I Bet You Did NOT Know This About President Johnson

[Dr. Who]

Never liked LB Johnson, who was the definition of deceit and opportunism. Not surprised he was obsessed with his "Johnson".

[Ethereal]

LBJ was a psychopath.

[Ethereal]

LBJ is in the top five, maybe a sob some of time, maybe a bit crude having come from the working class poor, but he was one helluva president. Makes everyone who came after him mediocre. Nam did him in and he knew it if you read his words. But the right wing in America only whines, if there is a god, she has welcomed home one of her better works. Look only what he did for all Americans. Did some of it fail, of course, the powers of negativity always fights the good. Nothing new there. Humans remain humans, weak envious and often stupid.

"[A] presidential library that opened in the early seventies to the howls of 2,000 protesters and the only one of the eleven that has no admission charge- Lyndon is rising from his long black night, shaking his big-eared head, brushing those damned yellow rose petals off his britches, and coming awake after all those years of JFK worship, after the ringing in his ears from punks like me shouting, HEY HEY LBJ / HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY! getting up as the American presidency toddles through the Clinton years after crawling through the Bush years and spending what out of kindness we might call the Dreamtime of the Reagan years. Lyndon's arising, clearing his throat, and letting loose with a yowl that cuts right through the cloud of Prozac hanging over the republic like the scream of a mountain lion coming off the peak in the night, and we snap alert and realize that after this cavalcade, one captured in paint by Ike Morgan - this cavalcade of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton-Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who took us to Nam in a hand basket, the man described by George Reedy, his own presidential press secretary, in this way: Were there nothing to look at save LBJ's personal relationships with other people, it would be merciful to forget him altogether. But there is much more to look at. He may have been a son of a $#@!, but he was a colossal son of a $#@! ... " Well, this Johnson may have been the last president who knew how to run the government and the last one to really have any practical handle on this vision stuff.

I know, you think I'm into the paint thinner again, but listen up: Head Start, civil rights, education, endowments for the arts and humanities. Medicare, clean air and water, wilderness protection, urban housing - that terrible big government we denounce and then we hitch up our pants and belly up to was built by Johnson. John Kennedy went down in Dallas November 22, 1963, with a legislative program that had been largely frozen since he took office, and by June 1964 LBJ had begun to ram 400 bills through the U.S. Congress. The man was compulsive. When we put the boots to him, and he went back to his ranch on the Pedernales, he told his hands, "I want each of you to make a solemn pledge that you will not go to bed tonight until you are sure that every steer has everything he needs. We've got a chance of producing some of the finest beef in this country if we work at it, if we dedicate ourselves to the job. And if we treat those hens with loving care, we should be able to produce the finest eggs in the country. Really fresh. But it will mean working every minute of every day." Yessssssssssir." Charles Bowden, 'Ike and Lyndon' Harper's Magazine, March 2000

"In the Great Society, work shall be an outlet for mans interests and desires. Each individual shall have full opportunity to use his capacities in employment which satisfies personally and contributes generally to the quality of the Nations life." Lyndon B. Johnson

It never ceases to amaze me how completely divorced from reality your posts are.

You're talking about a man who is partly responsible for the mass slaughter of countless Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians, and who entered the political arena by outright stealing his first election.

But because he cynically promoted civil rights (while spying on MLK Jr.) and because he increased government handouts, you think he was a great president.

[FindersKeepers]

Johnson was a crude $#@!.

I had no idea how true that was until I started reading about him. I don't think a President today could get by with some of the things he got by with.