The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power

by Lance Morrow

In 1948, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon were all ambitious young congressmen at pivotal points in their lives. LBJ was in a desperate Senate race, running against a more popular candidate. Campaigning frantically by helicopter across Texas, LBJ won only with the help of corrupt political bosses, whose illegal ballot-stuffing put "Landslide Lyndon" into the Senate by 87 votes. At the same time, Nixon was having his first meetings with Whittaker Chambers, the witness in the Alger Hiss trial that would make Nixon a national figure and lead to his selection as Eisenhower's running mate four years later. And Kennedy was still recovering from the near-fatal attack of Addison's disease he had suffered the previous year. From that point on, he would conceal the truth about his health, just as he concealed his reckless personal life. In all three politicians, Morrow finds a streak of amorality and ruthlessness-each believed that the rules didn't apply to him. Lies of one kind or another-lies they told or exposed-would propel each of them to power; lies would also undo LBJ and Nixon's presidencies and, ultimately, tarnish JFK's reputation.Morrow also tells the story of America in 1948, when it, too, was learning the secrets of power, and coming to grips with the vast changes of the postwar world. For readers of Robert Caro and Robert Dallek, The Best Year of Their Lives offers a fresh look at a crucial turning point in the lives of three presidents, by one of America's most observant and thoughtful journalists.

Genres: History, Biography, Presidents, Politics, American History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2005

About the author

Lance Morrow was an American essayist and writer, chiefly for Time magazine, as well as the author of several books. He won the 1981 National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and was a finalist for the same award in 1991. He had the distinction of writing more "Man of the Year" articles than any other writer in the magazine's history and has appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and The O'Reilly Factor. He was a former professor of journalism and University Professor at Boston University.

Reviews

[Aaron Million · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of Lance Morrow's book does not really seem to gel with what is actually inside the book. Chronicling - partially - the rise of three successive American presidents, Morrow decides that the year 1948 was a critical year for all three men. While a case can be made for that with each man, calling that year "the best year of their lives" seems to be an overstatement. To be sure, each of them had a crucial thing occur in 1948, but it is open to debate whether all of them would view that year as THE best year, especially Kennedy.

Morrow seems to focus more closely on Nixon than the other two men. Towards the end of the book, he devotes a long chapter to the Alger Hiss perjury case. Morrow is correct in asserting that this case made Nixon; it took him from an unknown freshman Congressman from California and turned him into a a rabid anti-Communist legislator trying to defend America against its most powerful and menacing enemy, becoming a household name in the process. Without this, it is hard to see Nixon getting into the Senate, then the Vice Presidency and finally the Presidency. Would Nixon have considered this to be the best year of his life? Actually, he very well might have, considering that he constantly brought up the Hiss case a quarter of a century later when he was President, and devoted extensive space to retelling it both in his first book Six Crises and later in his Memoirs. It, more than anything else, fixed in the nation's mind that he was a staunch anti-Communist.

Of the three, this year was the most crucial for Johnson. His 1948 election to the Senate propelled him eventually into becoming Democratic Majority Leader, then Vice President and finally President. Had he lost that election, he may very well have left politics for good. As it was, he "won" the Democratic primary runoff over Coke Stevenson by a mere eighty-seven votes. This really is a fascinating story to read about, but Morrow dispatches with it in seven pages. After spending almost sixty pages on Nixon and the Alger Hiss case, this seems woefully inadequate, especially given the importance that it held for Johnson's career. Morrow does write about Johnson's sham war service, where he was awarded, but most definitely did not earn, a Silver Star.

Morrow is weakest when writing about Kennedy, who is all but absent from the last third of the book. JFK was very close to his sister Kathleen. In 1948, she died in a plane crash. Why would Kennedy possibly consider this year to have been his best when dealing with a personal tragedy? Unlike the other two, he did not make his reputation during this year nor win a critical election. He was cruising along in an unremarkable stint as a Congressman from Massachusetts. I would think that he would probably rank 1948 fairly low if he were reviewing the good years of his life; certainly he would not rate it the "best".

Morrow's overall portraits of the three men are unbalanced. With Kennedy, he focuses almost to the point of distraction on his admittedly unsavory sex life. At times the book almost takes on a muckrakish quality when talking about Kennedy. While I do agree that, the further out in history we get from JFK's presidency the worse he looks overall, this seemed unnecessarily one-sided. Kennedy, like everyone else, was a flawed human being. Morrow seems bent on over-correcting the Camelot myths. Concerning Nixon, Morrow seems to go in not quite a completely opposite direction, but certainly he is much friendlier than he is when writing about Kennedy. Morrow does not hide criticisms of Nixon, nor excuse the bad things that he did. But he makes a concerted effort to showcase Nixon as a man damaged from childhood and as someone who was frequently misunderstood. Fair enough, yet Nixon was often his own worst enemy and capacity for hatred and holding grudges seemed unbounded. With Johnson, Morrow comes closest to the mark - painting him as a greedy opportunist, willing to do anything and everything to gain power while simultaneously having a callous disregard for other people's feelings.

