Does Nixon's "Treason" Boost LBJ's Legacy?

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54258/does-nixons-treason-boost-lbjs-legacy

Does Nixon's "Treason" Boost LBJ's Legacy?
by Robert Parry | February 17, 2014 - 9:18am

A front-page article in Sunday’s New York Times cited complaints from Lyndon Johnson’s daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, and veterans of LBJ’s administration that the late president’s legacy was excessively tarnished by the Vietnam War, obscuring his landmark social legislation advancing civil rights, medical care for the elderly, and environmental protections.

Pegged to Presidents’ Day weekend – and the upcoming half-century anniversary of many LBJ accomplishments – the article cites a recent CNN/ORC poll asking Americans how they rated the last nine presidents and putting Johnson at number seven behind Jimmy Carter and ahead of only George W. Bush and Richard Nixon.

But what isn’t addressed in the article is how Americans might have assessed Johnson if his plan for ending the Vietnam War in 1968 had not been sabotaged by Nixon’s presidential campaign, a reality now well established by documents and tape-recordings declassified by the National Archives but still outside the frame of most mainstream journalists and ignored by conventional historians.

I encountered this “lost history” when doing research at the Lyndon Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, in 2012 and published a lengthy story at Consortiumnews.com and in my latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative. After my reporting, the BBC published an account in 2013 recognizing the significance of the new evidence.