Why do people not like LBJ?

I was looking at the retrospective poll numbers and the results were mostly not surprising.

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh-hstry.htm

Kennedy had an 84% rating
Reagan had a 71% rating

Not too surprising as one is credited for winning the Cold War and one got assasinated on TV.

Clinton had a 61% rating
Carter had a 61% rating
Ford had a 60% rating

These numbers are in line with past surveys.

Bush I had a 56% rating

This number is probably correlated with his son's disapproval.

Nixon had a 29% rating

He lost the Vietnam War and was a crook. Does this surprise anyone?

But LBJ's rating did surprise me:

Johnson 41% approve 41% disapprove

I don't understand this. LBJ initiated great anti-poverty programs and is considered one of the Greatest Presidents by Schlesinger. At any rate, how is Gerald Ford's approval above LBJ's?

His social programs were great, but I don't think people like having their babies, husbands, wives, etc. killed in a senseless war. That pretty much trumps all the good he did.

.......at the very least, in the know about Kennedy's assassination and may have even ok'd or helped in some way.

civil rights, voting rights, and so on. Towards the end, his administration became bogged down in the morass of Vietnam, a war which LBJ escalated, to the point where he withdrew from the 1968 race. Ironically, Nixon won that election based on his claim of having a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, which -- in typical Republican bait-and-switch fashion -- ended up to be...even more escalation.

Basically, the nation was sick and tired of the body counts and seeing the war every night on the news. And, of course, there was My Lai.

And then there was the fact that he lifted his beagles up by the ears for the camera, which earned him points as being insensitive and cruel.

As someone who lived through that era, it seems to me that he is held in higher esteem today than he was in 1968.

requires more than half a generation to come to fruition.

The war escalated tremendously under LBJ. My understanding is that Kennedy was poised to withdraw our presence in Vietnam when he was assassinated. LBJ instead revved things up, particularly after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1965.
LBJ withdrew from the primaries on March 31, 1968, after Eugene McCarthy had a surprisingly good showing against him in New Hampshire. I was too young to recall how Humphrey got the nomination even though McCarthy had the early wins. The voting age at the time was still 21 so men who couldn't vote were being drafted.

As for Gerald Ford, he was just a caretaker, finishing up Nixon's term. He served just a little over two years and was not very memorable. Chevy Chase did a wicked imitation of him.

I worked with a guy who worked WH SS detail when LBJ was Prez. Most of the stories he told me I wouldn't even want to post on the net! Just let me say I sure feel sorry for LadyBird! As a human being, I honestly thing he was worse than Shrub, and believe me I don't post that statement without hesitation!

was married to his brother and you are correct in your last statement, at least as far as I have been told.

thing, that LBJ was an a-hole.

I'm still undecided about whether he was a racist. I think he loved politics, and power. He was deeply flawed and made some horrid decisions. But without him its hard to say whether we'd have the civil rights acts or Medicaid and care.

On a personal level, he was probably an ass.

But, they say Bush is a fun guy to be around.

I'd rather an ass who spent part of his presidency trying to help the citizens. I can't say that about Bush.

.

In 1961-2, when asked if he was going to use his influence with Congress and get the Civil Rights Act passed, LBJ responded, "And make that son of a bitch in the White House look good? No fucking way!"

Admittedly, this is a second-hand quote. He said it to my uncle, a life-long New Deal Democrat who was in Governor Soapy Williams' cabinet.

LBJ was, if nothing else, corrupted by power.

The legislation LBJ was blocking was the King-Anderson Bill which would have created the Medicare system. It was in 1962 that LBJ opposed it for reasons of rancor toward JFK. Only 2 years later, when LBJ was President in the final year of JFK's term, LBJ flip-flopped and supported it. Handily, of course, it led to LBJ's victory in the 1964 elections. (My uncle worked on formulating its payment provisions and lobbied on its behalf.)

LBJ was only "a little" corrupted by power. He enriched himself by parlaying his service in Congress into a "radio empire" in South Texas - assisted in no small part by his influence with the FCC and legislation he controlled.

