# Rethinking LBJ...Was He That Bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 18, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429 "2010-02-18T02:49:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/61 "2010-02-19T16:05:12Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > For a Texas politician, LBJ was surprisingly cynical. He didn’t give a sh\*t about the thousands of deaths he caused in Vietnam. All he cared about was his “honor”. > He was personally corrupt and gross (insisted on making his staff work while he was sitting on a toilet.) > He also freely admitted his corrupt senate campaign (he and Connoly’s goons stuffed ballot boxes). > And steering fighter contracts (to General Dynamics in Texas) was SOP with him..not to mention the Manned Spaceflight Center (which was to have been in Cambridge, MA-LBJ had it moved to Houston). > So, in the balance, he was a corrupt and devious man, who should presently be enjoying one of the warmer regions of Hell. You put it better than I would have. LBJ was a thief on a grandiose scale. He was popular because he spread it around. You hung with LBJ, you made money. There’s a reason why Texans used to crack jokes like this: Did you hear about the disaster at the LBJ ranch? Someone left a gate open and all the cows went home. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/62 "2010-02-19T16:43:03Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > You put it better than I would have. > > LBJ was a thief on a grandiose scale. He was popular because he spread it around. You hung with LBJ, you made money. > > There’s a reason why Texans used to crack jokes like this: > > Did you hear about the disaster at the LBJ ranch? Someone left a gate open and all the cows went home. Yeah, the racists never did forgive LBJ for pushing through Civil Rights… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/63 "2010-02-19T17:44:55Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > And had President Johnson been more aggressive it might have worked. South Vietnam did survive with heavy US aid until Congress more or less cut off funding for South Vietnam. From [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Exit_of_the_Americans:_1973.E2.80.931975): > [@](#): > > Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after President Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976. Which totally explains how the North Vietnamese regular army met essentially no resistance as it marched south to Saigon in the spring of 1975. > [@](#): > > Thankfully we seem to be winning in Iraq Define ‘winning.’ I mean, we could turn Iraq into a huge crater, so we can always ‘win’ in a strict ‘we’re living, they’re not’ sense. But success has to be related to goals and aims. What were our goals, to what extent have we achieved them, at what cost, and is that cost reasonable? > [@](#): > > Actually Chiang Kei-Sheik was on the brink of crushing the Communists in Manchuria when George Marshall forced them to negotiate instead. Uh-huh. Which reminds me of [this amusing story](http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20050919/NEWS/509190434?Title=Opponents-beware-when-Gov-Bush-unleashes-Chang-). ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/64 "2010-02-19T17:52:00Z")
He was from my state, and we are a little biased toward the natives, but I am gonna chime in anyway. He was a man and a president with honorable dreams and aims, and all of the necessary skills to have them implemented, but was ruined by his fears of what his enemies would say about him. It’s the classic failing of a politician, I suppose. Thinking about him and his presidency has brought me to tears, and I wasn’t even alive until he was out of office. Would Goldwater have continued his mistakes? I don’t know, Nixon did. It’s difficult to say whether that makes him a good or bad president, which probably means he ends up being an average president in a world where the alternatives aren’t known. He was certainly better than most that have been offered for the position in my lifetime, and better than the majority that held the office during that time. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/65 "2010-02-19T23:00:41Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > 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. This. A man of gigantic melancholies and gigantic…accomplishments. The war was a gigantic way of following on the misguided foreign policy of adventurism, assassination, & anti-Communist interventionism which he most definitely shared with JFK. Remember that JFK had tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, & a Castro sympathizer assassinated him. Really, the romanticization of JFK is amusing. Who knows what we’d think of him if he’d lived to oversee the Vietnam fiasco? LBJ is a case of a lot of good & a lot of bad in one. Some of the bad lived after him longer than the good, but enough of the good stuck to really change the country. But it’s so tempting to credit the good to people like MLKjr, RFK, & “random hippie kid I used to be,” even though they were all out of power. LBJ did the hard work of a politician, where many politicians would rather stick head under pillows & hope all the noise would just go away. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/66 "2010-02-19T23:17:37Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > The war was a gigantic way of following on the misguided foreign policy of adventurism, assassination, & anti-Communist interventionism which he most definitely shared with JFK. And with Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/67 "2010-02-19T23:18:02Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > You put it better than I would have. > > LBJ was a thief on a grandiose scale. He was popular because he spread it around. You hung with LBJ, you made money. > > There’s a reason why Texans used to crack jokes like this: > > Did you hear about the disaster at the LBJ ranch? Someone left a gate open and all the cows went home. You are right about LBJ’s thievery. It was estimated that at the end of his first senatorial campaign, LBJ had less than $1000 to his name. By the time he became president, LBJ was a multi-millionaire! how did he do it? He got to be head of the senate communications committee, and received copious bribes from people who wanted radio and TV station licenses. He was also involved with a slippery chap named Billy Sol Estes-a swindler and thief who bilked investors out of millions. It was also alleged, that the Vietnam War provided huge contracts to his businessmen friends, who willingly “kicked back” money to Johnson. The man was thoroughly corrupt, and left a stench wherever he went.☹ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/68 "2010-02-19T23:24:58Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > You are right about LBJ’s thievery. It was estimated that at the end of his first senatorial campaign, LBJ had less than $1000 to his name. > By the time he became president, LBJ was a multi-millionaire! > how did he do it? He got to be head of the senate communications committee, and received copious bribes from people who wanted radio and TV station licenses. > He was also involved with a slippery chap named Billy Sol Estes-a swindler and thief who bilked investors out of millions. > It was also alleged, that the Vietnam War provided huge contracts to his businessmen friends, who willingly “kicked back” money to Johnson. > The man was thoroughly corrupt, and left a stench wherever he went.☹ In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s recent novel [_Escape from Hell_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Hell_(novel)) (sequel to _Inferno_), LBJ is consigned to the boiling-pitch Pit of the Grafters. J. Edgar Hoover is assigned to the same bolgia, but he gets to be an apprentice demon, under the name of Pink Claw. ---
**Author:** ![Perciful](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Perciful](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perciful)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/69 "2010-02-20T01:48:19Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > 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. The Great Society built those lovely projects for the welfare Mom’s to live in. He hoped it would lower poverty but it actually increased it. He created the ghetto’s and the absentee fathers who were not allowed to live with the women and children so those kids went out and got pregnant and got their own apartment in the same project. He meant well with the program but it was a flop. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. He wanted to help the poor but you need to give them a hand up not a hand out. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/70 "2010-02-20T03:29:39Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > 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. . > [@Perciful](#): > > The Great Society built those lovely projects for the welfare Mom’s to live in. He hoped it would lower poverty but it actually increased it. [It’s time we put this to rest.](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html) Percentage of all blacks below the poverty level: 1959 – 55.1% 1966 – 41.8% 1969 – 32.2% The highest percentage after that was 35.7% in 1983 (under Reagan.) Blacks in families with female householder, no husband present, below the poverty level 1959 – 70.6% 1966 – 65.3% 1969 – 58.2% 1970 – 58.8% The highest percentage after that was 58.8% in 1982 (again, under Reagan.) By the way, the data also show that the number of people in white families headed by a female is increasing at a faster rate than the number of people in black families headed by a female. [Heckman and LaFontaine](http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf) have charged that overall high school graduation figures have been inflated, but even their own data show that the percentage of black males with a high school diploma (not a GED) has increased since the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/71 "2010-02-20T03:54:11Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > From [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Exit_of_the_Americans:_1973.E2.80.931975): > Which totally explains how the North Vietnamese regular army met essentially no resistance as it marched south to Saigon in the spring of 1975. According to the same article: > [@](#): > > On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phuoc Long Province. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The fall of Phuoc Binh and the lack of an American response left the South Vietnamese elite demoralized and corruption grew rampant. And President Thieu: > [@](#): > > At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis.But the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days?..The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men. > [@](#): > > Define ‘winning.’ I mean, we could turn Iraq into a huge crater, so we can always ‘win’ in a strict ‘we’re living, they’re not’ sense. But success has to be related to goals and aims. What were our goals, to what extent have we achieved them, at what cost, and is that cost reasonable? Our goals were to stabilize and democratize Iraq, we have acheived that quite well, and the casualties have been in my opinion reasonable. Had we not invaded Iraq and Saddam had died or been overthrown there would have been civil war anyways. > [@](#): > > Uh-huh. Which reminds me of [this amusing story](http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20050919/NEWS/509190434?Title=Opponents-beware-when-Gov-Bush-unleashes-Chang-). Which does not make what I said any less true. > [@kunilou](#): > > [It’s time we put this to rest.](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html) > > Percentage of all blacks below the poverty level: > 1959 – 55.1% > 1966 – 41.8% > 1969 – 32.2% > The highest percentage after that was 35.7% in 1983 (under Reagan.) > > Blacks in families with female householder, no husband present, below the poverty level > 1959 – 70.6% > 1966 – 65.3% > 1969 – 58.2% > 1970 – 58.8% > The highest percentage after that was 58.8% in 1982 (again, under Reagan.) > > By the way, the data also show that the number of people in white families headed by a female is increasing at a faster rate than the number of people in black families headed by a female. > > [Heckman and LaFontaine](http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf) have charged that overall high school graduation figures have been inflated, but even their own data show that the percentage of black males with a high school diploma (not a GED) has increased since the 1960s. It was under the Reagan administration, yes, but it was due to the welfare programs of Johnson. Plus what of lower class (but not poor as in below the poverty line) black families? ---
**Author:** ![Perciful](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Perciful](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perciful)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/72 "2010-02-20T04:55:43Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > [It’s time we put this to rest.](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html) > > Percentage of all blacks below the poverty level: > 1959 – 55.1% > 1966 – 41.8% > 1969 – 32.2% > The highest percentage after that was 35.7% in 1983 (under Reagan.) > > Blacks in families with female householder, no husband present, below the poverty level > 1959 – 70.6% > 1966 – 65.3% > 1969 – 58.2% > 1970 – 58.8% > The highest percentage after that was 58.8% in 1982 (again, under Reagan.) > > By the way, the data also show that the number of people in white families headed by a female is increasing at a faster rate than the number of people in black families headed by a female. > > [Heckman and LaFontaine](http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf) have charged that overall high school graduation figures have been inflated, but even their own data show that the percentage of black males with a high school diploma (not a GED) has increased since the 1960s. The legacies of the Great Society From Wikpedia The War on Poverty Interpretations of the War on Poverty remain controversial to American conservatives. The Office of Economic Opportunity was dismantled by the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely by transferring poverty programs to other government departments. Funding for many of these programs were further cut in President Ronald Reagan’s first budget in 1981. Alan Brinkley has suggested that "the gap between the expansive intentions of the War on Poverty and its relatively modest achievements fueled later conservative arguments that government is not an appropriate vehicle for solving social problems."The poverty programs were heavily criticized by conservatives like Charles Murray, who denounced them in his 1984 book Losing Ground as being ineffective and creating an underclass of lazy citizens. One of Johnson’s aides Joseph A. Califano, Jr. has countered that “from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century.” The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968. Conservative economist Thomas Sowell argues that the Great Society programs only contributed to the destruction of African American families, saying “the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.” Professor William L. Anderson also criticized the War on Poverty, noting the increase of dependency on the government as being harmful to the lower classes. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/73 "2010-02-20T04:56:55Z")
Johnson had some serious flaws. He really was a scumbag in his personal life - one of the most dishonest Presidents we’ve ever had. And he did escalate the war in Vietnam. He deserves all the criticism he gets for these things. He doesn’t really deserve the criticism he gets for not being John Kennedy. Too many of Kennedy loyalists hated Johnson irrationally in direct connection to how much they loved the Kennedys irrationally. But to give Johnson his due, he made huge strides on civil rights. And probably nobody else could have done what he did. He was the right man in the right place with the ability and the willpower to move things forward. Too many people nowadays think racial progress was inevitable but it wasn’t - another President might have just made some token efforts and let the “old ways” go on for another hundred years. So on the issue of race, Johnson stands next to Lincoln. ---
**Author:** ![Perciful](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Perciful](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perciful)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/74 "2010-02-20T05:40:01Z")
> [@fools guinea](#): > > This. A man of gigantic melancholies and gigantic…accomplishments. > > The war was a gigantic way of following on the misguided foreign policy of adventurism, assassination, & anti-Communist interventionism which he most definitely shared with JFK. Remember that JFK had tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, & a Castro sympathizer assassinated him. > > Really, the romanticization of JFK is amusing. Who knows what we’d think of him if he’d lived to oversee the Vietnam fiasco? > > LBJ is a case of a lot of good & a lot of bad in one. Some of the bad lived after him longer than the good, but enough of the good stuck to really change the country. > > But it’s so tempting to credit the good to people like MLKjr, RFK, & “random hippie kid I used to be,” even though they were all out of power. LBJ did the hard work of a politician, where many politicians would rather stick head under pillows & hope all the noise