Forgotten Man

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born 100 years ago today. After Franklin Roosevelt, his record as a progressive Democrat was unsurpassed. Thanks to his leadership and passion, Congress enacted Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, Headstart, the Job Corps, legal services for the poor, and countless other pocketbook measures that helped millions out of poverty and reinforced a secure middle class. And Johnson took immense risks to pass the three landmark civil rights laws. It is not an exaggeration to say that without Johnson's leadership, Barack Obama would not be accepting the Democratic nomination for president this week.

But here in Denver, where podium time has been found for a mind-numbing array of obscure speakers, the day will pass without ceremony or acknowledgment. Why? In part because for many Democrats, Johnson's greatness on domestic achievements has an asterisk--the Vietnam War, a divisive debacle too reminiscent of the Iraq War.

But, interestingly, the decision to ignore Johnson was made by Barack Obama himself. Senator Tom Harkin, a huge admirer of Johnson's War on Poverty and the rest of the Great Society, told me that several months ago he contacted the LBJ presidential library in Austin. Harkin arranged to have a short, 11-minute film made about LBJ and the Great Society as a centenary tribute. He pitched it personally to Obama, who was not keen on the idea. They cut the film to seven minutes. Still too long, said the convention planners; and finally to five minutes. It will air, with no fanfare, reportedly during non-prime-time Thursday, not even LBJ's actual centenary. No official announcement has yet been made.

What's the problem here, people? Do they not want to be reminded of a truly bold progressive Democratic president? Or is the reminder of civil rights struggle not the message this surprisingly bleached-out convention wants to send? Is Michelle's Obama's happy memory of the Brady Bunch more comforting to whites than the memory of LBJ and Dr. King, whose "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered 45 years ago this week? Or just the bad taste of the Vietnam War, which epitomized the Democratic divisiveness that this convention desperately hopes to avoid? Maybe all of the above.

When I was researching Obama's Challenge, especially my chapter on how great progressive presidents lead, nothing moved me as much as Lyndon Johnson's principled courage on civil rights. Here is an extract:

The landslide election of November 1964 increased the Democratic margins from 66 to 68 in the Senate, and from 259 to an astounding 295 in the House, a better than two-to-one margin that nearly equaled FDR's at the peak of his power. But the right to vote continued to be denied throughout the Deep South, and when legal maneuvers failed the white power structure turned to terror. In Mississippi, just 6 percent of qualified blacks had been permitted to register. While Johnson tried to use the tools of existing law, the movement escalated its tactics.

On March 7 1965, Dr. King began his historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to register blacks to vote. Alabama officials were determined to block the peaceful march. On their first try, the roughly 500 marchers got just six blocks before being turned back by police batons, bull whips, tear gas, and even crude weapons fashioned from barbed wire. The police were joined by a hastily deputized mob. A white minister from Boston, the Reverend James Reeb, was killed.

America finally witnessed, on national television, the raw terrorism, stripped of its pretenses, that had maintained the system of racial privilege and oppression in the South since before the Civil War. An outpouring of national outrage followed. Thousands of people converged on Selma to join Dr. King, who would be beaten back a second time. Finally, 3,000 people would join him to complete the march, their right of peaceful assembly protected by National Guard troops placed under federal command by order of the president of the United States.

It was in this climate of the breakdown of law that Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress and the nation March 15, 1965. In just the way that FDR more than thirty years before had spelled out what had befallen the banking system, what the president was doing to remedy the crisis, and what he expected of the people, Johnson spoke masterly words about civil rights.

At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man--a man of God--was killed.

Comments

[lwaxanatroi]

Funny thing, Hubert Horatio Humphrey has been mentioned in a positive way on more than one occasion during this convention. Yes, he was a proud liberal, but when I voted for him--because what was the alternative?--in 1968, it was with thumb and finger firmly pinching nose. So if HHH can get a tiny soupcon of redemption, why not the big guy? I agree with those who call him a tragic president. I hated him at first for the same reason millions of others hated him: he was alive and JFK wasn't. That's a hell of a way to begin a presidency. Then he went on to champion civil rights even though he famously knew it would cost the Democrats the south for at least a generation. His war on poverty was far from perfect, but it did something very important: it recognized the limits of the American dream and sought to spread that dream into places that never thought they could compete for it. And while we're on the subject of great names going unmentioned, I wouldn't mind hearing the name of a Roosevelt. Any Roosevelt. Let us not forget our history in our headlong rush to the future.

[S1m0n]

No, it's because of Clinton's regretable attempt to claim that LBJ was the real MLK.

[unitron]

Far be it from me to say anything nice about Lady McBubba, but the point she was making was that it took a President to get that legislation through the Congress and into the Oval Office to be signed into law, that there are times when, no matter how hard and how long others have worked and sacrificed, it takes the right person in the office of President to get finish the job of getting the ball into the end zone, and she was right. She never claimed that LBJ did it all by himself, just that if not for him, it wouldn't have gotten done when it did.

[January]

"To every thing there is a season." And it is true that LBJ's contribution to the advancement of African Americans and all the rest of us deserves our praise. Had he lived to see the current convention, with such wide mixtures of our All American stock, he would have a right to be proud of the risk he took.

Perhaps what we do not want to be reminded of is that we did not learn the lesson of Vietnam. I understand that lesson to be: Don't believe what the government tells you. The Gulf of Tonkin was a lie. The supremacy of the American military is a lie. The nuclear weapons in Iraq was a lie. Our government knew all of those at the time they happened.

The biggest lie of all is that it is anti-American to be anti-imperalist. Yes, our enemies are anti-American Imperalism. But so are our friends, our allies and our most clear-thinking citizens. The enemy is imperalism. Anything to the contrary is just another lie.

