for those of us who remember LBJ:

for all of his errors vis-a-vis Vietnam, can you just imagine him playing this kind of game with the republican minority? Hell, he got the Civil rights Legislation thru when it was his own Demo/Dixiecrats who were fighting him tooth and nail - he did a job on George Wallace,

http://whitehousetapes.net/exhibit/lbj-governor-wallace-and-buford-ellington-selma-alabama

and was he ever sharp.

This is amateur hour here...something's very very wrong...and it's reminiscent of the plot in the film Chinatown...a big piece missing.

Plus, there hadn't been 3 decades of pure 100% bullshit coming from the Echo Chamber blaring into the Church of the Right from Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, et al to the "true believers" at that time.
The true believers believing in gawd, guns, and no gays.

Plus, there wasn't a 24 hour cable tv channel dedicated to taking down Democrats, not matter how small or irrelevant.

And Obama is black, so even Northern and Western Blue Dawg Democrats voted with the Republicans.

"A bad surgeon blames his instruments."

I think there's some parallels we can draw. Anyone can find an excuse for not doing the job they were sent to do.

And some failure is inevitable. It is the lack of effort that's inexcusable.

He has his own henchmen to enforce party discipline. Unfortunately, they are deployed to fight the progressives and force them to cave to Republicans and Blue Dogs. Stupak amendment, anyone?

LBJ had a lot of power and he knew how to use it. He wouldn't have gone up to the republicans holding a cup and asking them to fill it with sugar like Obama constantly does. And he would not have caved, caved and caved like Obama has done. LBJ had a lot of faults, but lack of strength was not one of them. I have seen absolutely no signs Obama has a shred of courage anywhere in his body, not one shred. When republicans speak out, he cowers in total fear. That's not what I supported and voted for. I've been betrayed.

At least compared to the current crop. LBJ was a master of gathering votes through backroom deals as well.

I never dreamed I would be nostalgic over the days when Nixon was President.

Noam Chomsky is right.

The fact that you would place him above Obama says a lot about you and your understanding of history -- none of it good.

:applause:

And BTW: I know my Nixon, backwards and forwards.

You seem to think that Nixon, who waged a secret and illegal war in Cambodia, who is revealed on tape to be a bigot of the highest order, who built his reputation through redbaiting, who surrounded himself with people like Pat Buchanan, who appointed William Rehnquist to the SCOTUS (and tried to appoint Harold Carswell and Clement Haynesworth to the Court) and named John Mitchell as Attorney General and Earl Butz as Secy of Agriculture, who vetoed the CLean Water Act (passed over his veto) and the War Powers Act, who vetoed the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1972,natonal child care/day care legislation, and a bill to fund mass transportation, and an emergency energy bill that was opposed by the oil industry, can somehow be spoken of as a "liberal" and indeed, as "more liberal" than Obama.

I think the record shows how ridiculous that is.

...signed the Clear Air Act, Title IX, Title X, the Equal Opportunity Employment Act, the Philadelphia Plan, helped establish OSHA and the EPA, as well as increased food and SSI assistance while lowering military funding.

If you really want to sit here and start dragging out the things Obama has supported that aren't very progressive, we can do that too. Obama is cowering to the right now the same way conservatives used to claim Nixon was trying to move to the left. Deal with it.

I never placed him above Obama as a human being. But as a politician he was far better than the group that Obama is willingly climbing into bed with right now. If you can't see that, your understanding if history is not good......it's piss poor.

a creep who regarded studenrs who protested the war as "bums" even when they were being gunned down by the National Guard as someone to whom the label "liberal" can be fixed....you probably have nice things to say about Attila the Hun too.

Sorry, but anyone who misses Nixon is either twisted or ignorant of history.

By the way, do you go to bed every night dreaming about the good old days when the National Guard was shooting students? You know, the protesters that Nixon referred to as "bums"?

Apparently you think today's Republicans aren't all that bad, using the same logic, and you have no problem with the fact a Democratic president seems willing to appease them.

...climbing into bed with this current group of elephants is sick as well. Just following your logic....from what you've written....you're okay with it.

but isn't Obama? Sure Nixon would keep the Patriot Act alive and well and USE it, but hasn't Obama?
Sure Nixon would keep Military spending on STEROIDs, but hasn't Obama?

Nixon gave pay raises to postal workers, pay raises they hadn't seen in 12 years of both republican and Dem administrations.
Obama has frozen all federal workers pay.

It's not a matter of nostalgia -- it's just some sad ass comparative facts.
And the OP is pointing out some decent progressive domestic (HOMELAND) legislation. All factual.

You just can't handle it.

as if having him as president today would be better than having Obama. Sorry, that doesn't fly. Maybe some folks here are so blinded by whatever the fuck is blinding them that they don't remember or don't have a clue as to what a bigoted, hateful, bastard Nixon was that they'd really like reliving those days. Y'know, the ones where folks like Rehnquist (and Carswell and Haynesworth) were choices for the SCOTUS and where the president of the US' reaction to the shooting of student protesters was to shrug his shoulders since, after all, why should anyone care about "bums" that protest.

And spare me the suggestion that Richard Nixon was a friend of government employees. My father was a career civil servant who nearly had his career ended, and was expressly denied a promotion he had earned because Richard Nixon personally went after him for having belonged to the Lawyer's Guild -- described by Nixon and his ilk as a communist front--in his 20s.

Maybe you think the positive things that Nixon did outweigh his evil. I don't. And it turns my stomach to see some here claim that a person who could and did do the sorts of things that Nixon did was more "liberal" than President Obama.

Oh, and by the way, my post wasn't a response to the OP. It was a response to poster that said they were nostalgic for Nixon. Try paying attention next time.

