As a child in Karnack in east Texas the girl who became Lady Bird Johnson fell in love with nature, a passion she would never abandon. “Some of the most memorable hours I’ve ever spent,” she said many years later, “have been in the out-of-doors, communing with nature and reveling in the scenic beauty which abounds.” On her seventieth birthday in 1982 she would give 60 acres of land east of Austin and $125,000 to launch the National Wild-flower Research Center.
First Lady is not a federal office described in the Constitution. But it is a position of great prominence and its incumbent and her husband, the President, can make of it whatever they like. As Lyndon Johnson idolized Franklin Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson revered Eleanor Roosevelt. But their styles differed so markedly that she could hardly emulate her illustrious predecessor. In her careful and cautious manner, Lady Bird pursued a role as First Lady.
In August 1964 she and Stewart Udall made a tour of the Rocky Mountain West. She dedicated the Flaming Gorge Dam, visited several Indian reservations, and made speeches supporting the reelection of Democratic Senators Gale McGee of Wyoming and Frank Moss of Utah. James Reston, Jr., of Udall’s staff, wrote the speeches and they stressed conservation. Best of all, she had long easy talks with Udall in which they shared an enthusiasm for the natural beauty of the country and the need to preserve it. She found him a mother lode of information about the West.
Lady Bird was moving toward “beautification,” a word nobody liked. She and Udall found it distasteful. Carpenter wrote that it was “too dainty.” Critics used it derisively to imply superficiality, cosmetics, and, worst of all, femininization, that is, something that was all right only for women. The word raised unpleasant memories of the City Beautiful movement at the turn of the century, which had been drummed out of existence by the criticism of architects and city planners. But the search for a better word came up empty.
In November 1964 the Task Force on Natural Beauty urged the President to launch a national program for beautification—highway landscaping, regulation of billboards, rehabilitation of parks, and so on. It recommended a White House conference on “America the Beautiful.” Mrs. Johnson read the report with enthusiasm. In fact, she had already been planning to work on the beautification of the city of Washington and the nation’s highways.
The President was her staunchest supporter. In his State of the Union message on January 4, 1965, he asked for a “substantial effort… to landscape highways.” He called for the beauty conference a month later.
Laurance Rockefeller was chairman and his staff worked out the program. While these people meant well, according to Elizabeth Drew, they “lacked the savvy to deal with the politics of beauty.” Their main accomplishment was to publish an almost unreadable 782 pages of proceedings. Eight hundred delegates gathered in Washington on May 24–25, 1965, and 15 panels discussed a wide variety of topics, mainly in unmemorable generalities. One participant told Drew that it was a “kind of shambles” and many left “mad.” The panel on roadside control, however, was significant.
In 1956 Congress had authorized construction of the immense 41,000 mile Interstate Highway System. Though prior road laws had provided for a 50—50 split of the cost between the federal government and the states, now the federal share jumped to 90 percent. The new Highway Trust Fund provided the program with an assured source of income. All federal taxes on cars, trucks, buses, gasoline, diesel fuel, motor oil, tires, and automotive equipment poured into the trust fund.
Because of its size, long life, and guaranteed income, the system was called by some the biggest pork barrel in the history of the Republic, a prize that was guarded by an extraordinary interconnected series of powerful lobbies. The interstates would cross all 50 states and 406 of the 435 congressional districts. The Public Works Committees of both houses were so solicitous of the system that they were said to be willing to authorize pouring concrete over the entire land surface of the nation, including Alaska, if asked to do so. In 1965 Jennings Randolph of West Virginia was chairman of both the Senate committee and its subcommittee on roads. He had been treasurer of the American Road Builders Association for ten years before being elected to the Senate. On the House side committee chairman George H. Fallon of Maryland was the author of the Highway Trust Fund and he, John C. Kluczynski of Illinois, chairman of the roads subcommittee, and William C. Cramer of Florida, the ranking Republican on both committees, were very close to the road builders. The American Association of State Highway Departments and the National Association of Counties opposed the use of trust fund money for anything but road construction.