[FDRbyGodDemocrat]

The Vietnam war, or rather the mismanagement of the Vietnam war, is much more than "an asterisk" on his Presidency: it is the defining issue of his Presidency, and that blot will not be removed in the lifetime of those who served or those who protested.

As for the civil rights legislation bearing his imprimatur, that work could not have been accomplished except for the mood of the country created by the assassination of a President and the courage of millions of activists.

By today's examples certainly we might rank LBJ among the better Presidents, but by no means on a par with FDR in my opinion.

[SugarMan]

Another thing --- LBJ was a great president. It was a historic moment when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I think I have heard that mentioned in speeches at the DNC this week.
But I have a question. This year, women and minorities are being emphasized due to Obama and Clinton. Is it neccessary to honor each and every great Democrat who has passed through. Don't get me wrong, LBJ should be mentioned as often as possible. But that is not what the convention is for.

[MourningDude]

We have an unpaid 75 trillion dollar bill for Medicare and Medicaid, and you want people to HONOR LBJ?

-boggle-

[melonman]

His was the most tragic presidency of them all. Unable to cleanse the country of the miasma of the Vietnam War, he nevertheless achieved great things for the most helpless in our society: the poor, the young, and the incapacitated.

God bless LBJ's tortured soul.

[thereigoagain]

Hillary brought up LBJ and she was called a racist. That's the problem with the Obama religion. If you're white and criticize you're a racist, if you're black and criticize, you're an uncle tom.

[SugarMan]

That is a lie. Hillary R. Clinton does not carry the label of racist. That is not what she is known for.
A racist is someone who has exhibited a history of racism - like David Duke, Woodrow Wilson or KKK founder Forest Bedford.

[Unangryblackman]

everyone should read the book by Michael Bechlsos

[larry278]

Like it or not LBJ is remembered as a failed war president. Ronald Reagan eviscerated many of LBJ's Great Society initiaves. Republicans in the Congress & White House since Reagan have gone on to eviscerate New Deal programs. LBJ is accused of tepid support of Humphrey. Many say that LBJ helped Nixon win in '68. Nuff said. LBJ wasn't loveable. Many progressives admit to hating LBJ. LBJ, rightly or wrongly, won't be remembered or honored in Denver. Many progressives have nothing good to say of LBJ & want to forget LBJ. That is going to be done in Denver. It's deliberate. It won't change if BHO sits in the White House in '09. LBJ has the aura of damaged goods. Some will allow that LBJ meant well but... LBJ is fated to be damned with faint praise-if LBJ is even mentioned. Rob't Caro's books & other histories of LBJ's presidency are a collection of grim it might have beens. LBJ won't be celebrated in US history for now, if ever.

[MourningDude]

It's just odd to hear White House tapes with LBJ telling his advisors he wants to "kill some people" or "blow some people up" in Vietnam.

That kind of inhumane, knee-jerk, retaliatory warmongering should be offensive to everyone.

[WolfLarsen]

Lyndon Johnson is a perfect example how an unpopular war can overshadow enormous accomplishments. Had Johnson found a way to shutdown the Vietnam War instead of escalating it he would be on the level of FDR.

Maybe the greatest lesson Johnson can teach future presidents is that the greatest good can be destroyed with the most well intentioned evil. He should still be honored for what he did for this country. We forgave Truman for Korea. We should not forgive or forget Johnson's involvement in Vietnam but we should honor his contributions to our better angels.

But his greatest lesson may be to learn from his mistakes..­..somethin­g Bush failed to do.

[jhhl]

The LBJ of my youth was reviled for the Vietnam War to the tune of "Hey Hey LBJ How many kids did you kill today." For the most part, that has masked his astounding achievements, culturally and politically. Read up on Robert Caro's LBJ books, learn a lot about how power is used in politics in general and the driven nature of this man - so corrupt and manipulative, harsh and needy on one hand, and yet the source of unimaginable (at the time) civil rights breakthroughs, pushed through with an unstinting passion through decades of law sanctioned prejudice, protected by embedded political and economic power. I eagerly anticipate the next book, which takes up his presidency and his major civil rights work, and his downfall.

[skepticfromschenectady]

Exactly so. LBJ was to JFK what FDR is to Obama. LBJ and FDR did the work to literally transform society for the benefit of the working and middle classes, while JFK and Obama were /are more inspiratio­nal/aspira­tional. The former knew how to get things done and weren't afraid to fight for the American people. LBJ is right up there with Lincoln, Washington, and FDR in the greatest president's club.

[MourningDude]

I hope you're joking.

LBJ's Great Society has been a failure. Some spin it to say that he "lifted people out of poverty", but one could just as easily argue that he helped institutionalize near poverty for millions.

And that's now, before the long term consequences of his policies truly hit the fan. Once Medicare goes into deficits, our country will be struggling for its own survival.

Sorry, but in my book you can't leave future generations a $75 trillion dollar bill and claim that you've done a great thing for the country.

[Mariel]

Mourning Dude, you may be right about the overwhelming debt due to Medicare and Medicaid. I don't have great hopes for universal medical care. I believe it will be half-assed medical care. More and more we have poor medical care, with doctors frustrated by the bureaucracy. The poor get a little care, the middle class get mediocre care, and the rich get, I suppose, the best they can pay for.

Ever thought about the nightmare of Medicaid nursing homes? Get older and you'll worry about it. Bush took away a lot of the funds for Medicaid in nursing homes. And so they become even less than the mediocre they were.

We have in America less good health than most of Europe, more birth defects and stillbirths. Our system cost a fortune and only barely works.