WARREN BURGER ON EISENHOWER, KENNEDY AND JOHNSON

In the collection of Burger marginalia that I happened upon, there are two places where Warren Burger reveals his judgments about postwar U.S. Presidents. The observations are sketchy and predictable in some way: Eisenhower tapped into a need for authority, JFK pursued laudable goals and LBJ tried to outdo him.

In the margin on page 165 of H.A. Overstreet's The Mature Mind, reprinted below, Burger latches on to Overstreet's description of the social function of the postwar Presidency - the office serves as a focal point for a desire for authority. And Burger apparently believed that Eisenhower was able to take advantage of that desire. Overstreet's description of the postwar craving for authority is far from upbeat; what Burger thinks is, of course, ambgiuous.

In the text, Overstreet seems to argue that the harrowing experiences of WWII created conditions for a mature outlook - one that is emancipated from old certainties. "We are not so sure that we have all the answers." But there is another possibility as well - that the loss of certainty through war and depression will also lead to a search for new certainties. "Yet the old immaturities linger on. So many of them linger on, in fact, that we stand in grave danger of having even our new humility go to waste: in rescuing us from cocky childishness, it may land us merely in a submissive childishness; it may merely send us looking for some new authoritative 'parent' on whom we can rely."

And here, in the margin, next to the last line, Burger writes "DDE to a degree." Given the postwar context of Overstreet's remarks, it's reasonable to conclude that DDE stands for Dwight David Eisenhower, Burger's main political patron, the person whose nomination Burger worked to secure, and the person who appointed him to the Justice Department and then to the DC Court of Appeals.

In a second note, Burger assesses Kennedy and Johnson briefly. The text of the note seems to be meant as a footnote to the a longer note that he writes on the facing page of Samuel Lubell's The Hidden Crisis in American Politics (1970). The asterisk seems to refer to the word "impatience" on page 16.

The text on page 17 reads: "*This is what I wrote re LBJ's acceleration of JFK's promises of 'unfulfillable expectations.' JFK's were remotely possible and good. LBJ had a neurotic urge to outdo JFK. Whatever Jack promised, LBJ would do better. Ltr to Amos Peaslee [?] 1963-4?"

Burger is apparently remembering the text of a letter that he wrote to someone in 1963 or 1964, probably after Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination. The letter might be to Amos Peaslee (1933 - 1989), who was an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Manhattan in the 1950s.