The private lobbies were formidable: the contractors, the road builders, the asphalt and concrete industries, the auto, truck, bus, petroleum, and tire industries, hotels, motels, filling stations, and other roadside businesses. At the end of the list came the notorious debeautifiers—the billboard industry represented by the Outdoor Advertising Association and its clever lobbyist, Philip Tocker, along with the auto junkyard and scrap metal industries.
The groups that supported beautification could hardly be called lobbies: Road Councils in a few states and the Garden Clubs, both dominated by women. The mainline conservation organizations, like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, did not consider beautification a conservation issue. Further weakening support was the fact that the Commerce Department rather than Interior was in charge of legislation because it included the Bureau of Public Roads.
Since Lyndon Johnson had been majority leader at the birth of the interstates and the Highway Trust Fund, he was fully aware of this grotesque imbalance of political forces. He must have known that pushing an effective highway beautification bill through Congress was virtually impossible. Nevertheless, he waded in. He wanted to present his wife with what came to be called “Lady Bird’s bill.” He derived great pleasure from giving the people he loved large showy gifts. In his legislative world the biggest present he could bestow upon anyone was a statute. “You know,” he told his staff, “I love that woman and she wants that highway beauty bill. By God, we’re going to get it for her.”
Outdoor advertising along roads preceded the invention of the automobile, and objections to the clutter went back almost as far. When Congress launched the interstates in 1958, it offered the states bonuses to ban billboards within 660 feet of the highway (90.5 instead of 90 percent of the cost paid by the federal government) and 3 percent of their allotments in the trust fund to buy roadside land to improve scenic beauty. But the incentives flopped. By 1965 only 209 miles of the 41,000 mile system restricted billboards, and the scenic provision was not used at all.
In 1963–64 the Johnson administration and the Outdoor Advertising Association negotiated over the roadsides. The Bureau of Public Roads got nowhere with Tocker. The President put Bill Moyers in charge. Both he and Tocker were Texans, the latter from Waco. Tocker hired Donald S. Thomas, a prominent Austin lawyer who was the personal attorney and friend of both Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. It was no contest. While highly intelligent, Moyers was no match for them in expertise or lobbying skill. On the eve of the May 25 meeting of the panel on roadside control the administration caved in.
The panel, except for Tocker, consisted entirely of people who favored the mandatory prohibition of billboards on the interstates. Mrs. Cyril Fox of the Pennsylvania Roadside Council, who had been battling Tocker for years, told the Rockefeller people that he was the “camel’s nose in the tent.” He proposed what he called an “agreeable surprise,” a ban on billboards if industrial and commercial zones were exempted. This, in fact, would have increased the number of billboards. The majority preferred not to be surprised and voted for a prohibition on both the interstates and primary roads.
That afternoon members of the majority were startled to hear President Johnson state that both the billboard and junkyard provisions of the bills he was sending up the next day would not apply to commercial or industrial areas. They would have been even more shocked if they had known that Tocker was listening to
the President’s speech in the White House office of Bill Moyers.
The President proposed four bills on May 26, 1965. The first two would require the states after January 1, 1968, to eliminate billboards and junkyards within 1000 feet of an interstate or primary highway except in industrial and commercial zones. While the states would determine the exempted areas, they must be approved by the Secretary of Commerce. Existing signs and junkyards would have to be removed by July 1, 1970. A state that did not comply would lose its federal aid grant. A state without adequate police power could ask the federal government to pay the cost of purchase or condemnation.
The third bill would require a state to use 3 percent of its allocation from the trust fund for landscaping and rest and recreation sites along the highways. The fourth would compel the state to use one-third of the funds it received for secondary roads for improved access to scenic and recreational areas.