would just go away. LBJ cried and was in therapy. He was melancholy for good reason. He died within a few years of leaving office probably of a guilty conscience. I don’t know where you get your info but JFK was not assassinated by a Castro sympathizer. Castro himself would tell you that! JFK was ending the Vietnam war and preparing to send the troops home. After his murder LBJ reversed Kennedy’s decision to end the war and tore up the documents. So there would not have been any Vietnam disaster had Kennedy lived. I would have liked to see him live and see what he would have done for our country. There is still a lot of unanswered questions we may never know. My childhood in the 70’s was greatly affected by the Vietnam War on the news every night. It was very depressing. War has been a long drawn out affair ever since. JFK and LBJ were two totally different men with very different ideas on running the country. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/75 "2010-02-20T13:06:18Z")
This disaster is estimated to have consumed some $3,000,000,000,000! If the money had simply been given to every person adjudged “poor” in 1964, every one of these people would be a millionaire. And now, we are stuck with all of these Federal agencies and programs, still costing us huge amounts of money. The povery industry has been VERY good for a lot of people-one wonders how this country would be, had LBJ never come up with this boondoggle. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/76 "2010-02-20T14:48:55Z")
> [@](#): > > LBJ cried and was in therapy. He was melancholy for good reason. He died within a few years of leaving office probably of a guilty conscience. I don’t know where you get your info but JFK was not assassinated by a Castro sympathizer. Castro himself would tell you that! JFK was ending the Vietnam war and preparing to send the troops home. After his murder LBJ reversed Kennedy’s decision to end the war and tore up the documents. So there would not have been any Vietnam disaster had Kennedy lived. I would have liked to see him live and see what he would have done for our country. There is still a lot of unanswered questions we may never know. My childhood in the 70’s was greatly affected by the Vietnam War on the news every night. It was very depressing. War has been a long drawn out affair ever since. > > JFK and LBJ were two totally different men with very different ideas on running the country. Not sure what you’re saying on the Kennedy assassination. Do you believe Oswald wasn’t the assassin or are you disputing his Castro sympathies? I’m also wondering what your evidence is that Kennedy was going to withdraw from Vietnam. Sure he said things that might have indicated that. But he also said a lot of things that indicated he was willing to escalate the war. But talk is cheap so I look at his actions: Kennedy kept increasing the American presense in Vietnam throughout his term and never initiated any plans to withdraw. I think there’s a parallel here with Vietnam and civil rights. Kennedy sort of edged around these issues during his lifetime. After he was killed, Johnson took over and implemented the things Kennedy had talked about - which was good on civil rights but bad on Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/77 "2010-02-20T16:44:06Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > We did not even know the Gulf of Tonken was a lie . Yes we did, some of us. Nobody with half a brain would think that a small little armed Vietnamese PT boat would attack 2 United States Navy destroyers back in 1964. Nor did it make any sense even at the time to have a Vietnam War in retribution for that insignificant attack which did not cause any damage to our destroyers. All of us vietnam war protesters at the time knew the whole Tonkin Bay attack and War Resolution was a sham, a lie, and a poor excuse to go to war. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/78 "2010-02-20T16:52:10Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > There are Whitehouse tapes of Johnson expressing his misery about being trapped in Nam, and saying he knew he’d made a mistake. And the worst part is, that he knew it was a mistake, he knew he could not win it, he knew he had no plan to win it, he lied about it to the American people, he knew the senseless Vietnam war would undo all the other good things that he had done or tried to do, and yet he went ahead and kept making war in Vietnam and brutally killing hundreds of thousands of vietnamese civilians and tens of thousands of American boys anyways. Yes, LBJ WAS!!! that bad!..and lots of us knew he was bad…he was a very bad man. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/79 "2010-02-20T16:54:33Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” > > . LBJ’s theme song. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2010, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429/80 "2010-02-20T17:07:35Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > On balance, LBJ would be remembered today as the second-greatest POTUS of the 20th Century after FDR – if not for Vietnam. . Not just vietnam, but LBJ lost all support from conservatives/gun owners because of his 1968 Gun Control Act. The young college and the liberals and the mothers of drafted sons hated LBJ because of Vietnam… and the conservatives hated, and still hate, LBJ because of his 1968 GCA and because LBJ never tried to win the war. Once LBJ became hated by the young, hated by the liberals, hated by the gun owners, and after civil rights people like MLK went against LBJ, then there werent any people left to like him. When you lose the left, and the right, and the poor, and the blacks, and the gunowners, and also the middle class families, there isnt much remaining as a base of support. Who is left to like him? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rethinking-lbj-was-he-that-bad/529429.md?page=5)