Since there is a thread on whether or not Bush was as bad as he’s popularly thought to have been (consensus seems to indicate that ‘yes’ is the answer), I thought maybe we could have a discussion about another president that I believe enough time has gone by to take a fresh look. This is inspired by a recent History Channel special that focused on key turning points in American history wrt individual presidents (the presidents were FDR, LBJ and Ronnie btw…check out the series if you haven’t seen it).
LBJ was president when I was a kid. I barely remember JFK as he was killed when I was essentially a baby. What I DO remember is that, at least in my family, JFK’s picture sat next to Jesus on the mantle, while for LBJ there was genuine anger (and my family were and are die hard Democrats)…even rage. So, I grew up with a pretty poor impression of LBJ, mostly due to the Vietnam war.
But perhaps that’s not the whole story. Watching the show on History I got a bit of a different perspective on LBJ as civil rights leader. Again, in my family, most of the credit for civil rights goes to JFK for starting the programs and getting the ball rolling, while the perception I always got was that LBJ just sort of carried on (with connotations of reluctance). However, at least according to the show, while it’s true that JFK did make various attempts at civil rights and voting reforms, he did so in an almost desultory and half hearted manner because he didn’t want to piss off the southern Democrat bloc of Senators, Congressmen and Governors.
At any rate, given that a sufficient amount of time has passed now to take a more dispashionate view of LBJ and his impact on history, what say you 'dopers? To paraphrase, Was LBJ That Bad?
LBJ’s Great Society would place him among the greatest of presidents, while his expansion of the war in Viet Nam would place him among the worst. I don’t think I’ve ever heard people evaluate his overall presidency as “that bad,” so I’d say no it wasn’t.
Again, his domestic achievements were phenomenal, both in his ability to enact them, and the success that they have demonstrated over time. It really is amazing when you look back at what he was able to do.
And yes, LBJ was very personally invested in passing civil rights legislation.
All I can say to this is that you obviously move in different circles than I do if you have never heard that he’s ‘that bad’. I’ve heard a lot worse than ‘that bad’ in my time.
(ETA, that said, I have to say that this show really gave me a new perspective on the man that I never had when I actually lived through his presidency and the ones that followed him…which is why I started this thread to see what others think)
I think he like President George W. Bush a man who tried his best and does not deserve to be so viciously condemned.
His Great Society included many workable programs but other programs encouraged (for instance) women to remain single in order to get better welfare leading to the breakdown of families in inner cities.
His efforts to save South Vietnam are admirable in the face of domestic opposition. His worst mistake was not invading North Vietnam-it would not have started World War 3 (if the Soviets had complained Johnson could easily cite the example of Hungary) and quite possibly annihilated the Vietcong bases there.
His civil rights bill were excellent.
So overall I’d list him as a good President who tried his best.
Authorized wiretapping of Martin Luther King and others.
Vietnam.
In Latin America, supported the overthrow of democratically-elected leftists such as Jao Goulart of Brazil and Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic while supporting authoritarian regimes.
Vietnam.
Vietnam.
Pros:
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Great Society.
War on Poverty.
Medicare and Medicaid.
Federal funding for education.
Appointed Thurgood Marshall to the SCOTUS.
Maintained support for the Apollo program.
On balance, LBJ would be remembered today as the second-greatest POTUS of the 20th Century after FDR – if not for Vietnam. Which, by the way, sucked the funding from his War on Poverty and made it much less successful than it might have been.
First off, you can’t evaluate Johnson without Vietnam, just like you can’t evaluate Nixon without Watergate. But if you want to talk specifically about Civil Rights, the record shows that Johnson worked for it even without Kennedy. For example, he pushed the Civil rights Act of 1957, and its follow-up in 1960. Critics say the legislation was half-hearted and Johnson’s support was insincere, while his champions say that getting anything through the Senate at all was close to a miracle.
Johnson was an old-school politican, which meant he was willing to cut deals, grant and call in favors, twist arms and do whatever it took to get a bill – any bill – passed. He used Kennedy’s death as a political tool to ram through a lot of legislation. But he grew up poor, and his support of the underpriviledged, whether sincere or coldly calculated, was at least consistent and life-long.
It was a somewhat similar situation with the space program. Johnson advocated for it while he was still in the Senate, and his support seemed sincere. Of course he also managed to put a large chunk of it in Texas – but hey, if you can do well by doing good, why not?
I tend to take a more sympathetic view of Johnson than many of my contemporaries. But, as I said, it’s impossible to evaluate his presidency without factoring in Vietnam, and that’s his legacy.
I’ve also never had the impression that Johnson is largely hated or even particularly disliked. Most people seem pretty dispassionate about him these days - you certainly don’t hear as much about him as you do, say, FDR, JFK, Nixon, or Reagan.
From what I know of him, he strikes me as a decent-ish president.
Other than Vietnam, he was pretty good. The Great Society and Civil rights legislation alone put him in the “good” category, I think.
He also had the decency to at last feel guilty about Vietnam, and handwrote letters of condolence to the families of every soldier killed there under his Presidency.
When he left office he was so reviled and so disillusioned that he essentially drank himself to death. I guess today things have changed, but at the time, at least in the circles I ran in when I was a kid, LBJ was not a very popular president at all. Think about the riots in DC and Watts, and the increasingly strident anti-war protests. Even people like MLK basically turned against him over the war. It was…ugly. Much more ugly than even people who lived through GWB can conceive I think.
“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
That shit actually did get to him. He had a conscience about it. There are Whitehouse tapes of Johnson expressing his misery about being trapped in Nam, and saying he knew he’d made a mistake.
Great Society actually as I mentioned above encouraged many inner city women not to marry in order to get increased welfare payments and thus contributed to inner city violence. And Truman at least helped found NATO and stopped the tidal wave of Communism-one of the greatest accomplishments in world history.
Well, if you really want to debate it, you need to start. You are the one making a claim. You have the burden of proof. Let’s see some cites and figures to back it up.
Curtis your programming is complete.
LBJ picked his beagle up by the ears. That was a no no. It got lots of press. Who could defend him?
Most people like his social programs. But my impression was he did it to carry on for JFK.
The war was his undoing. We did not even know the Gulf of Tonken was a lie ,yet we did not trust him. His rep was a hard bargainer that knew how to control the house and senate. He got things done. Most of us knew he was enriching himself in his wifes name while in office. He came out pretty rich. She bought radio stations and invested in a start up military contractor that made a ton of money.
No, really, your countering of the Great Society with an argument that it increased inner city crime because black women did not get married in order to get welfare is simply the worst kind of pablum. It really isn’t worthy of a response, it’s just that ignorant.
You certainly don’t think very highly of world history if this is one of our greatest accomplishments. BTW, it is quite outrageous to credit HST with ‘stopping the tidal wave of communism’ when it had already largely come to a standstill by the end of WW II, when the Iron Curtain was drawn. Anyway, back to debating Johnson everyone!