Though these measures were modest, the lobbies immediately opposed them. The Highway Trust Fund, they argued, was a sacred commitment to construction and there must be no alternative use of funds. With more power in the states, the lobbies resisted mandatory federal controls. They wanted the federal government to bear the entire cost of removing signs and junkyards.
These arguments dominated the hearings before the roads subcommittees of both houses in the summer of 1965, and the voices of the ladies of the Roadside Councils and Garden Clubs were barely audible. It seemed that no bill could pass. The committees were ready to fold their tents in late August, when, according to Drew, “word came from the White House that the highway beauty bill was one … the President wanted this year, that he had to have this one, it was reported, ‘for Lady Bird.’ ”
The Senate committee proceeded to treat the beautification bill (the four had been consolidated) as though it was peeling an onion layer by layer until little was left except a bad smell. A state rather than the Secretary of Commerce would determine zoning. If a state had once been eligible for a bonus, it would continue to enjoy it even after relaxing controls. The Highway Trust Fund would pay nothing; all costs would be assessed against the Treasury. The federal government, not the states, would pay compensation. If a state was suspended for noncompliance, there would be no penalty. The use of secondary road funds for scenic improvement was deleted. So much for beautification.
The Senate Public Works Committee adopted this shadow of the bill on September 14, 1965. The administration restored a few minor provisions on the floor and the Senate adopted the bill on September 16 by a vote of 63 to 14. The House bill closely resembled the Senate’s.
By late August, Johnson had become frantic over the measure. He told Califano: “Take over the highway beautification bill.” Califano soon learned that he had given the same order to Moyers, Valenti, Busby, White, O’Brien, and Commerce Secretary John Conner. Both Johnsons worked the phones relentlessly. “Everyone was involved,” O’Brien recalled later. “But I don’t know as we involved the fellows in the White House mess.” By September 12 chaos reigned and Califano urged Johnson to put O’Brien in charge. The latter informed the President about “our confusion, about our unnecessary harassment of friendly members, and about irritations which can prove damaging with other bills.” He pointed his finger at the President, but to no avail.
House debate opened on Thursday afternoon, October 7, a special day. That evening members of the House had been invited to a reception at the Chinese Embassy for Madame Chiang Kai-shek and then to a White House party to celebrate the legislative achievements of the 89th Congress. The representatives’ wives that afternoon were seated in the galleries in their evening finery, fuming over the delay. The President demanded a vote that evening on the beautification bill and the Republicans could not resist holding it up until after midnight.
The “debate” is not noted as one of the finest hours in the history of the House. Cramer, a master filibusterer, said, “I resent, and I say it with just as much strength of purpose as I can,” the refusal by the Democrats to cross a “t” or dot an “i.” “I am for beauty. As a matter of fact, I married one of the most beautiful girls in the world.” Cramer intimated that Johnson had voted in 1958 to strike the billboard control provision from the earlier bill because he would have had to take a sign down on Route 290 near Austin advertising the family TV station, KTBC. Was the President twisting arms? “My arm is real sore.”
House minority leader Gerald Ford insisted on the Republican right to offer “constructive amendments.” Sample by Representative Bob Dole of Kansas, a man who never hesitated to rise in order to deliver a low blow: “Strike out the word ‘Secretary’ wherever it appears … and insert the words ‘Lady Bird.’ ”
The Republicans had their fun and made their point. It was 12:07 a.m. before they finished, by which time the guests at the White House salute had departed. The Democrats then passed the bill 245 to 138, and the Highway Beautification Act was signed on October 22, 1965. The President made the only defense possible: “It is a first step.” It would also be the last.
“Much of the fault,” Califano wrote, “lay with the President for the one inept legislative experience I witnessed and participated in as a member of his staff.” Johnson wished this disaster upon himself by uncharacteristically ignoring the political realities. The committees would gladly have allowed the bill to die. The Bureau of Public Roads had no stomach for the brawl. The White House staff considered the exercise ridiculous and O’Brien thought it politically damaging. Moyers, according to Lewis Gould, “distanced himself from his connection with the billboard organizations and particularly the president of the OAAA, Philip Tocker.”