Overall, this book is disjointed. Morrow goes off on diatribes (such as comparing Nixon's personality with that of Lana Turner) that verge on psychoanalysis. Some of his writing is overdrawn, such as on page xx when he writes that Joseph Kennedy Jr. was "blown to bits" in WWII. Long periods of time in the book take place outside 1948, leaving one wondering why this particular year was so important when Morrow needs to bring in stories from other years.

Grade: D

[Andy Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

A promising premise, look at the lives of three future Presidents from 1948 when Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and John Kennedy were all in Congress. However, the book was a disappointment. The author, Lance Morrow, eventually acknowledges that his research was based on his reading of various biographies and not any original research. One result is that any reader with a background of the three Presidents is unlikely to learn anything.

To Morrow's credit he doesn't claim to offer new information or insights but offers "essays" on the men and their times. But this also falls short, the essays lack depth and have questionable value. For example many pages are spent comparing the lives of movie star Lana Turner and Richard Nixon. I kept waiting for the connection and finally realized that there was not any connection, only the author's ruminations of comparison.

The better parts of the book were when the future Presidents interacted, I especially liked the section where Kennedy and Nixon traveled together from Washington DC to an out of town debate over Taft/Hartley. The comments about style, substance, self confidence foreshadowed their Presidential debates 12 years ago. More time on interactions like this would have made a far better book.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's a journalistic approach which identifies someone's "defining" trait (ruthless, lying, authentic, naive) and then shapes coverage to reflect what the person is "really" like underneath. Morrow does way too much of this: he has an image in his mind of the three men, and shapes his history and observations accordingly: Nixon was very reticent and inhibited talking about sex, and he was reticent about admitting his crimes in Watergate, it all fits together! Except it doesn't. That's just silly.
Ditto Morrow's fondness for treating history like a novel, finding patterns themes and motifs that don't really exist. A fictional JFK might reflect the Osiris myth, but the real JFK? No.
Morrow also pads out this book with lots of stuff that doesn't relate to the topic (a real bete noir of mine in nonfiction) like the history of Washington DC and its public-art murals. I think biographies of the three presidents would be a better time investment.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

A publishing trend in history books in recent years is for authors to focus on a particular year or month with a subject, such as a war or leader, and claim it as a turning point. It has its appeal to both reader and author but only works if the author is able to make a convincing case for the year/month’s importance. Lance Morrow, “Time” essayist, makes a strong case for 1948 as the convergence of fate for three future Presidents in “The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon in 1948.” Morrow tracks their rising fortunes, as each one took part in events that would presage their rise to power but also their eventual downfall in the eyes of history. For Kennedy, it was his father’s push to get him into Congress and to learn to juggle a public life with private secrets about his health and reckless womanizing behavior. For Johnson, it was a determined drive to lie and cheat his way to win a Senatorial race. For Nixon, it was a dogged adversarial role in the Hiss-Chambers House on Un-American Activities Committee hearings that would spotlight him as a freshman Congressman. While not a work of original research, Morrow combs the extensive biographies of each man to place 1948 as a tipping point in the context of their future lives. If Morrow relies a bit too much on cinematic metaphors (the title or the strangled connection of film noir with Nixon), he nonetheless often impresses as a writer. Here’s an apt description of Nixon’s walk: “….his gait, like [Bob] Hope’s (without the jauntiness), was curiously hinged at the knees and hips, a sort of utilitarian glide (like that of a glider sofa on a forties front porch). The walking legs were somehow disengaged from the upper body, which did not swing, but floated on its own.” Even when Morrow seemingly gets off track with a review of post-war life in Washington or an examination of George Marshall’s greatness, it serves to richen the whole work. “The Best Year…” is an engaging work, a thoughtful re-consideration of each President’s beginnings in Washington. Recommended.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Morrow, an author, professor, and journalist for Time magazine, analyzes three men's personal histories against the backdrop of 1948, which inspired their divergent careers and visions. Although he offers little new information, Morrow provides entertaining, warts-and-all insights into three Presidents' characters. Most critics found his writing and analyses intellectual and powerful; a few, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, saw botched linguistic gymnastics, chronological haphazardness, a deep sense of predetermination, and psychobabble (Johnson as God's id, for example) instead. But, in this age of evenhanded presidential biographies, Morrow's sympathy toward Nixon and less-than-flattering portrait of Kennedy are refreshing.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is part biography of the three men mentioned in the title, and part description of early post-war America, as well as a meditation on how and why America was changing in that period. The author is even-handed when discussing Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson, and he does provide some insights into their character. Unfortunately, the book skips around considerably, and often introduces tangential elements that do not suppor the main thesis of the book.

[Diener · Rating 3 out of 5]

Offers a new angle on the three men who led our country from 1960-1974. Well-researched. Easy to read. A solid history.