"Worst President in modern American history."
Let me preface this statement by stating that I endorse all of Sanders' platform: Medicare for All, College for All, Green New Deal, and so on. I'll be voting for Sanders on May 19th when the situation will have changed quite a bit.
I do, however, start to wonder about Sanders when he trots out this line about Donald Trump being the "worst President in modern American history." I really doubt this is true. I'm sure that, when he says this, Sanders is doing something appropriate to what a politician who is running against Donald Trump should do, but there really needs to be a public comparison of how bad our Presidents have been, and some of them have been shockingly bad on scales that Donald Trump cannot yet reach. Sanders also has a problem with the term "modern" -- since, if we are to use the term in any historically meaningful sense, ALL American history is modern history. At any rate, let's start with:
1) Unnecessarily violent Presidents
By 1968 it should have been obvious that President Johnson's war strategy in Vietnam was not working. The US ability to identify "the enemy" having failed, the war should have wound down rather quickly after Johnson left office in January of 1969. Instead, incoming President Richard Nixon decided to prolong the war for another four years. As Nick Turse's "Kill Anything That Moves" suggests, the war as a whole involved more than 3 million deaths during the time in which Americans were involved. Richard Nixon has to be held responsible for at least one million (if not more) of those three million deaths, because of his failure to arrive at a quick solution. Moreover, Nixon's illegal bombing of Cambodia fed the Khmer Rouge takeover of that country, and the genocide which followed. We know for sure that Donald Trump has a record of bloodthirstiness -- how does it compare with Nixon's?
In 2001, after the events of September 11th, the administration of George W. Bush ran a publicity campaign against the dictatorship in Iraq, as a pretext to a bloody war against Iraq which probably wasted about 800,000 lives (if we are to measure them by the rate granted by The Lancet, which suggested 655,000 lives lost as of June 2006). Has Donald Trump done anything comparable?
2) Presidents who screwed us on civil liberties
Here we must think of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Bush for having pushed through the USA PATRIOT Act, and Obama for having extended the Act and coordinating the crushing of the Occupy protests in 2011. And while we're talking about civil liberties, we should say something about Woodrow Wilson. (FDR get a dishonorable mention for the internment camps.) Has Donald Trump done anything relatively bad when compared to what those two were able to do? I suppose keeping the PATRIOT Act around qualifies him.
3) Doing nothing effective while the economy went to ruin
Here the prize should go to Herbert Hoover, who was ideologically incapable of taking effective action against the onset of the Great Depression, the worst economic catastrophe in history. I suppose, though, we should give Donald Trump a few more months to see if he can outdo Hoover on this score.
4) Subverting the national interest
First place in this event has to go to James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861 (perhaps not "modern in Sanders' sense). A portion of Buchanan's Republic seceded, despite his fruitless "negotiation," though his Secretary of War John B. Floyd managed to sequester large quantities of weaponry for the Confederate cause in anticipation of its secession. (While we are on Buchanan we should mention his role in making the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision the awful thing that it was.)
*****
Now, in discussing these other Presidents, we should in no way excuse the atrocious behavior of Donald Trump. Here is a list of Trump's bad moves. What we should admit, however, is that American Presidents are generally prone to being bad. Most Presidents before the Civil War should be duly excoriated for their support for the institution of slavery and their brutal warfare against the native peoples of the land. Presidents of the late 19th century were commonly involved in patronage scandals. Warren Harding's appointees were basically crooks. Woodrow Wilson was possibly the worst racist to inhabit the White House, and that evaluation would have to include Donald Trump.
The challenge, then, is not to elect a President who is better than Donald Trump. Being bad is the norm for Presidents. In this regard, we can expect that if Joe Biden were somehow to luck into being elected President, he would fit that norm. The challenge is to elect a President who is actually good: we need to change the norm. So far Bernie Sanders is what we have.
Comments
Agree and Disagree ...
Lots of good candidates but, for me, the worst President in my lifetime has to be LBJ, because he reversed JFK's policies that, in my view, would have led to a thaw in the Cold War and saved 50,000 US lives that were lost in the misguided US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. And, frankly, I don't want to delve too deeply into CT but I believe there's evidence that LBJ may have been behind the conspiracy to eliminate his predecessor.
