Building The Great Society

Ryan McKittrick: What inspired you to turn your attention to the 1960s and the Civil Rights Act?

Robert Schenkkan: I was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as part of their American Revolutions program, but I had been thinking about LBJ for a long time. I grew up in Austin, Texas, and my family knew LBJ casually. My father had been hired by the University of Texas to set up the first public television and radio station in Texas. That meant he had to go to then Senator Johnson and get his permission to open, what would have been, a station that was in competition with Johnson’s own television and radio empire, which was the heart of his somewhat controversial fortune. I’m pleased to say that Senator Johnson not only gave his blessing and his support, but that he also, during his presidency, signed into law the bill that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. So there was that odd little family connection, rife with an apocryphal visit to the LBJ ranch where my family’s car supposedly got stuck in the mud and Senator Johnson came out to help pull it out himself.

RM: What was Johnson like in person?

RS: I was too young to remember this, but my older brother said that the only time he saw our father with LBJ was also the first time and only time he ever saw our father cowed. By anybody. He was extremely respectful around Senator Johnson. On a more personal level, I remember both the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy and the 1964 LBJ-Goldwater elections. The 1964 election is especially vivid in my mind. It was the first time I was really politically engaged. I had “All the Way with LBJ” stickers on my school books, wore my LBJ/Humphrey button, and was convinced that if Goldwater won there would be a nuclear apocalypse.

RM: How old were you?

RS: Twelve. And I remember the elation over the size of his historic, landmark victory. And then, within three years, with two older brothers facing the draft and 200,000 soldiers in Vietnam, I had a very different feeling about LBJ. Then move forward 15 years: I’m married with children; I’m an artist; I’m trying to make a living in this country and becoming aware of how many aspects of the social network on which I depend were created during the Great Society, and I have a different feeling yet again about LBJ. So I have had a very complicated relationship with the man.

RM: Why is Johnson such a compelling character to you as a dramatist?

RS: Because he was a figure of Shakespearean size in both his appetite and his ambition. Because he accomplished so much progressive legislation on the domestic front. Because of Vietnam. And finally because it was such a tumultuous period, out of which modern political America was violently birthed. What especially interested me about Johnson was the whole notion of power and morality. We want our presidents to be aggressive. We want them to take action. We want them to achieve. It’s fascinating to watch LBJ as he labors to bring the 1964 Civil Rights Act into being. As audience members we relish all of his tactics—most of which are fairly distasteful. I think that’s what Bismarck referred to as the “the sausage-making of politics.” But we cheer him on and we take pleasure in it because we believe in what he is doing. Yet when he uses those same tactics with Vietnam or with getting himself re-elected, we begin to feel a little uncomfortable.

For me, his first term, November 1963 to November 1964, is seminal. A pivotal point in America. So much happens that will go on to shape the country and the political debates that we continue to have to this day. This was the end of the famous Democratic dominance in the South and the emergence of the modern Republican Party with their Southern strategy. This year saw the first major civil rights bill since Abraham Lincoln. It’s the beginning of the Great Society. Medicare and Medicaid. Poverty Bills. Job Bills. Urban renewal. Environmental laws. Consumer Protection laws. The NEA. Head Start. Freedom of Information Act. Just an incredible legislative accomplishment. But it is also the beginning of the fracturing of the Civil Rights Movement, which was never monolithic to begin with, of course, but in this year, you can begin to see the younger generation bristle against the notion of non-violence and out of that will eventually come Black Nationalism. And finally Vietnam—the Gulf of Tonkin incident and subsequent Resolution, on the basis of which all action in Vietnam was eventually justified. It’s an extraordinary year. You can really do a before-and-after for the United States with that year.

RM: Absolutely. The first time I read your play I couldn’t stop thinking about how this moment explains so much about where we are politically in this country today.

RS: If you look at the arguments over social programs that we’re having today, they are the same arguments that they were having in 1964. And then look at the recent Supreme Court decision on voting rights. What an extraordinarily sad chapter in the struggle for voting rights and equality in this country. We tend to forget how bad it was and what had to be overcome and not so long ago. Fifty years is not a long time. I think this play will feel very contemporary for Boston audiences because of its current political relevance and because it touches on a time about which many people have acutely personal memories of their own.

RM: Do you think the past five decades have seen a gradual chipping away at Johnson’s Great Society?

