https://imgur.com/gallery/jWkFazX

It's better to have them in the tent, pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

Don't ever pass up a free meal, or a chance to go to the bathroom.

I don't want loyalty, I want LOYALTY! I want them to kiss my ass and say it smells like roses.

He couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

That dog won't hunt.

That man was a master of timing.... Bad timing.

Vietnam tore the country apart. He was so unpopular because of Vietnam that he did not even run for reelection.

Many don’t feel comfortable embracing a well documented racist and sexual harasser these days regardless of his accomplishments.

Any many will never forgive him for greatly escalating our Vietnam involvement.

You can call him a racist but that’s false. LBJ was race conscious and sympathetic to the poor since he was an adolescent and - literally - harnessed like an animal to road construction equipment. His getting the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts came from that experience.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-most-vulgar-american-president-ever-it-sure-as-isnt-donald-trump

snip

And then there was the N-word. Although Johnson styled himself as a civil rights crusader and did make progress on race relations, he still presided over a United States torn by racial violence. His public and private statements showed that he never realized he himself may have been part of the problem. For example, Robert A. Caro says he referred to the manual labour of his youth as “n—-r work.”

A recorded 1964 telephone conversation with the hapless Jack Valenti touched on Johnson’s electoral chances in Texas for an upcoming presidential race: “I think I can take every Mexican in the state and every n—-r in the state.” Several weeks before that presidential vote, Johnson spoke before a New Orleans crowd about how Southern politicians constantly twisted all issues towards race. That was a valid point, but then the speech became strange: “All they (the voters) ever hear at election time is n—-r, n—-r, n—-r!” Woods discovered that somebody sanitized the official record of the speech, substituting the word “Negro,” but witnesses confirmed what was really said. Robert Dallek learned of a 1967 meeting in the Oval Office with Texan state official Larry Temple, concerning possible black candidates for the Supreme Court. Johnson stressed he would consider only high-profile people: “When I appoint a n—-r to the bench, I want everyone to know he’s a n—-r.”

Unsurprisingly, when black rioting erupted in Los Angeles in 1965, Johnson was bewildered, and he confided to aide Joseph Califano his fear that “Negroes will end up pissing in the aisles of the Senate.”

In the end, however, it was the uncontrollable Vietnam War that destroyed Johnson’s administration and wrecked his legacy. William Doyle unearthed a fitting quote from a moment in mid-1965, when Johnson was moodily strolling on the grounds of the White House, cursing: “I don’t know what the fuck to do about Vietnam.”


snip

Everything he did was eclipsed by this. I remember him as a great President for everything else he did.

Not Vietnam.

..we got the EPA, Clean Water Act, China normalization, etc under Nixon.

And Nixon did eventually get us the hell out of Vietnam (after exacerbating it). So using your logic....

All Presidents are flawed and a despite these flaws, most still do a lot of good. But sometimes, their personal traits or other activities can bring their legacy down and the value of mentioning them. For example, Clinton, he could have had a better legacy, but his womanizing got to him. Nor his signing off on the repeal of Glass-Steagall, revamp of Bankruptcy Laws that make student loans indentured servitude.

GWB had plenty of admiration and loyalty from the country after 9/11. He squandered that away with Iraq and will be regulated as the President who was in charge when the economy came crashing down.

Nixon SABOTAGED the peace talks with N. Vietnam just before the ‘68 election. Nixon and his thugs thought if those talks were successful and peace came from it, Nixon would lose.

Thought that would cover it.

Wow!!!!!

...Climate Change. I find that very important, even if it did start with a corrupt GOP politician.

I think that it is more important that kids of color have better healthcare and better educational opportunities due to LBJ's efforts.

Maybe I am blinded by the arrogance of being a technologist, or maybe I have read enough about scientific matters to know that history is filled with the skeletons of people who claimed that the major problem of their day was not solvable.

It could very well be that a Black or Brown kid that got better nutrition and didn't die from a curable disease will come up with solutions that will prevent our climate debacle. All because of LBJ and others that worked with him to craft and pass monumental legistlation that indeed made this country better.

In response, he impounded the funds allocated for it, refused to enforce it, and fought for his right to do so all the way to the Supreme Court (which ruled against him).

The EPA was just a consolidation of existing agencies — there was zero additional money budgeted for environmental protection when it was created. Nixon only supported it was easier for him to maintain control over a single agency.

[leaving the opening for the unpopular Nixon to slip into the Presidency], and the conflicting ghosts of those Dem factions, tend to have Presidential candidates avoiding the problem ghosts.

