If DU had existed in 1965, how would it have treated Lyndon Johnson?

[Ken Burch]

We've had a number of speculative threads on how DU might have treated Democratic presidents that served in the pre-Internet era.

Since the situation we are now in may be closer to the '65-66 political era than any other, it is only right that we consider how

LBJ might have fared here.

My guess is, some of the fault lines that exist in DU today would have occurred then.

[jwirr]

1. We would have definitely been divided in our own support. Anti-war

and pro-legislation. They are not kidding when they talk about 2 LBJs.

[Ken Burch]

3. I think some of the same McCarthyite tactics against dissent would have emerged

One of the things a lot of people don't realize about the Johnson Administration was that it STARTED the meme that opponents of the war were "eggheads" and "elitists". Spiro Agnew just took up what people like Ben Wattenberg and Eugene Roche started.

[stevenleser]

71. I'm curious as to why this post was unrec'd. I dont always agree with the OP, but

this was an interesting question.

[CTyankee]

77. It's not this post. It's a control issue with the Unreccer's, I'm convinced of that.

Just an irrational thing, like a tic...ignore it. These sudden hiccup motion unrecs are just about as meaningful as a hiccup...

[vaberella]

2. I haven't a clue. I remember some people saying Obama should be like Johnson.

To get things passed right. Because he'd run rough shod and tell Congress to do what he wants (ie medicare for all). Obama escalates war in Afghanistan---he's like LBJ and Afghanistan is our Vietnam and he's destroying the nation.

DU is full of people who don't know what they want...and meh----it's bipolar with an unhealthy dose of Alzheimer's.

[tblue]

4. Got that right. nt

[Ken Burch]

7. The good part of LBJ was what he did on domestic issues

That's what people meant when they said President Obama should be like Johnson. I doubt even YOU think Obama should emulate the Johnson foreign policy, a policy that was based, even leaving out Vietnam, of brutal military defense of reactionary governments around the world and, in some cases, the destabilization of democratic governments who'd committed the unforgivable crime of being too progressive(such as the Juan Bosch government in the Dominican Republic and the center-left democratic government of Greece that was overthrown by the Greek military, with open U.S. support, in 1967).

The idea is to be like the GOOD part of Johnson, not the bad.

[freddie mertz]

73. Here's a clue for you: LBJ was complicated.

In some ways, he may have been our greatest president. And he had great early success with historic progressive social legislation. That is the LBJ that some people want.

Then there was the LBJ of the Vietnam war disaster. No one wants that LBJ.

There's no contradiction in seeing some extreme poles in the LBJ record. They are there, rather famously in fact.

[valerief]

5. I dunno, but I know Huffpo would have had a daily article about what Lady Bird was

wearing, about her Beautification of America project, and what the Bird girls were up to.

Maybe DU would have bashed him for the war, praised him for Medicare and civil rights, and fetished over his scar. (Of course, the trolls would have done the reverse.)

[IndianaGreen]

6. Today's Democrats are the Republicans of 1960s

The Democratic Party has moved so far right that it is unrecognizable. The GOP has gone beyond right field into pure fascism.

[valerief]

9. Yeah, but DU has dems with a small d not big D. DU is for progressive and liberals. nt

[IndianaGreen]

10. LBJ would have never become VP because JFK's affairs would have become public

That's what would have happened have we had an internet back in the 1960s.

[demosincebirth]

11. Really? I was a Democrat in the '60s, and I'm still a Democrat.. One thing similar is

the fact that in the 60's, there were people like you spouting off the same way. My, my, the more thing change, the more the stay the same.

[IndianaGreen]

13. Lester Maddox was a Democrat

and Vietnam began as a Democratic war.

[demosincebirth]

17. Let me ask you something: Why are you

using "Democratic Underground" if you detest the democratic party so much? Maybe you should be getting ready for the next WTO meetings.

[IndianaGreen]

18. I am a New Deal Democrat

which was a very big tent. In the 1960s the Southern Democrats were segregationists, and liberals were constantly told to STFU so as not offend the sensibilities of the bigots.

[demosincebirth]

22. Don't make me laugh. eom.

[IndianaGreen]

23. Lester Maddox was my governor for a while

until Jimmy Carter was elected and on his inauguration announced that "the days of segregation are over."

Do you even remember Maddox restaurant and what he gave his patrons?

I've been there, and done that. And I also know this war is evil.

[demosincebirth]

57. You know the "difference between an ax handle and a pick handle?"

[frylock]

21. love it or leave it

[David Zephyr]

49. It had that ring to it, didn't it?

Perfectly put.

[amandabeech]

35. Lester Maddox was a Dem before LBJ's big realignment that lost the south.

He'd be a hard-core Rep now.

Indiana, I agree with you a lot, but you do yourself and your arguments a disservice by bringing up the party affiliation of southerners before Johnson did the right thing and lost us the south for a couple of generations.:)

[Ken Burch]

26. You do realize that those people were right, .

And pretty much about everything.

[David Zephyr]

48. Did you support the Democrats inside or outside the '68 Convention in Chicago?

You see, there in lies the great rub.

You go after IndianaGreen, essentially suggesting that she is not welcome at the Democratic Underground, and question her credentials as a Democrat.

Is it her stand for peace and against war that upsets you so? Is it her stand against corporatism over the individual that riles you up so much as to point the door to her? Is it her command of the those uncomfortable facts that she is always armed with that gets at you so much?

Like you, I am also a life-long Democrat and an activist, even a street activist. For me, the activist always came and comes before the Democratic Party establishment.

In my eyes, the Democrats outside the Convention in 1968 were better Democrats than the pro-war corporatist inside that year.

I ask you, since you were "a Democrat in the '60s" as you say : Did you support the Democrats inside or outside the '68 Convention in Chicago? Which is it?

Were you a Humphrey Democrat or a Tom Hayden Democrat?

I think we both already know, don't we?

[apocalypsehow]

60. That "great rub" you're so proud of created a backlash that gave us Nixon & Reagan twice - and by

huge margins.

Rubbing the "Silent Majorities" face in your counter-cultural "revolution" gave us a solid forty years of Reactionary triumphs. Congrats!

:eyes:

"In my eyes, the Democrats outside the Convention in 1968 were better Democrats than the pro-war corporatist inside that year."

Then own that statement: admit it was your kind who gave us Nixon I & II, and the Reagan follow-up. Because your self-righteous, arrogant, kind most certainly did.

I well remember sitting with my grandparents as a kid during a television replay of the chaos outside the convention site in Chicago from '68. They were life-long Democrats to the core. As those blue-collar, working class Chicago cops started getting spit on and pummelled with stones, and in turn started thumping on those privileged college kids who were doing it, guess who they cheered for?

It was your kind who turned those two life-long voters for the Democratic ticket into "Reagan Democrats."

Again, congrats - what a revolution you managed to create! The Reagan revolution, that is...

:thumbsdown:

[Ken Burch]

65. It's not QUITE that simple

The rage in the streets in Chicago(some of which, it was later revealed, was instigated by FBI informants and police provocateurs in the crowd)was caused in large measure by the arrogant decision of Lyndon Johnson and his minions to impose a pro-war platform and an(apparently)unabashed hawk as nominee on the party despite the overwhelming vote for peace, increased social spending and party reform in the Democratic primaries.

If LBJ had just done the decent thing and not tried to influence the nominating process, there'd have been no craziness in the streets.
And if LBJ had gone public with the proof he had in the fall of 1968 that the Nixon-Agnew campaign had intervened in the Paris Peace talks with the intent of preventing an end to the war before the election, Humphrey would have won going away.

You can't put ALL the blame on the doves. The party pushed them too far that year.

[apocalypsehow]

70. Another thoughtful, measured, intelligent reply. One I agree with in part, especially regarding the

sordid hanky-panky the Nixon-Agnew campaign was up to its eyeballs in, monkeying around with our foreign policy.

You are what the face of DU debate should routinely look like, but, alas, all too many times doesn't. Kudos to you for that, sir.

[Ken Burch]

76. Er...you're welcome.

Nice graphic in your posts, btw.

[David Zephyr]

68. LOL. I'm proud to be what you disdain as "your kind".

What a reactionary post, void of any knowledge of history and one that the Dixiecrats would have been most proud of.

Seriously, your disdain for what you call "your kind" is almost as ugly to this gay guy as the depths of your ignorance.

[apocalypsehow]

69. Three sentences, every one of them non-responsive and/or *ad hominem*. About what I expected.

"void of any knowledge," indeed.

As to "ugliness" - it was "revolutionaries" like you, assuming you're not just doing the online braggadocio thing and actually were out there burning draft cards (which is more likely), who did your damnedest to give us some ugly years pondering the joys of having both a President Nixon and a Ronnie Reagan.