RS: There’s no question about it. That became true immediately after Nixon was elected. But the Great Society was under assault from the very beginning; those legislative achievements were hard won. The Great Society included a number of very different kinds of social programs, basically predicated on the notion that one of the primary responsibilities of the federal government is to improve the life, health, and welfare of all of its citizens. Now, there were definitely problems with some of those bills. Some programs were not fully thought through, and all of them, at least in the beginning, were underfunded. But, by and large, the country took an enormous leap forward. For example, you can look at the change in poverty pre-LBJ and post- LBJ, and there’s a significant reduction—something on the order of a ten percent drop nationwide. Then you look at the health consequences. And the number of students who went on to college. One can make a very compelling argument that it did what it was supposed to do.

RM: Has President Obama slowed that assault on the Great Society?

RS: He certainly comes out of a tradition that believes the federal government has this responsibility. And Obamacare is an attempt to fill in some of the gaps of Medicare and Medicaid, and to that extent it is a very laudable achievement. Not perfect, but, as Lyndon would say, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think it’s a good step forward, and I think it will continue to be revised and honed over time. I just wish Obama would channel his inner LBJ a bit more.

RM: How so?

RS: Well, just recently—shockingly and appallingly—the Senate stripped food stamps out of the agricultural bill. This was a bipartisan tradition, dating back sixty years. The GOP killed food stamps entirely. The cruelty of that is really shocking. What are these people supposed to do? How are they going to feed their children? LBJ would be banging the bully pulpit like a drum. He would be going into those states and challenging those senators to defend their actions. He would call it cruel. He would call it callous. I’d love to see that now. But in fairness the political landscape has changed dramatically since 1964. Back then both parties had three wings: a strong liberal wing, a conservative wing, and a very broad moderate base and it was perfectly okay to cross the aisle and make a deal. Now the strategy seems to be no deal, no crossing the aisle, no compromise whatsoever. It makes it very tough to legislate, and very tough for the President, who is now considerably more constrained than he was in 1964. In some ways that’s a good thing, but in some ways we might not wish it were so much like that.

RM: What are the greatest challenges for you as a playwright when you’re dramatizing historical events?

RS: One of the traps is trying to tell the entire story and winding up buried in not very interesting detail. It’s very important to remember that I’m not a historian or a documentarian. I’m a dramatist and I play by a different set of rules. I have a very particular point of view and that’s what I bring to bear as I examine historical events and characters. I don’t make any bones about the fact that on occasion I play fast and loose with the historical record, change the chronology, or combine characters, invent dialogue and create scenes out of whole cloth. You have to give yourself that freedom as a dramatist. For me, the question is always, what is the story I’m trying to tell? Where is the drama? What is the conflict? And most important of all, what is the theme? What ideas am I interested in exploring by focusing on these events and these people?

RM: But some lines in the play are taken directly from historical documents?

RS: Absolutely. And most of these are generally very obvious—famous speeches and quotations of the day. But there are also some things from the historical record, less well known, that are just so wickedly delicious I couldn’t resist. For example, some of the comments about race that were uttered on the Senate floor during the civil rights debate are just appalling. And I think it is useful to remind us all that this is how many people in this country felt.

RM: One of the many things I admire about All The Way is its structure. The play has such incredible momentum. Was the structure something that developed over time or did you have a sense of how to shape this play from the beginning of the process?

RS: I knew the overall structure early on—where it would begin, where it would end, where the act break would be. And LBJ is of course our engine in the play. The man was such a tornado of energy, such a ferocious force of nature. He was described that way by everybody, without exception. So putting him at the center of the play creates a dramatic momentum that is inescapable. Then there’s the sense of the ticking clock—both the clock of this very narrow window in which it might be possible to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and then the bigger clock of his re-election, which was so desperately important to LBJ, given that he felt he had only inherited the presidency—not really won it. So what you have are these two great ticking clocks, putting this tremendous pressure on all of the characters in the play. It’s a life and death struggle for everyone. Having embraced these givens naturally generated a certain kind of style—short, tense, confrontational scenes that blend seamlessly into one another as we watch the repercussions of LBJ’s machinations reverberate throughout the political environment.

Ryan McKittrick is the Director of Artistic Programs and Dramaturg at the American Repertory Theater.