LBJ's Great Society, social programs, [Medicare, medicaid, civil rights legislation [women included, etc.], are huge. No Prez since comes close to rival his works, [which are simply taken for granted. My favorite is the voters who are against Obamacare, but expect the medical benefits they get to come automatically].

bathroom habits, gag! 🤢 🤮

My father was a lifelong Democrat but was against the war. He faced the prospect of two sons and eventually me being impacted by it. Because LBJ kept escalating my dad swore he would never vote for LBJ again. Since HHH was LBJs hand picked VP he had reservations about voting for him but his cooler head prevailed and he did vote for Humphrey. I guess the thought of voting for Nixon and the ideologue Agnew was not an option for him.

Back then we didn't know about keeping his pants zipped or bathroom habits and such. After all, there was no internet, no cable news and Rush Limbaugh's biggest concern at the time was whether he could cut school and if he could get a draft deferment.

I take stock of what he did during his presidency. I think it took a lot of guts for him to take the stand he took against Jim Crow laws and for the voting rights act. This was not a popular decision for some and the the Dems would lose the South, even today, but we are a much, much better country for it. If he didn't take such a rigid stand on the Vietnam war I think he would have been one of the most transformative presidents to the good we ever had.

JFK had a minor number of combat advisers in Vietnam. The war began when Congress authorized full scale combat with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. Most historians think the fact circumstances which lead to that resolution were highly exaggerated by Johnson. He poured hundreds of thousands of troops into Vietnam and dropped countless bombs on that country. There is a reason the Democratic party was ripped apart in 1968.

Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a United States Central Intelligence Agency domestic espionage project targeting the American people from 1967 to 1974, established by President Johnson and expanded under President Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. [1][2] The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.[3]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS

and then talk again.

In my bookclub. It said he kept a file on everyone and would threaten them to get them to vote his way which is how all that great stuff got passed.

While I am grateful it got done his methods were awful and probably why dems are silent about him.

Then he took the Vietnam war and instead of stopping it thought he could win it and brought in the draft and made it way way way worse, so many were killed.

Even though he was there when some good things happened, his stance on the Vietnam War poisoned his presidency. He took the wrong direction with it, which cost him the support of those who were dead-set against that war. That gave Nixon the opportunity to win an election he should have lost handily.

Johnson took the wrong path in Vietnam. That's why we don't talk about him a lot. That's always there as part of his legacy.

president but a terrible foreign policy president also, may associate him with JFK's assassination.

Fuck LBJ, honestly.

'The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have proved to be among the most powerful agents of partisan realignment since the Civil War and have helped each party secure its hold on one branch of Government, politicians and political scientists say.

Recalling the dramatic and painful birth of the 1964 act, aides who were present at its creation say advocates and opponents alike saw its potential to obliterate the old political order and install a new one in its place. White Flight Worried Johnson

Some of President Lyndon B. Johnson's advisers recall how Democrats rejoiced at the thought that millions of grateful black voters would come flooding into the Democratic camp. But some also remember that Mr. Johnson was warned that whites would flee the party, and they say he worried about it late into the night of July 2, 1964, after signing the bill.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/us/civil-rights-act-leaves-deep-mark-on-the-american-political-landscape.html

To the poverty stricken

I read he grew up in a dirt floor shack.

My brother was drafted in '67 under him and sent to Vietnam, but still says he was a great President.

His story is incredible and should be a movie.

Vietnam was his great mistake.

The beginning of this clip illustrates that, from one of his speeches... he could be quite stubborn.

My brother told me that the soldiers in Vietnam loved him so much, they actually named a body part after him, an expression that is used to this very day.

Traveled with him on his campaign, and adored him.

the Vietnam War to the point where he was unable to run as an incumbent for gosh sakes, thus opening the door to hand the White House to Dick Nixon and the GOP in '68.
We love LBJ but it's a complicated relationship.

lawn. Marine says to LBJ “That is your helicopter Mr. President. LBJ puts his arm around soldier and says: “There all mine son”.
2nd: Read

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKestes.htm

It is about graft and corruption in 1960s LBJ Texas that would be multi billions in today’s dollars. Abuse of power and cronyism match corrupt dollars in degrees of abuse. It is like quid pro quo or we’ll kill you.

I remember Billie Sol Estes being big in the news, but, being 13 at the time, it didn't really all sink in. Thanks for helping flesh it out.

to put even more boots on the ground in VN.

Really overshadowed his legacy other areas.

Interesting timing of your post as I just watched that episode last night. I won't spoil the episode but he comes off as a cantankerous man who can be charmed.

Johnson took on issues that should have been dealt with during reconstruction a hundred years before. I think he understood how complicated race was in this country at that time and he also understood that there were some basic hurdles to get over before we could begin to improve those relations.

But Vietnam. His ego led him to believe he could win an unwinnable war. Imagine how different the last 56 years would have been if he had pulled out of Vietnam.