I think it's interesting that corrupt corporate dealings of politicians always seem to find their way back to Baker Botts (the Bush Family's Crime Empire conselors.).
http://www.bakerbotts.com/infocenter/newsroom/Detail.aspx?id=0b707cfb-5437-4761-8da5-d1043439a8c2


$105 million for 51% of an empire started by an intial investment of $17,500 in inherited money. Not bad. The interplay between inheritance, politics, and corporate wealth is fascinating.

who thought he was heavy-handed, a jerk and just mean which was probably all true. After * we need another dem like him IMHO. But I do have a nice pic of him and Westmoreland with my grandma from the early 70s. He seems nice here. Try to just walk up to a former president in a park and ask to take a picture. It won't happen now. The only one I could possibly see doing that is Carter and only if his security detail will let you.

I can still hear it.

And the other guy was called, "General Waste More Land" (for his use of napalm and Agent Orange, to lay waste to the Vietnamese countryside).

I remember the 1967 antiwar march in San Francisco--my first experience of any kind of march. I'd driven up from L.A. with friends. (I'd gone to Alabama in 1965 as a civil rights workers, but we didn't do marches--just voter registration). It was so heady, marching with 30,000 people. We were sure the war would end then. The crowd was very "straight," as we used to say. Businessmen. Mothers with baby strollers. How could the government resist such opposition?

The next year I went to a much bigger march/demo at Century City in L.A. --more than twice as big. Johnson was speaking there. Once again, a mostly "straight" crowd. 70,000-80,000 people. All chanting, "Hey, hey, LBJ/ How many kids did you kill today?" It sounds like a taunt. But it was really true, and we really meant it. How could you be napalming babies in Vietnam? For what?

Same questions as today. The difference between then and now is that marches mattered then. Century City was likely one of the reasons Johnson withdrew from his 1968 re-election campaign. It turned into a police riot (my first). I remember being chased across the grass by an LAPD helicopter. I felt like I was in Vietnam.

The other difference was that we had a freer press, which actually reported real news. Now we have the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and their drivel. They're all making money off the slaughter of Iraqis, and high oil prices, and tax cuts for the rich--so what do they care? They helped fix the 2004 election. Bastards.

I only wish we had been able to bust the "military-industrial complex" after Vietnam--cut their budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture. Too big a temptation to fascists. But corporate/military welfare was locked in by then. And every effort was made to kill the antiwar movement. They're still trying to kill it.

that was a gawd awful war with politicians that cared more about an ideaology than human life. That definitely sounds familiar.

People like him because of civil rights, but I don't think his intentions were particularly noble.

He really did accomplish some tremendous things, much more than Kennedy, but the perceived need to be seen as "tough on Communism" made him into one of the most scorned.

Deservedly so.

out of guilt for the number of lives lost under his command.



:shrug:

He was afraid of communist infiltration into the black community.

doubtful and ultimately disastrous war in Vietnam in which almost 60,000 Americans, many of them minorities or working-class citizens, lost their lives.

It tore the country to emotional shreds and LBJ was in office while the tearing went down.

There is also the strange, uncomfortable attachment to the celebrity of the fallen John Kennedy, whose charisma Johnson could never match when JFK was alive, nevermind after he became a dazzling legend, or, as Robert Hazel put it, "a young god without wound," ever alive in the hearts and minds of Americans while crusty old Johnson kept sending more young people to the jungle to die.

When the Smothers Brothers turn against you, you're pretty much toast.

I was too young to vote for JFK in 1960, but I supported him then and also when he was nominated for veep candidate at the dem convention in 1956. (Sen Kerr of OK stopped that, probably b/c JFK was catholic.)

Yet more and more I said 'JFK has the skills to get elected but he can't get any real laws through congress.' I felt really bad that if the republicans nominated a half-way decent candidate I would probably vote for him b/c JFK couldn't seem to get anything done.

Then JFK was murdered, and there was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. LBJ had been senate majority leader for years, and he knew where all the skeletons were. He forced these 2 through b/c he was furious that the 3 young civil rights workers were murdered in MS in 64 and people were killed while the AL govt tried to stop blacks from registering to vote in 65.

It never seemed to me that LBJ was a very nice man, but he sure could get things done. He lost his real place in history b/c of the Vietnam War. Some claim he pushed the war b/c he felt the 'elite' around JFK looked down on him and pushing the war was a way to gain respect.

A few years into the war and all the anti-war protests there was a horrific article in some political magazine. It said 'what if JFK had lived and pushed the war? young people were so enamored of him they would have been lining up to fight with this brave young president.' JFK did start the Green Beret program and several other nasty aspects of the war. There have been claims that he had become disillusioned with the idea of the war and that he 'had to be eliminated' so that the powers that be could get the war they wanted and needed.

at a complicated man.