Sen Richard Russell gets the Johnson Treatment




Speaking to Members of Congress


Whitney Young

campaign and "rushed" back to D.C. to handle the economic crisis, by most accounts, he did nothing in that meeting with Bush. Even Dumbya himself stated that Obama took over the meeting and commanded attention in that room. He behaved as a leader.

What happened to the man in that room???

What happened to the man who took on the Republicans when they came to talk to him about the health care reform bill and the economy. Obama made minced meat out of them.

Now he just looks defeated, like he doesn't even want this job anymore.

And who could blame him? He gets it from ALL sides!!

prior to inauguration? I was thinking he needed to be reading LBJ books instead.

It would seem that LBJ or FDR would have served him much better as a role model..

The big difference between LBJ and President Obama is about 20 years of experience. Johnson was a protege of Sam Rayburn...the ultimate beltway deal maker and insider. Johnson became one himself when he got to the Senate...probably the most powerful Democrat in the late 50s. He played a lot of hardball to get things done as a leader is expected to do. Even before he was President he was JFK's "man on the hill" similar to how President Obama tries to use VP Biden.

You are right...something is missing...and the word is "leadership". This administration has attempted to operate by consensus...or stay above the partisan battles and in the end has come off looking very weak. Add to this the poor leadership of Reid in the Senate as he's gotten sandbagged constantly by McConnell. The only leader the party has had has been Speaker Pelosi and she was thrown under the bus when the non-stop attacks by the right wing and corporate media made Democrats skittish.

Right now this administration is in full reaction mode...they let the GOTB take the initiative and continue to deprsess and alienate their base. Leadership is needed...and badly.

Cheers...

the thing about him is that he was simply unafraid.

he could make deals and twist arms because he believed had something the other guy wanted -- and he acted on that.

plus that remarkable texas earthiness -- that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time.

Lyndon Johnson was undeniably one of the two single greatest Presidential Legislators (the other being FDR) in American history. And yet he would have been the first one to tell you that all the parliamentary technical mastery in the world is not going to avail you one little bit if you don't have the numbers to back up your cause. When the bulk of the Great Society was enacted, he had 68 Democratic Senators and 295 Democratic Congressmen. A certain portion of them were conservative Southerners, but to make up for that there was as mentioned a liberal wing of the Republican Party that was prepared not merely to cooperate with the President at times, but on certain issues actively support him. This is in powerful contrast to the 58 Senators and 258 Congressmen that formed the height of Obama's legislative coalition, with nothing even resembling a liberal wing of the GOP that could be reached out to for extra votes.

Another thing that might well be worth remembering is that Johnson was reviled by liberals for much of the 1950s for his actions in watering down a number of key pieces of legislation. He defended himself against charges of having "gutted" such items as the Civil Rights bill of 1957 by asserting that if he hadn't weakened the bills then they would never have passed - that the numbers just hadn't been there for stronger legislation, but this did nothing at all to molify the liberals, who regarded him as something approaching a traitor. It would not be until his presidency and the Great Society that liberals found it within themselves to really forgive LBJ - prior to then, the main base of his power in the Senate rested with the Southern Caucus.

It is very, very easy to imagine LBJ approving of the "kind of game that Obama is playing" today in regards to the Republicans. Memories of LBJ and his dealings with Congress tend to be rather selective - focussing on the period when he was at the height of his powers. One finds in examining his Senate career however, and his presidency post-1966, that he was very much able to tell when the winds were blowing against him, and adjust his position accordingly.

... good ole boy would have woken up with the fish's next day.

Don

Though you had the Dixiecrats, you didn't have these Corporate Democrats posing as liberals. And many of the Republicans were "coastal Republicans." In other words, they were much more moderate and reasonable. Not all of them, of course, but there were those mainly on the Eastern seaboard and on the westcoast that were a lot more liberal/moderate back then...well "Teddy Roosevelt" progressives. The fuckers in the Republican Party today are just idiots, crazy, hateful bastards. The Republicans have kicked all of the liberals and moderates out of their party.

So, please stop comparing the political climate of LBJ to what we have now. There's no comparison. After Watergate, distrust of government has increased, as well as apathy. Not to mention, the rise of the Corporations and the Religious Right.

.... in Austin. Never been there before. Should be interesting and educational.

remember mansfield was lbj`s general in the senate.

and to move forward incrementally.

LBJ, as majority leader, enraged liberals and civil rights leaders because of his willingness to water down early Civil Rights bills in order to push them through. Even the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 contained several compromises that were needed to keep Dirksen and the repubs on board. But after each bill was passed, the next bill built on the success of the previous bill and went a step further.

Sometimes, it seems, some DUers forget this history and seem to think that unless Obama delivers a full grown pony with each bill, he has failed.

for what he believed in, even when he realized it would be harmful to himself.

I think that if people here thought that President Obama was actually fighting for them, they would accept incremental change. It appears that a growing number of people, not limited to the democratic left, do not believe that he is actually fighting for them.

I'm confident that someone on DU will counter this by noting he is favored by 85% of democrats. I keep seeing this. Polls, as history shows, are not always reflective of reality.

"Hey, can we just drink a beer and be cool" isn't much of a core value.

He was wrong about Vietnam and the "spread of communism," but at least he based it upon his life observations and real history, and he didn't fail to act because he was simply too meek.

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had been Speaker. He had years to build up clout and a reputation. Obama had 2 years in the Senate and NO clout other than from the Party Bosses. It's become oh so obvious that Obama was so not ready for Prime Time.

The "bipartisanship is holy" mantra came in with Raygun, and is trotted out whenever Congresspersons DO NOT WANT to do what they were elected to do.

He needed repubs because he had a large block of southern Democrats that opposed a lot of his policies. Most of his legislative accomplishments were the product of some amount of legislative comprommise.