Chief of Staff: Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency
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 inReaching for Glorythat Johnson was depressed and almost clinically paranoid at times during his presidency. Photos not seen byPW.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.