I am left to be forever bewildered by Johnson. He certainly "got things done" on the record, but his personal attitude toward the Kennedys and Dr. King was less-than-respectful more than once. I felt a grudge in him for them, whether because they were social reformers or for other reasons... I have no idea, really. But it was a palpable conflict.

Historians will give him the social initiatives and the war on poverty (not a complete success by any means, but not bad for it being the first time anybody tried it on such a grand scale: 22% poverty rate down to about 11%... not heroic or perfect but not bad at all).

But he was a man of a period and of a frame of reference, and he just never seemed to evolve beyond that. No matter what anyone thought about the Kennedys or Eugene McCarthy, LBJ was his own island, and when the coffins began to arrive back in the U.S. from SE Asia, it was all over for his presidency. He announced in March in 68 that he would not seek the nomination again. He knew it was going to be a sad finish.

I miss only the era he governed in, not the war of course, but the idea that blacks and other minorities, and young people of all stripes could rally in the streets and affect meaningful reform. There was still the sense back then that government was still of, for, and by the people. Things were under tremendous stress but they still HELD. Under Bush, I worry that the structure itself is threatened.

Thanks for the response. It's hard to have much of a conversation here.

He Bombed North Vietnam.

He bombed them heavily.

He used napalm.

He ran as an anti-war candidate in 1964.

He betrayed us.

For all the good he did (and there was a lot of that0, his presidency foundered on Vietnam.

he did controversial things (civil rights, the great society)

his health was poor, and he aged quickly

when he left office he was depressed and ill and went back to Texas, and "waited to die"..

I don't think he wanted the public spotlight, and probably regretted ever being president.

His successor took all the oxygen out of the room, and politicians have been held in low esteem since..

Johnson has always seemed like a sad and unhappy man, to me.

Asian, including 55,000 US soldiers--the war he initiated and insisted upon, despite a huge antiwar movement. About half of them were slaughtered under Nixon--with the escalations into Cambodia, etc. But it was Johnson's War.

The other reason: Look at that rating for JFK. 84%. He was a hard act to follow--and would have been, even without the VN War. Add the war, and the combined bitter disappointment and escalating horror will forever be LBJ's legacy.

I remember voting for LBJ in 1964. My first vote for president. He sold himself to us as the "peace candidate" and his opponent, Goldwater, was painted as "trigger-happy" and extremist (right). I voted for the peace candidate--and got 2 million dead. Do you wonder why I have a low opinion of him?

The anti-poverty programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, would all have been JFK programs, if he'd lived. They were part of the Dem platform. It did take some skill to get them through Congress, and I credit LBJ especially on Civil Rights and Voting Rights. He bucked his southern brethren on them. And he was a brilliant legislator. But the Vietnam War is just a huge stain. It was really just unconscionable--genocide. Horrible. And for nothing--totally, totally unjustified. Merely a way to keep the war profiteers happy, and buck up the war economy that had never been demobilized after WW II. Addicted to big military budgets.

JFK was a peacemaker, in essence. He started off as a "cold warrior" but he was learning as he went along. His first big step--very early in his only term--was defying the CIA on their plan to invade Cuba. He didn't agree with it, and denied air support. (The old CIA and the Cuba fascists never forgave him for that.) He next prevented WW III (the Cuban missile crisis). He finally--just before he was killed--signed executive orders to reduce US military "advisers" in Vietnam. I am firmly convinced that he never would have done what Johnson did--escalated that situation into a war. Johnson immediately started escalating, as soon as he took office.

Five years later, his brother, RFK, was assassinated for the same reason: peacemaker. RFK, too, had come a long way. He supported the VN War at first. But when it got out of hand, by 1968--tens of thousands dead--he turned against it, and was running for president on an antiwar platform. He had just won the California primary and was sure to win the White House. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot.

A few months earlier, M L King had been assassinated. He, too, had publicly spoken out against the war, against the advice of "liberal establishment" advisers. His speech on it is one the best speeches ever given. Look it up! It's brilliant. Really stunning.

