easier, because international actors are, in principle, competitors or potential enemies and don’t vote in American elections. The national security beaurocracies know it is much easier to capture the attention and approval of a new president if the focus is on groups that don’t have the power to deny him a re-election in 2012.

Bush wanted the wall on the Mexican border finished before the 20th of January 2009, because he knew that there was a high probability that Obama would be obligated to, at least interrupt its construction because of voters linked to Mexico and Central America.

The logic for withdrawing from Iraq is very similar to the logic for withdrawing from Vietnam. The U.S., even stuck in a war paralyzed by an impasse, has to leave in a way which passes for honorable.

The photos of the last helicopter leaving from the American embassy in Saigon make it dramatically clear what was the end of the Vietnam War was. A good part of Americans still believe, ambiguously, that the US won this war.

It is very probable that Obama and his close aides will be pushed towards beaurocratic concessions in foreign policy, exactly like Johnson. British magazine The Economist exhibited on the internet an interactive map showing preferences for Obama in almost every country. But foreigners will not A COMICIOS in the US neither do they vote there.

Knowing this, beaurocratic sectors of American intelligencce (which have the advantage of being able to operate in secret and benefit from electoral immunity) moved rapidly to capture the attention of the president-elect.

The news immediately preceding and following Obama’s election and inauguration showed the preocupation of the agencies in charge of national security with the alleged size and durability of threats represented by many of the detainees in Guantanamo. The symbolic importance of closing Guantanamo in improving the American image in the world made this one of the easiest ways Obama could act autonomously. A good part of his non-security advisors trusted that this was one of the easiest fronts with which to obtain a globally significant victory.

Others ways, which involve larger budgets and commitments from the great beaurocracies, tend to have their implementation reduced by inert beaurocracy.

Maybe Obama (whose victory, after all, was only by a 6% margin of the popular vote and wihout a majority of white electors) will find himself forced to pay less attention to international matters if he wants to save his government (and his eventual re-election) and focus more on domestic issues, trying to escape the Johnson paradox.

Johnson ended up unpopular, defeated in the White House by a merciless beaurocratic war waged by his allies and aides, despite having bgun with a popular and socially just agenda.

Hopefully Obama will have a good memory, read good history books and put up a good fight to implement the agenda with which he was elected.

Alexandre Barros, Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago, is the dean of the Unieuro University Center in Brasilia.