Own it.

[freddie mertz]

75. Yeah, Democratic defeat in 68 had NOTHING to do with HHH's own baggage

From LBJ's war.

You really are taking a very black-and-white, rather right wing position on this.

[freddie mertz]

74. So, you thought the Vietnam war was just peachy then?

Yeah, people were "spouting off," people like Dr. Martin Luther King, who spoke out against Vietnam war escalation.

Bunch of nay-saying "haters" I guess.

[demosincebirth]

8. I think the anti-war movement, sometimes extreme, influenced the election

in '68, and definitely the nomination of McGovern, in '72.

[present and past]

12. Johnson in 1965 did a terrific job.

If you mean the summer of 1965, then people here would have applauded President Johnson for making such a large contribution to the passage of the Voting Rights Amendment earlier in the year and to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Johnson had so much power over his fellow Democratic senators during the 1940s and 1950s that shortly after the JFK assassination, he knew exactly how to pressure the right number of them for a majority vote to happen with the civil rights bill.

We'll never know if African Americans would have sat in the backs of buses for many more years had JFK served two terms. But we know that JFK didn't have the same power over Democratic senators and congressmen that Johnson had. JFK stayed away from Capitol Hill for much of his stint in the U.S. Senate because of illness or maybe because of other reasons we don't know. He was not there when the U.S. Senate voted to condemn Joe McCarthy. During the 1950s, JFK was very famous and popular in Massachusetts but not so much in DC. Johnson, on the other hand, was Senate Majority Leader for many years, and he helped launch a civil rights bill as far back as 1957. It failed within a few weeks, but he remained committed to change.

We also know President Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law in July of 1964, which was three months before he announced that Oswald had acted alone according to the thorough Warren Commission report. If the commission was right, then maybe Lee Oswald did millions of African Americans a favor. But we'll never know.

[Ken Burch]

14. I agree that, on civil rights, LBJ was the Second Lincoln

1965 was also the era when the decision was made to escalate in Vietnam. So a great duality of feeling was out there.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Once again, the internet would have exposed LBJ and JFK's many affairs

and the tabloids would be asking if Kennedy had a hand in the murder of Marylin Monroe.

Back in those days, the press was discreet about Presidential affairs.

[present and past]

29. At least Johnson's womanizing wasn't foolish and dangerous like Kennedy's.

<< Once again, the internet would have exposed LBJ and JFK's many affairs >>

Johnson wasn't faithful to Lady Bird, but at least he didn't rendezvous with his women in places like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Palm Beach and New York City. And Johnson slept with very few women compared to Kennedy. And Johnson wasn't stupid enough to steal Sam Giancana's girlfriend. People who knew Kennedy have said he enjoyed the thrill of sleeping with the girlfriend of a criminal whom the attorney general was trying to incarcerate. That's very dangerous and foolish. Johnson's main mistress was Madeleine Brown, and they had their rendezvous quietly in private homes of his Texas friends.

[Clio the Leo]

16. LBJ didn't have a CBO.

(That may or may not be relevant to the point you're trying to make, but I like to point it out whenever possible.) :)

[Ken Burch]

19. Ok, he didn't

Would you mind elaborating on what the significance of that would be?

And the trade off was that, while LBJ may not have had the CBO, he did have to deal with the Dixiecrats who controlled the House Rules Committee and use that power to stop a lot of stuff from ever getting to the floor for a vote).

[SemiCharmedQuark]

43. But he also had Republicans who were willing to work with him.

[eleny]

20. We marched against his war policy and praised him for his social achievments

[andym]

24. He would have been priased and criticized

Praise: Great Society--> Medicare, Medicaid, Housing
Civil Rights

Scorn: Medicare -- with the biggest Democratic majorities in the last 70 years and plenty of liberal Republicans in Congress to help why did he not go for Universal Healthcare

Vietnam

[Better Believe It]

25. A minority would have opposed Johnson's war escalation and by 1968 that would have become a majority

[CTyankee]

78. I lived thru it. God, did we hate LBJ for escalating that war. And then Nixon.

It took me decades to get over my seething against them both but it happened, first with LBJ in recognition of his good deeds and finally, grudgingly with Nixon but not because I thought he was a good guy, but he did open relations with China.

There would not be the split here on DU that we see with Obama. It would have been clear cut, all out WAR against LBJ. My god, that was a time of riot in the streets...don't you remember seeing at least the photos of them?

[question everything]

27. If DU existed in 1941, how would it have treated FDR

decision to join the war against Nazi Germany? How would it have treated FDR had the Japanese did not attack Perl Harbor and FDR would have still joined the Brits?

If DU existed in 1998, how would it have treated Clinton's decision to join NATO in the Kosovo war?

My guess is, there would be no fault lines. All would be vehemently opposed to anything military.

[amandabeech]

36. There would be plenty here who would have wanted to go against Nazi Germany

with or without Pearl Harbor.

There would have been those who were adamantly opposed to war against Nazi Germany until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

There would have been those who would never have wanted to go to war with anyone even after Pearl Harbor, but those would have been fewer.

It would have been the usual DU free-for-all.

[MiniMe]

28. I think we would have been split

He gets an A+ on civil right issues, but he flunked Viet Nam.

[neshanic still]

30. There would of been a server failure when he lifted his dog by his ears.

[onenote]

31. Many, maybe most, would have been trying to drive him from office

Notwithstanding the Great Society programs, we would have been demanding his scalp because the war -- and the opposition of progressives to the war --trumped all. The War on Poverty didn't stop people from chanting Hey Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today.

At least that's what the majority here would be doing, I suspect. A few might recognize the good things he did, but no one would defend the war. I remember going to his funeral -- I was a 20 year old college student -- and being stopped by a reporter and asked what a long-haired college student was doing there. I don't remember what I said, but I acknowledged that he did some important things in the area of civil rights etc and needed to be remembered for those things. But four years earlier, while he was in office, I would never have had a good thing to say about him

[neshanic still]

32. At least the drafted ones would be.

[CK_John]

33. LBJ would have shown up at Skinner's door and broke his legs, end of DU.

[amandabeech]

37. LOL!!! I would have paid good money to see it on Uncle Walter, too. n/t

[apocalypsehow]

34. Like shit.

Hell, he was hands down the most productive, in terms of liberal legislation, Democratic President of the twentieth century, and he still gets treated like shit by so-called "progressives" and "liberals" here.

They much prefer their fair-haired boy JFK - who once privately expressed his contempt for liberals by calling them "honkers" - the president who peddled a Reaganesque tax cut in 1962 along with the largest peacetime military buildup in American history while Bozo Reagan himself was still doing promo ads for GM.

So go figure.

[IndianaGreen]

38. and he put wiretaps on MLK

[apocalypsehow]

51. Who, JFK through his brother Bobby in the latters role as Attorney General? Quite right. n/t.

[Ken Burch]

55. They were probably acting, at least in part, out of fear of J. Edgar Hoover

Hoover likely had all sorts of evidence of their womanizing hidden away.

[apocalypsehow]

59. So, your assessment is that they were either (a) weak leaders, yanked around on Hoover's chain, or

(b) shamelessly self-interested ones. Either, or.

Which is it? :shrug:

In point of fact, it was neither: the actual hard historical truth is that both Kennedy brothers thought MLK was a trouble-maker threatening to upset the applecart of their 1964 re-election plans, and, further, who they both knew (from the illegal wiretaps) was a man quite fond of bedding women other than his wife.

Sorry, Charlie: there's just no way to make the hagiography come out right on this one. Actual history is sometimes a bitch that way.

[Ken Burch]

61. Of course they were shamelessly self-interested

That's part of the dark side of that family's legacy.

And I wasn't trying to preserve anybody's hagiography. I never thought JFK was a saint(it's always struck me that there was a unique paradox in the fact that JFK was a great orator who had no strong personal convictions about anything, other than his mindless support for the Cold War).

Bobby I see as a guy who started out as a total bastard and then(at least somewhat)"got it", and thus ended up giving his life in what may have been this country's last "truth to power" presidential campaign. No saint, hardly imperfect, but a person who was ennobled and humanized by the pain of his brother's murder. To me, that transformation is the only reason that he could end up saying something like the quote on the Gross National Product that I use in my posts.

But you would also have to acknowledge that, on some issues, they were at Hoover's mercy, due to the, er, dicier moments in their private lives. Hoover's specialty was using sexual indiscretions as blackmail gold. It's naive to think that that didn't come in to play with the decision to wiretap Dr. King.

[apocalypsehow]

62. But that would apply to LBJ, too, and he still managed to get more done. Remember this LBJism?:

"I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

That was Johnson's reply when urged to fire Hoover by his aides.

Hoover was FBI director until May of 1972 - certainly for the entire length of the Johnson administration. And Johnson still did more for liberal causes and progressive legislation than any president in history to date.

That's my chief point.

[Ken Burch]

63. And LBJ never stopped Hoover from persecuting civil rights activists

and actually encouraged him to silence the antiwar movement by any means necessary. And most of those who were repressed and hounded by J. Edgar were to Johnson's left, so he had no reason to care about what Hoover was getting up to.

So Johnson and Hoover more or less had an understanding.

Plus, LBJ LITERALLY got a lot of the things done over JFK's dead body and used the climate the assassination created to get the votes for civil rights bills and the earliest part of the War on Poverty. Which doesn't mean that JFK was a hero, but it does mean that his death gave those from below who actually DID believe in the things JFK pretended to support the political space to organize and win for a time.

[apocalypsehow]

64. Well, on this - the contents of your post here - we're pretty much agreed. n/t.

[apocalypsehow]

52. But if it was LBJ you were referring to, so what? MLK was a controversial figure in 1965, no matter

what our collective consensus about him is in 2009. You are suffering from "presentism," the mental affliction of those who think in slogans, instead of with actual thoughts.

I'd get that checked out. :thumbsup:

[yurbud]

39. are you saying if we were around then, we should have all stood up and saluted?

I admire LBJ's domestic accomplishments, but not the war in Vietnam. On the other hand, if he had staying in the race in '68 and won, he probably would have ended the war. But the GOP convinced the North they'd get a better deal with the GOP, so the North dragged their feet in negotiations with LBJ, sort of like the October Surprise in 1980.

[Ken Burch]

44. No, I wasn't saying that.

It just struck me that there are some parallels between 1965 and 2009.

I favor MORE social advancement and wish we hadn't escalated in either war.

[yurbud]

45. ok

[boppers]

40. LBJ was a servant to the corporatist olgarchy!

So was Jefferson!

Now that I've made these inflamatory statements, please respond to my thread. Tell me I matter by responding.

...Trolls know no time, no age, and the "holier than thou" purists seem to be part and parcel of the Americas.

[The Magistrate]

41. For A Rough Account, Sir, Of The 'DU' Attitude Towards President Johnson....

Look up a lovely old book by Mr. Sherril titled 'The Accidental President'....

http://www.librarything.com/work/1081640

"Will the real Lyndon Johnson please sit down."

[SemiCharmedQuark]

42. Considering how many progressives have decried "spending your way out of a recession" today,

(specifically talking about government, NOT individual, spending), I'm wondering how people would have reacted to FDR.

[Ken Burch]

47. FDR wasn't giving the money to other rich people.

n/t.

[marshall]

46. If DU existed in 1965, would LBJ even BE president?

We likely would have uncovered the plot to assassinate JFK and prevented decades of misery--Vietnam escalation, Watergate, voodoo economics, the list goes on.

[Ken Burch]

54. Good question. Unanswerable, but good.

n/t.

[Occam Bandage]

58. Have we ever uncovered and prevented a conspiracy?

We see (or think we see) plenty of conspiracies in events that have already occurred, but that's hardly the same thing.

[treestar]

50. Yes. The Civil Rights Bill would not have been good enough

And not gone far enough.

[asdjrocky]

53. I think many of us would have treated him honestly.

Just like many of us are honest now. There is a certain ring to the truth.

[Bonobo]

56. You mean Saint Lyndon? nt

[Garam_Masala]

66. DU would have backed Bobby Kennedy for president

against the incumbent LBJ. Without a doubt!
And so did I....yes I was voting age in 1968!
But poor Booby was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan and we lost
another great (potential) President Kennedy.

JFK was the best president in my life time...yes even better than Billy Jefferson.
JFK had more charisma than there are fir trees in Western Oregon.

[old mark]

67. Hate. He was from Texas. He would not have been picked as VP

or elected today.
He was too plain spoken.

mark

[Jennicut]

72. I am not sure. But I was born in 75 so the only thing I remember about Vietnam is how my Dad did not

end up going although he did enlist in the army (figuring he would be drafted anyway). I think I would say there were good things and bad things that I have read about LBJ, just as there are good things and bad things about Obama.