That was a very heavy time. And Johnson had no ability to understand that era, or no connection with my generation, people who were in their 20s and 30s, or teenagers. We had undergone a change of consciousness--a very deep thing--on all issues, but especially on being cannon fodder for the capitalist rulers. (They weren't known as the "corporate rulers" yet. They've since become global corporate predators--all those big corporate welfare companies from WW II.) Why should we hate the Vietnamese? No reason to, whatever. They wanted our help AGAINST China. (They had been fighting off Chinese invasions for 5,000 years!) They never would have formed an Asian communist block. They wanted self-determination. That's all. And Ho Chi Minh--the man whose election Eisenhower had cancelled--loved our revolutionary history, quoted Thomas Jefferson, and thought we would approve of their independence. God! It was all so awful.

And when ALL our heroes were assassinated--LBJ just had no ability to fill their shoes. He--like Bush--did the exact opposite of what most people--especially the younger generation--wanted. Peace!

You may or may not remember all the social accomplishments LBJ pushed through, but I can tell you will certainly remember watching your son being buried six feet under after not surviving a tour in Viet Nam.

... given how unpopular he was at the time; my guess is that his post-presidential activities have made him more popular.

As a congressman (representative) in WWII, LBJ wrangled a commission in the Naval Reserve. Over the objections of the Depatment of the Navy, he got a junket to the pacific theater. He rode along on an observation plane that turned back from the formation becuse of mechanical problems. Upon landing after being nowhere near the action, LCDR LBJ stepped off the plane and was preseted the Silver Star - our nations 3rd highest medal for valor. Nobody else on the flight (i.e. the people wh actually had something to do with the mission)received a damn thing. Pretending that he had demonstrated valor, he wore the pin the rest of his life. Here a link to the full story: <http://www.b-26marauderarchive.org/ms/MS1709/MS1709.htm>

but I don't want to jump to conclusions

That's why I'm called a professional troll.

at home that many people have been facing for years throughout our history.

rights legislation. It was a VERY different time, folks. Southerners and conservatives felt he had betrayed them. Then when he supported escalation in Viet Nam, liberals felt he betrayed them. When the cost of the war in VN prevented him from getting funds for the war on poverty through Congress, black leaders felt he betrayed them. So he pissed off a lot of large voting blocs, instead of pissing off the same people over and over, which would have been a better political survival strategy.

was involved in Kennedy's assassination. Is there any evidence out there of this? I always thought Poppy might be involved because he was CIA then and he was in Dallas that day, but LBJ and Poppy in cahoots?

What say all you grassy knollers out there?

the Ford Administration.

And LBJ involved in the JFK assassination? It's far more likely that the alien they keep locked up in Area 51 got loose and did it. The last time he broke out, he took over Chairman Dean's body and mind before being recaptured. Oops, I let out the real secret of the scream, Damn these fingers!

from some fellow Democrats. I would like to know what really was going on and why did these rumors about LBJ get started. Have they been debunked or is there some possibility. That's all.

His former attorney wrote a book about it called, "Blood, Money, and Power." It is very informative about LBJ's life just before, during, and after the white house. And it is yet another interesting conspiracy theory of the JFK assassination.

Vietnam got a lot of people angry. And while many really approved of the civil rights stuff, a whole lot of people didn't. He lifted his beagle (basset?) up by the ears and showed off his appendectomy scar.

Nixon did not lose the VietNam war. The VietNam war was lost before the USA got there. Nixon got us out, for which I am grateful. He was a paranoid little man, but still, I'm grateful for the end of the VN war.

The primary histories done of the Vietnam War were done by either antiwar historians or those sympathetic to them. A simple historiography shows the clear bias from the source material. LBJ suffers because most of the histories currently available are heavily biased. A simple test for bias is to check the author's opinion on the importance of Soviet and Chinese aid. If it's downplayed, it's more of the same bs. If you happen to see something about the 300k or so Chinese soldiers who served in North Vietnam in a support capacity, you have a better chance of that history being worth reading.

LBJ also suffers because, and this is taboo to mention in some circles, because the New Left took over the Democratic party. They saw him as a dictatorial fascist and the ultimate opponent of democracy. From their great 'success,' we got a generation of Republican presidents because the New Left convinced America that Democrats were not to be trusted with foreign affairs. Carter doesn't count, as you could have literally run an old yellow dog in 76 had it elected over any Republican.

Edit: One other thing. Kennedy supporters throughout the years have pissed on Johnson because he, unlike JFK, actually could propose and pass legislation. He suffers in comparison to a mythologized predecessor, which is sad. LBJ was clearly the better president by any objective standard.

Interesting.

I thought he was a war hero and a great leader. :shrug: