LBJ: The most American of U.S. Presidents

Lyndon Baines Johnson was our 36th President. He was President during one of the most turbulent social and political times in our nation's history. It was the mid 1960’s and he inherited a very grief stricken country following the Kennedy assassination. The country was experiencing the most violent civil unrest since the Civil War. Riots in Watts in 65’, Detroit in 67’, riots at the DNC convention in Chicago in 68’, and the entire country in the spring of 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was raging with intense resistance and rioting. As a nation we were on the brink of a nervous breakdown. The counterculture was emboldened and took to the streets

Promises had been made and it was Johnson's challenge to bring about civil rights legislation and Voting Rights legislation to a race of Americans that was still wading in Jim Crow.

What makes Lyndon Johnson so compelling and fascinating? What makes him the most American of Presidents? What makes him so sympathetically human? He was not charming and handsome, Harvard educated, and eloquent like his predecessor, JFK. He did not come from wealth. He was born in rural texas in poverty. He came from nothing. LBJ was powerful, arrogant and demanding. He was as persuasive as a politician could be and looking down at his peers at 6' 4" only strengthened his intimidation He used every tactic, both savory and unsavory, to break the will of his political opponents. He passed more legislation, through that persuasive power, than any President before or since. It's not even close. He passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through intense opposition. He passed the Voting Rights act of 1965 through intense opposition. He declared a War on Poverty. He dreamed of "The Great Society". He never forgot his humble beginnings. He grew up in the very racist South. He grew up using the word "niggah" to describe that 13% of our society that was black. It's the way things were.

Before his Presidency he showed no interest in civil rights or the plight of the "colored" race. He was a "good ol' boy" to his core; he was a racist, plain and simple. What happened to make him the best friend to the black population that we have ever had. No President has gone farther and higher and risked so much to bring dignity and opportunity to the black population. Barack Obama is deep in the shadow of LBJ when it comes to fighting for the black race. It's staggering if you think about it. LBJ put his Texas ass on the chopping block for all to see by embracing black society. I don't think any politician in history could have moved the needle on civil rights the way he did.

Lyndon Johnson launched us into the Vietnam War on a total lie. When he took office on Nov. 22 1963 following JFK's death, Vietnam was an ongoing civil war that we had a stake in but we were acting in an advisory capacity. We were not in combat though over 10,000 Americans had already been sent to Vietnam to try and help the South Vietnamese government to maintain a thinly veiled democracy. Kennedy had stopped well short of committing troops to Vietnam. The prevailing opinions based on Kennedy's own words were that he was never going to commit militarily to Vietnam. Then, why in August of 1964' in an effort to go to war with North Vietnam did LBJ create a false narrative that we had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese military forces. It was a cataclysmic blunder and an unforgivable deceit perpetrated on the American people. It was an unforced error and it cost us 58,000 American lives and millions of dead Vietnamese. At the time 80% of Vietnam supported the communist leader Ho Chi Minh. He had withstood 15 years of war with the French to gain Vietnam's independence and he was not backing down now to the Americans.

LBJ didn't think this one out. He kept sending more and more troops in the face of greater and greater disasters. He and his Department of Defense lied to us incessantly about the dire results of the war. It was unwinnable from the start without destroying every man, woman and child living and breathing in Vietnam. I despised Johnson for this horrible lie and decision that killed so many young boys between 1964 and 1968 when he resigned from office. No other President had gone to war on such a worthless and futile predicate (up to that point in time.). Every drop of blood shed in Vietnam was on his hands. He ignored the ever growing protests by returning Vets, anti War activists and eventually the most powerful from his own party. In early 1968 Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy decided to oppose the war. Perhaps more menacing was the powerful voice of Martin Luther King, his partner in every ounce of the the Civil Rights battles, who strongly opposed the Vietnam War earlier than anyone. Always the trendsetter, MLK gave speech after speech in opposition to LBJ's war as early as 1967. LBJ never forgave King for opposing the war. He even refused to attend King's funeral in Atlanta in April of 68'.

I despise LBJ but I love LBJ. He's a flawed American, like most of us. He was flawed but he was trending upwards to the end of his life. When perhaps no other President would, Johnson held hands with Martin Luther King in his effort to make racial progress. It was a Titanic achievement and it couldn't have happened without either one of them. Johnson had a conscience and he was able to rise above his upbringing and the push back and hatred of much of the country at that time. He looked in the mirror and then he put the mirror up to society. By March of 68' Johnson knew he was losing control of the War and losing political support. His head was too often being cradled by his hands as he sat in the Oval Office wondering how it all went so wrong. Such greatness and leadership on the one hand had been countered with such colossal failure. He was now too entrenched in Vietnam and he didn't know how to extricate himself and the country.
Following the assassisnation of Martin Luther King in April of 68' there were intense riots all over the country. Over 150 US cities experienced violence and explosions and looting; many died during the violence; many were left without homes and businesses. "Johnson looked out the window from the Oval Office following the tragic night of the MLK assassination. He pointed toward the immense pillar of fire that climbed over the cornices of downtown Washington and billowed in the sky." LBJ said, "What did you expect. I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years and then you let him up what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off."

In the end he felt the pain of the impoverished, of the downtrodden and most famously the black race. He was great. He was despicable. He was truly an American. He was human. Perhaps no President in memory evolved more while in office. After leaving office at the end of his first term in January of 1969 he would fade out of public life entirely. He even grew his hair long. Many say his long hair was his way of showing a connection and solidarity with those hippies and members of society who most strongly opposed the War. . He felt horrible guilt over Vietnam. It probably killed him. He would be dead only 5 years after he left office. He was only 64.

He was a man of conscience. We should never settle for any leader who doesn't have a robust conscience and an ability to accept failures.

"My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulia, Texas, in a small Mexian-American school. Few of them could speak english and I couldn't speak much spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes."

"And I pledge to you that we will not delay or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy."

"Education is the path to achievement and fulfillment: for the nation, it is a path to a society that is not only free but civilized; and for the world, it is a path to peace..for it is education that places reason over force."