Bush’s corruption is of a different nature – less of the crass $$$ venality, more of an existential threat to the constitutional republic. Furthermore, Bush represents the element of Texas political culture – the aristocratic, extractive-economics element – that is corrupt at its core beliefs; Johnson represents the more progressive element, oriented towards technology, industry, and making things better for everyone. (Based on Lind’s book cited above.)
LBJ was no dope, but his behavior during the Vietnam War was very strange. LBJ thought he could bully Ho Chi Minh (like he bullied political rivals)-when that didn’t work, he decided to bomb the daylights out of the Vietnamese. he still couldn’t understand people willing do die for idealistic reasons-his idea was to bribe and corrupt. That said, johnson did a LOT to hasten this nation’s decline-he saddled us with those moronic “great Society” programs-which are bankrupting us today. The Federal housing program alone, is a sinkhole of corruption.
Johnson made a great show of being a “common good old boy”-when in reality he was a multi-millionaire (his crass behavior as head of the senate telecommunications committee made it possible for him to sell radio and TV licences to his cronies in Texas).
All in all, a liar and a thief, a man with no redeeming characteristics.
While this is the argument used for decades by apologists of Johnson who sought to enshrine him for his Great Society and civil rights programs, the record of correspondence, conversation, and public oratory says differently. Johnson was an avowed proponent of widening the war, and an unvarnished advocate of the Domino Theory. Nearly every one of his Cabinet advisers (at least those inherited from the Kennedy administration) cautioned against expanding the war, and McNamara in particular is on record (albeit, in private counsel and correspondence) as advising Johnson against expanded troop deployment and for a strategy of mediated exit that would avoid the expensive stalemate of Korea. The same is true for every major foreign ally, and particularly Charles de Gaulle. Far from being too trusting of his advisers, Johnson dismissed evidence and advise that recommended settlement or withdrawal, and openly embraced the opinion from the JCS that the fall of South Vietnam would result in a catastrophic expansion of Chinese communist influence in Southeast Asia.
[url=BobLibDem]LBJ inherited the mess. Sure, he could have withdrawn sooner. But I don’t know if any other president would have done much differently prior to 1968.
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Johnson inherited a problem and turned it into a mess. It is arguable whether another president would have done differently–certainly Goldwater and Nixon would have pursued aggressive campaigns against perceived Communist expansion–but regardless Johnson was in the Oval Office and steadfastly waved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution around any time his executive authority to commit military forces was questioned. Portraying Johnson as a reluctant victim of fate and the commitments of previous administrations is complete balderdash.
Stranger
Could you provide some evidence of how much the Great Society programs are costing us now, and why we could afford them and be on the road to paying off the national debt a mere eight years ago, yet they’re bankrupting us now?
ISTM that LBJ couldn’t have brought about too much of “this nation’s decline” given that we were doing far better, by almost every measure, in 1999 than when he stepped down in 1969.
ETA: And what Stranger said about Johnson’s responsibility.
Cite?
Unlike faux-everyman W, however, LBJ really was born poor.
When Bush leaves office, the U.S. Constitution and republic will still stand and, histrionics aside, be as strong as it was in 2000. When Johnson left office, a lot of Vietnamese and Americans were dead.
The attempts to paint Johnson as better than Bush here come across as partisan to the point of outright dishonesty. Vietnam wasn’t just worse than Iraq; it was a LOT worse, worse by far greater than an order of magnitude. Johnson set into events a war (and it was his war just as much as Iraq is Bush’s; blaming Kennedy for Vietnam is not much different from blaming Clinton for Iraq because he bombed it) that killed almost sixty thousand Americans, MILLIONS of Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians, and caused destruction and waste on an incomprehensible scale. The number of people killed by his actions in southeast Asia was far greater than any reasonable estimate of the number saved by his domestic policies.
There simply isn’t any objective measure by which Bush is a bad President and Johnson wasn’t. Imagine fighting the Iraq War - the whole thing, from 2003 to now - ten times over, and you’ll have some idea as to what Vietnam was.
What in God’s name does this mean in the real world? A dead Vietnamese is just as dead even if you claim that Johnson’s “element” was more “progressive.” What unadulterated nonsense. Do you really think it matters what “element” a murderer belongs to?
And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hopped.
You are correct, LBJ was the son of a poor judge. Once he got a taste of the good life, his rapacity knew no bounds-from colluding with swindlers (“Billy Sol estes”), to moving major governemnt departments to texas, LBJ made SURE he GOT HIS CUT!
I think you’re exaggerating the extent of the difference. It’s hardly an order of magnitude. It’s not even a factor of ten. US military deaths in Iraq were 849 in 2004, 846 in 2005, 822 in 2006, and 902 in 2007 (I’ll leave out partial years). US military deaths in Vietnam were 3373 in 1966, 5373 in 1967, and 6332 in 1968. The Vietnam:Iraq average death toll ratio was less than 6:1.
I hope so. But LBJ never did anywhere near Bush/Cheney’s level of damage to the Constitution.
I think you could easily decide LBJ is better than Bush without resorting to dishonesty or partisan contortions. Bascially, it boils down to, as godawful a fuck-up Vietnam was, LBJ has more positive accomplishments that, to some degree, balance it out. Bush, on the other hand, seems to be an anthology of the worst aspects of recent bad presidents without their redeeming features: you’ve got all the Imperial Presidency and contempt for the constitution of Nixon without his foreign policy successes; and the pointless war of LBJ without his civil rights achievements.
Youngster here, requesting a VERY BRIEF history lesson. Who started the Viet Nam war?
I really don’t know, but want to. I do know that it’s ridiculous to try to pin the blame for the current Iraq war on Clinton.
In a nutshell…I suppose you could say the French started the Vietnam war, broadly speaking with their desire to maintain their grip on their old colonies.
I don’t think many people blame the current war in Iraq on Clinton…though, as with all things he played his part. But I think most people lay the lion share of the blame (or I suppose the credit if you swing that way) for the current war in Iraq squarely at Bush’s feet (though it’s a bit unfair not to give some of that credit to Saddam as well).
-XT
A short history of the Vietnam War with an emphasis on American participation there.
Indochina (which is currently Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) was a French colony since the 19th century (they acquired it in pieces between 1858 and 1884). When France was conquered by Germany in June 1940, Japan figured that Indochina was vulnerable and conquered it in September 1940. When Germany and Japan were defeated, France re-established control.
Meanwhile the people who lived there were never really happy about the situation and had been an active resistance movement against France (and Japan) pretty much since 1858. France had been weakened by World War II and was not able to keep control of the country. Their last major military effort was ended by the defeat of the French forces at the Siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
By this point, the Vietnamese resistance movement had been unified into a single organization called the Viet Minh which was led by Ho Chi Minh. The group contained all the factions that were opposed to French rule but its largest group were the Communists (as was Ho himself).
After Dien Bien Phu, there was a meeting in Geneva between France and the various Vietnamese resistance groups. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were recognized as independent countries and France agreed to withdraw its troops.
Vietnam was a special case because the country was not controlled by a single group. The Viet Minh, which were now controlled by the Communists, were in control of the northern part of Vietnam and various non-Communist groups were in control of the southern half of Vietnam. As a temporary solution it was decided to let each group keep control of the half it currently had with an election scheduled for 1956 to decide who would be the government for Vietnam.
The United States had provided support to France while it was fighting but had not been directly involved. But after the Geneva Accord it was clear that the 1956 election was going to turn Vietnam into a communist country (there were more people in the north so they would outvote the south). So we encouraged Southern Vietnam to declare itself a separate country which it did in 1955 as the Republic of Vietnam. The northern half, which called itself the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, did not recognize the independence of the southern half and began working to overthrow the southern government. The Republic of Vietnam obviously fought back against this and President Eisenhower sent American troops to act as military advisors to assist the southern forces in 1955. Under Eisenhower, there were about 700 American troops in Vietnam.
When Kennedy was elected in 1960, he expanded support to the Republic of Vietnam, sending more money and more troops. By the time he was killed in 1963, there were over 16,000 American troops in Vietnam.
When Johnson took over after Kennedy’s death, he felt he had to maintain Kennedy’s commitment to Vietnam. He sent more troops raising the total to around 21,000. But the big jump came in August 1964 when Northern Vietnamese ships allegedly fired on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave Johnson the authority to commit whatever forces he thought were necessary to Vietnam to protect American troops there and to defend the Republic of Vietnam. Johnson interpreted this authorization widely and by the end of his term in 1968 he had increased the number of American troops in Vietnam to over 500,000. This made Johnson very unpopular and he decided not to run for re-election in 1968.
Nixon won the election in 1968 by, among other things, promising to end the war. He took a few detours along the way (including sending more troops and invading Cambodia and Laos) but the Paris Peace Accords ended American participation in the war in January 1974. Following the American withdrawal from Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam was unable to defend itself and was overrun by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in April 1975.
Thank you very much. It sounds like it was pretty much inevitable to some extent, given the recent experience of World War 2 and the fear of Communist takeover of the world. I really can’t imagine any president back then doing nothing to help the South Vietnamese.
I guess that it’s only with the benefit of a lot of hindsight that we know that there is a happy medium somewhere between Isolationism and World-Nannying.
So, we are going to compare the honesty of George Bush, to that of Lyndon Johnson.
Talk about reduced expectations.
Tris
Little Nemo, that was an excellent post.
The whole mess could have been avoided, but that’s Eisenhower’s fault, not LBJ’s.
Technically, then, the Iraq mess could have been avoided by any President from LBJ on.
The contortions, contradictions and cognitive dissonance people here are willing to go through just to avoid admitting that a Democratic President was largely responsible for a catastrophic, pointless war are truly astounding.
I’d say the two biggest turning points in American participation in Vietnam was the decision not to accept the terms of the Geneva Accord and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which turned what had been a large military intervention into a full-scale war. The first decision was made by Eisenhower; the second by Johnson.
Some indication of the character (or lack thereoff) of LBJ, is afforded by his wartime “service”. At the outbreak of WWII, LBJ was a Texas representative in Congress. He somehow used his influence to obtain a commission in the US Navy (he was awarded the rank of Lt. Commander). He showed up on the island of Espiritu Santo (New Hebrides), and took a plane ride (ostensibly to study japanese positions). For this “service” he was awarded three medals! A real POS, LBJ!