The Great Society by Robert Schenkkan

Author:Robert Schenkkan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2017-04-26T17:06:26+00:00

ACT THREE

SPOT on LBJ facing the audience.

LBJ They were driving me to Andrew’s airbase in my big custom- built Lincoln Continental, the one that’s armored like a tank. There’s a rally on the sidewalk and the police are trying to keep the anti-war protestors apart from this big group of construction workers. Both groups are yelling and screaming obscenities at each other with the police stuck in between. Suddenly, this girl—this girl couldn’t have been but seventeen or eighteen, Luci’s age, this girl she breaks through the police line and throws herself against the car. She couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet but she hits the side of the car like a linebacker, clawing the door. The windows are tinted and I know she can’t really see me but I feel like she can. I feel like she’s looking right at me, her eyes burning through me. The Secret Service are on her immediately but for a split-second, her face is smashed up against the window with this look—this look—this look of such hatred. Eyes rolling back in her head. Face twisted. Spit running down her chin. Blood on the glass. As she yells at me over and over again to die. Just die. Just die why don’t you?

SPOT Fades OUT on LBJ.

TB reads: MARCH, 1967. 13,170 AMERICAN DEAD. 51,043 WOUNDED.

{From here to the end of the play, projected images will no longer be confined to the screen but will gradually begin to bleed over the Proscenium and the set itself.}

OVAL OFFICE. Ackley enters with pages of reports.

GARDNER ACKLEY Sir, we cannot contain things any longer; the cost of the war is just wreaking havoc on the economy. We could be looking at double digit inflation within the year. We have to have a tax increase.

LBJ (reluctantly) How much?

GARDNER ACKLEY A personal and corporate tax increase is essential and the sooner the better.

LBJ How much?!

GARDNER ACKLEY Ten percent.

LBJ (shaking his head) We could ask for maybe six percent over two years.

GARDNER ACKLEY I’m not sure six will be enough to . . .

LBJ . . . SIX PERCENT! And I’ll have to strip naked on the floor of the Congress and let Mills and Dirksen beat me like a pinata to get that. If I’m lucky. Six percent.

LIGHTS SHIFT. LBJ/MILLS/Dirksen.

LBJ I’m not gonna beat around the bush here, fellas, I don’t like it, I don’t want it, but the country needs this tax bill.

REPRESENTATIVE WILBUR MILLS Like it needs a hole in the head.

SENATOR EVERETT DIRKSEN I knew it would come to this. It’s what I always said.

LBJ I never lied to you, Everett, but the situation has changed. Nobody anticipated what Vietnam would become but there it is. We’re at war. You don’t want to send our boys over there to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, do you?

REPRESENTATIVE WILBUR MILLS No, no, no, no, no! This is not about patriotism. I fully support your war effort but you need to bring your domestic expenses in line.

LBJ Hell’s bells, Wilbur, we’ve recommended closing dozens of programs but you know how it is .

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