Everyone knows by now that Indiana has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964. And I am guessing everyone knows who that Democrat was. Most of you know that I have a minor interest in one Lyndon Baines Johnson, so it seemed like I would be negligent by not spending one post on this American president since I have an excuse to do so.For those of you who didn't know me in college, conversations with me frequently went like this:
Unsuspecting Person: "Hi Elizabeth. How's it going?"
Me: "LBJ got screwed by the Vietnam War. He was meant to pass sweeping changes on the domestic side."
Unsuspecting Person: "Uh..." (backing away)
I wrote not one but two papers on LBJ in college (and remember now I was a science major). The first was called "A Legislator in a Guerrilla War: Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War" and the second was entitled "The Man vs. the Myth: How the Legacy of John F. Kennedy Affected the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson" (note that the actual file name for this paper is my great obsession.doc).
I am still completely proud of the fact that I managed to bring the Vietnam War into a presentation on mangroves in my Conservation Biology class (by the way, I am also fascinated by the Vietnam War and mangroves).
So, now you may be asking yourself...why was Elizabeth so interested in our 36th president? Many who studied that era would choose John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jr. I am not saying those three weren't important or interesting; they certainly were, but for me, the tragedy of LBJ's presidency is what draws me to study him.
He had many flaws and made many mistakes, the biggest of which was entangling us deeper in Vietnam. He badgered people into agreeing with him. His personality was...uh...challenging. Here's a quote I took from one of my papers. Joseph Califano, his special assistant for domestic affairs, stated that Johnson "could be altruistic and petty, caring and crude, generous and petulant, bluntly honest and calculatingly devious---all within the same few minutes." He picked up his beagle by its ears (strangely, he also named his beagles "Him and "Her").
On the other hand, he got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act passed. He started Medicare and Medicaid. He appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. He passed legislation to fund public schools. His interests and his strengths were on the domestic side, but his legacy will always be the Vietnam War. Surrounded by Kennedy's advisors (he kepts most including McNamara well into his presidency), he led America further and further into a war we could not win and shouldn't have been fighting (my opinion there). The truth was he never wanted to go, but he felt like he had to. That does not take away his responsibilty, but it further illuminates the tragedy of Vietnam.
3 comments:
Nice post, Elizabeth. Very, very helpful to understand the situation better. I could rant in a similar manner about how Frida Kahlo got screwed by Diego Riviera. ;)
Good work on getting to write two good papers during your science training! I was able to work in some legendary IU film classes, not to mention History of Rock, but the amount of writing I did for Chem/IT was absolutely minimal. Wish I could have written up FDR like you did for "El B.J.".
My favorite LBJ moment comes from this inane conversation between he and the Hagar Slacks company.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/lbj_haggar.html
"Now the pockets, when you sit down, everything falls out, your money, your knife, everything, so I need at least another inch in the pockets. And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I've had anywhere in the United States."
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