But the troubles had only begun. The administration of the Highway Beautification Act was a disaster. The Outdoor Advertising Association and the Republicans declared war on improving the statute. Regulations proposed by the Department of Commerce on January 28 and July 1, 1966, and on January 16, 1967, were rejected by Congress. Except for compensation for firms that took down signs, it was virtually impossible to obtain funds. By 1978 over $107 million had been paid for billboard removal and the General Accounting Office estimated the ultimate cost at $823 million. Tocker’s success in exempting industrial and commercial zones was a master stroke. As Charles F. Floyd and Peter J. Shedd pointed out, “The practical effect of the provision has been to allow billboards in commercial areas where they are totally inharmonious, and also in areas which are almost totally rural in character.” The billboard firms cut down trees that blocked the views of their signs. The Highway Beautification Act, Senator Robert T. Stafford of Vermont wrote, became the “Billboard Protection and Compensation Act.”
The junkyard program, by contrast, was a modest success. By 1979, some 2,345 noncomplying yards had either been removed or screened and 1,055 illegal yards had been shut down. But there were still 10,608 nonconforming junkyards in operation. Scenic improvements along highways may have done as well.9
There was a dramatic change in environmental policies during the sixties. The historic conservation programs—national parks, monuments, rivers, and wilderness—were broadly expanded and improved by the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Wilderness Act. And now there were also the first efforts to establish controls over the new problems of water and air pollution in the face of formidable industry opposition. “From beginning to end,” Krier and Ursin wrote, “pollution policy in the years up to 1970 was made by a process of least steps taken down the path of least resistance—steps, that is, quite consciously designed to disturb the existing situation as little as possible.” How far the nation must still travel was evident in the report of the President’s Task Force on the Quality of the Environment of October 1, 1967: “We are just beginning to marshall our forces. No one who has breathed the air in one of our leading cities, dared to swim in one of our great rivers, or been assailed by jet noise overhead, can be complacent about the future.” The Highway Beautification Act, which might be called Lyndon Johnson’s Folly, is best forgotten.
Another stain fell on Lyndon Johnson’s record as conservationist. With Theodore Roosevelt leading the way, most Presidents in the waning days of their terms, as Udall put it, “take lands from the public domain and enlarge the national park system and enlarge the national wildlife refuge system.” T.R. in 1905 had established the national forests. Even Herbert Hoover in 1933 had set aside 4 million acres, including Death Valley National Monument.
Udall, acting on this tradition, raised the issue with the President in July 1968. Johnson said, “Go ahead.” Udall then got his people at Interior to put together a big package of 7 million acres—three areas in Alaska and two each in Arizona and Utah. Udall himself had authority to sign off on a few of the minor units set aside for Alaskan wildlife refuges, but the President must be responsible for the major ones. Udall assembled an impressive presentation with magnificent photographs. He cleared the idea with a few members of Congress, swearing them to secrecy, but avoided those he knew would oppose, including Wayne Aspinall. He recognized that Johnson liked to touch base in Congress, but warned him “this is the one instance, as you go out the door, you shouldn’t care whether congressmen like it or not. The issue is what’s good for the country, and … they will accept it.”
In mid-November Udall made the presentation at the White House. The President had invited Clark Clifford, Charles Murphy, who had been Truman’s counsel, and Lady Bird Johnson, who was enthusiastic. Udall said he “came away with the impression that the President wanted to do the whole thing, [but] that he wanted to be satisfied on legal questions.” There were none. He began working up the orders and the press releases. His idea was to break the story before Christmas so “the President could … announce it as his parting Christmas gift to the American people.” But the White House lawyer, DeVier Pierson, kept raising questions about political clearances and the decision was delayed. Since the secretary’s own actions required thirty-day notice, he signed the Alaskan refuge orders on December 19.
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