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What do you mean? LBJ remains one of the most-discussed presidents of the 20th Century.
Personally, I regard LBJ as a corrupt buffoon whose one positive contribution to American history was Civil Rights. His blundering and mendacity in Vietnam created distrust for government that remains to this day. His War on Poverty was an ill-considered hodgepodge of programs that made no appreciable dent in poverty, instead leading the mushrooming of the entitlement state. That will prove an issue that, before long, we'll have to grapple with. Entitlements are simply not sustainable.
To me, the most enlightening glimpse into the mind of Lyndon Johnson has been Robert Caro's monumental multi-volume biography, Years of Lyndon Johnson. Beginning with Path to Power, it traces LBJ's life from a poverty-stricken childhood to his life as a ward heel in the Texas hill country, to his corrupt shenanigans in the House and his ultimate election to the Senate. Meticulously researched, it is simply unanswerable as it details Johnson's use (And abuse) of power.
All Presidents have pros and cons but overall, LBJ accomplished a lot.
LBJ'S Legacy:
War on Poverty: forty programs that were intended to eliminate poverty by improving living conditions and enabling people to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty.
Education: sixty separate bills that provided for new and better-equipped classrooms, minority scholarships, and low-interest student loans.
Medicare & Medicaid: guaranteed health care to every American over sixty-five.
The Environment: introduced measures to promote clean air and water.
National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities: program to support artists, performers, and writers.
Job Corps: provided enabling skills for young men and women.
Head Start: program for four- and five-year-old children from disadvantaged families.
Everything on your list was a good idea and needed at that time. However, what some of those programs turned into wasn't the original intent. Johnson certainly can't be blamed for that. What he started as a hand up turned into a nanny state in some cases.
It's quite a stretch to think the NEA and NEH are a role of government. These should have been temporary programs.
Take away Vietnam and I think he had a very successful presidency. At least in the upper half when ranked.
I don't call that a bust. I call it a 25% reduction in poverty. Actually, I disagree with your numbers. The table appears to show a decline in the poverty rate from about 22% in 1963 to about 12% after 1965. That's about 50%. The poverty rate fluctuates over time with more people being in poverty during republican administrations and recessions. In 2000, at the end of the Clinton Presidency it dropped over four percentage points to about 11%.
Did anyone really think any President's policies would end all poverty? That would be a real pipe dream. There are many reasons people are poor. They range from age, to illness, to lack of education, to handicap, to even the geographic area they live in. It was to Johnson's credit that he obtained about a 50% decrease in poverty with the help of the War on Poverty.
https://www.heritage.org/marriage-an...-years-failure
According to the census bureau, the poverty rate in 2013 (presumably latest numbers available) was 14.5%, about the same as in 1964, when LBJ declared 'war on poverty.' And that is after $22 trillion of federal spending. Interestingly enough, current US debt is $21 trillion.
The link does view the census numbers as questionable (it's all in how 'poverty' is defined), but those are the census numbers.
BTW, a book by a historian about dirty campaigns had the 1964 LBJ campaign ranked as the dirtiest ever. The campaign sent reams of fake letters to Ann Landers and Dear Abby expressing horror at the thought of Barry Goldwater as prez. And the LBJ campaign falsely portrayed Goldwater as a KKK-loving racist in Northern states. In Southern states, the campaign accurately portrayed Goldwater as an anti-racist who had fought to desegregate the family company (dept store chain) in Arizona, and was an early advocate of military desegregation.
LBJ continues to fascinate because of the extremes of his personality. Having grown up in poverty, his desire to use the presidency to do something for the less advantaged was genuine. Where JFK waffled on aspects of civil rights, LBJ came with a full bore commitment. Simultaneously he personally was probably the crudest man to hold the office (the current occupant is not yet eligible for comparison) and reveled in the excess exercise of his powers, including the humiliation of those who worked for him.
The Caro biography is extraordinary, as is the subject. I especially loved the first volume with its depiction of the impoverished area where LBJ was born and raised, and of his rise out of these roots through sheer force of personality. LBJ seems to have been the sort who crawled out of the womb with his psych fully formed, instantly dominating those around him with a combination of gooey southern charm and not at all empty threats.
My favorite LBJ story was when just after he was re-elected in '64, his staff asked him if he would now fire J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson responded "No, it's better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
All Presidents have pros and cons but overall, LBJ accomplished a lot.
LBJ'S Legacy:
War on Poverty: forty programs that were intended to eliminate poverty by improving living conditions and enabling people to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty.
Education: sixty separate bills that provided for new and better-equipped classrooms, minority scholarships, and low-interest student loans.
Medicare & Medicaid: guaranteed health care to every American over sixty-five.
The Environment: introduced measures to promote clean air and water.
National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities: program to support artists, performers, and writers.
Job Corps: provided enabling skills for young men and women.
Head Start: program for four- and five-year-old children from disadvantaged families.
Add on, I think, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting(PBS), HUD.
The Clean Air Act(passed in 1970) and the EPA started during the Nixon admin.
2 or 3 yrs ago there was an article that i read that said lbj had something to do with jfk assassination. i don't remember what source it came from because i heard it with my ears. will someone help me find out if this is true because sometimes i don't know what the true source is?
please don't do research before 2016 because i don't know if they were talking about that before that year.
yes the accusation of lbj was recent so you won't find it in newspapers. that's the reason how i got this idea for this post and wondering who he is. i thank anyone ahead of time if they help me to know if this is false or true.
Please give a reason why you believe this is true or false according to reports.
No it is not recent re lbj.
Conspiracy nuts have been pushing that for years about lbj. There's another bunch who think GHW Bush and the CIA were responsible.
Books by Josiah Thompson and Vincent Bugliosi probably are about as close to the truth about the assassination as we will ever get. However Thompson now thinks the headshot came from the front. The release last fall of the assassination papers, which was mandated during Bush 1's admin, had a couple of interesting references to the cia.
That's right. Although LBJ supporters credit him for the popular Medicare, Medicaid and Food Stamps; they don't want to remember how he poured millions of dollars, and men, into a war that was s lost cause. And also forget how he dropped his reelection campaign early on because his war was unpopular.
Of course we remember even those of us who supported all of those programs. I had three friends from high school who died in Vietnam and their names are on the Vietnam memorial wall in Wash. DC.
Its impossible to have a discussion about Johnson without someone asserting without any evidence that he was responsible for JFK's assassination. I get more than a little tired of it. Instead of history, its hysterical speculation.
That article you quoted states that Jackie Kennedy held that particular belief. It does not state a shred of evidence upon which such a belief might be based.
I'll give Jackie a break. That poor woman had to sit next to her husband in a car while a gunman blew her husband's brains out and all over. A person is entitled to act a bit irrationally after that.
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