As far as the current Presidential campaign is concerned, while I respect Bernie and his positions, I'm afraid that where our choices among active candidates are limited to four 70+ white men (Bernie, Biden, Trump and Weld) and one younger, energetic candidate whom happens to be female, I'm going with Tulsi when the MD primary comes around. I don't buy this "lesser of two evils" BS, I vote for the person I think is most authentic and would make the best leader, which in my view, is Tulsi. But, I certainly respect those who advocate for Bernie who has certainly been slammed in the MSM in recent weeks to the same extent as Tulsi, but at least he's still mentioned whereas the MSM and DNC establishment has been doing everything they can to erase Tulsi.
Johnson also pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Though clearly the conflagration he caused in Vietnam was dreadful -- here I am allowing LBJ to plead ignorance for at least part of his term, though certainly he could have avoided causing a lot of bloodshed once he had decided not to seek a second term. Nixon knew better, and yet decided to continue along Johnson's lines at least for the whole of 1969.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Still Not Good Enough for Me ...
… The legislation had been put forth by the Kennedy Administration and I've got to think JFK, had he lived and won a second term, would have produced the same results. Plus, there's evidence that JFK was planning on replacing LBJ in 1964 with Terry Sanford, a much more progressive Southern Democrat similar to Jimmy Carter and, in more recent times, John Edwards.
But we agree to disagree on this topic, I just happened to believe that the loss of 50,000+ American lives is a great stain on LBJ's Presidency that outweighs the domestic programs.
Additional tragedy was
that it was wholly unnecessary politically or geopolitically. LBJ was under no great bipartisan pressure to go into VN massively. Very little political pressure overall in fact -- only a few crazy RWers, and of course Nixon out there hinting that American shouldn't abandon its allies, blah blah blah. Even some of Johnson's close Dixiecrat supporters, like Sen Russell of GA, the closest senator to LBJ, strongly warned him against it.
The Right and their views represented by war hawk Barry Goldwater, had been resoundingly defeated in the 64 election. Overwhelmingly. It was liberalism in the ascendance. And at that time, they were not pumping for a little war over there. Lyndon's liberal VP, Hubert Humphrey, was strongly against going to war, as was Maj Leader Mike Mansfield. Hubert paid a big price personally when Johnson read his antiwar memo and decided to cut him out of future VN discussions. And he also bugged Humphrey's office. Signs of disloyalty. What else was he disloyal about?
Hindsight is great.
It also omits factors that led up to 1964. The biggie as far as I'm concerned is that the US didn't demobilize after WWII as FDR had planned.
Why was Truman rejected for reelection in 1952? In the middle of the McCarthy period, "He lost China."
Who served as LBJ's Defense Secretary? Who appointed him? It's heartbreaking that LBJ didn't/couldn't hear the better/wiser FP voices at that time. That he always felt intellectually inferior to east coast intellectuals. Couldn't shove Vietnam back into the secret US war that it had been for nearly two decades. LBJ's "daisy ad" that almost nobody actually saw was a response to loud voices among warmongers in 1964 who were advocating nuking Vietnam. The Vietnam War was popular with the general public through 1966, and protestors were the same reviled "peaceniks" they've always been. MLK, Jr.'s 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech was dismissed as he was by both the white and black communities.
The 1960s were truly the best and worst of times, but the prior generation said the same about WWII. The major difference was that young men didn't want to go to Vietnam or even be compelled into military service, but they weren't public about that. They didn't applaud Muhammad Ali in 1966 when he refused to be drafted; instead they loathed him like everyone else did.
McN's policy
was to implement the president's policy, giving advice when asked. With JFK, he initially argued in favor of sending in troops, but when he got the clear sense that JFK wanted to wind down instead and wanted Pentagon cooperation in providing a specific withdrawal plan, he worked loyally to implement that policy.
(Others in powerful positions, such as Averill Harriman in a top State Dept post, were not loyal to Kennedy and his peace-seeking plans, and in that case even quietly acted to sabotage peace efforts. Interesting how Harriman ended up leading the US delegation for Lyndon at the Paris Peace Talks.)
Working for LBJ, McN got a Feb 24 (or 25th) 1964 phone call from Lyndon, and hearing the conversation from the WH Tapes, there's no question Johnson was barking out orders -- about ramping up the US military effort -- to his underling McN. Not even remotely a case of McN badly advising poor Lyndon -- LBJ was too busy interrupting him and telling him what to say about the war at Mac's next presser.
Will have to stop there. This could go on a long time, and I must get on with other things here at the hacienda.
Re LBJ's
Daisy Ad: It wasn't a general counter to various warmongering voices in the land re VN. The ad (LBJ aide Bill Moyers was the responsible party ultimately for its creation) was a clever, devastating way to respond specifically to one person, namely Barry Goldwater, LBJ's election opponent in 64, who indeed had made remarks not only about how nukes might solve the situation in VN, but had also made reckless comments about how it might not be a bad idea if we were to launch one at the Kremlin. Obviously it was designed to reference those highly publicized comments and to highlight how dangerous BG would be as president.
Re LBJ's advice on VN: As I noted, Johnson was more about giving advice than taking it, at least wrt McN and a few others in the admin, the Kennedy holdovers. (He was deeply angered in early 65 when his VP, HHH, sent him a 5-pg memo explaining why escalating in VN would be unwise. This early, little-known antiwar Humphrey, was actually closely following the late 1963 withdrawal position of JFK, which Hubert may have been familiar with as senator). But LBJ was also getting advice from others close to him politically, esp southern Dems like Sen Russell, Lyndon's mentor in the senate, who strongly advised him against going in. Russell told him specifically that it would be a quagmire, an unwinnable war essentially. LBJ heard him and said, Yes I agree. But I have to do it anyway b/c They will hound me to death if I don't.
Johnson knew exactly what nightmare mess he was getting into. And b/c he was a hardcore cold warrior, he vastly overestimated how not going in would resonate politically. In 64/65, there just was no major groundswell of opinion in the land in favor of escalation, and generally VN was not yet a driving issue for the public b/c our military footprint there was still just several thousand military advisers.
On his getting advice generally: remember, LBJ was ALWAYS on the phone with dozens of people every day, Ds and Rs in Congress, people inside and outside the WH And of course today we can hear what was said from the WH tapes (those which still exist, haven't been tampered with). So, it's very misleading to discuss his getting advice on the war only in terms of McN or any other Kennedy holdover. There were plenty of sane, wise voices on VN that LBJ respected or claimed to respect or should have respected, who were advising him not to escalate. Among them, Russell and other usually conservative figures, many in Congress; Humphrey, and LBJ's successor as Maj Leader, Mike Mansfield, whose area of specialty and interest in the senate was Asia.
Re his intellectual inferiority to "those Harvards" as he called them, there was for sure at least a surface sense of that, which he likely reconciled with an attitude of I'm just as smart; I just didn't have the chance to go to Harvard and get a fancy degree to prove my smarts. It is very misleading to suggest any sense of inferiority meant he was just a puppet to them or easily manipulable. Johnson was always thinking solely in terms of what best benefitted him politically. If advice from fancy Ivy League advisers wasn't consistent with his political goals, the advice was noted but not followed.
Finally, if some give LBJ full credit on the domestic legislation, it's important to be consistent and give him full discredit for his unnecessary, disastrous war, and not pass the buck onto his holdover Harvards.
Gets both the credit and discredit from me.
You only seem to give him the discredit.
Wrt nukes in 1964, in the public's mind that only concerned Vietnam. Most voters at that time recalled Hiroshima and Nagasaki and believed it had been effective/worth it. Many advocated doing the same thing in Korea and then China. These were Americans still in the grip of the glory of being the winners and took the "loss" of China as if it had been lost in an active US war. A decade and a half later they were fully invested in the "domino theory" -- no more Chinas. That wasn't out of the blue, as US domestic anti-communism propaganda had been present since the Russian Revolution and was an extension of the crackdown on socialism and labor that preceded it by a few decades. They incarcerated the socialist party leader for god's sake!
Read Robert Caro on LBJ's early life (so painful that it made a non-softie like me teary-eyed), political development in sync with the New Dealers and LBJ's life, and his first hundred days. Early wounds never heal completely and JFK's team did a number on LBJ that opened and exposed them -- LBJ wasn't "their kind." His first hundred days were LBJ's, developed over his decades in office, and not some fanciful completion of the cold warrior JFK's agenda. (Bay of Pigs > Cuban Missile Crisis > came close to blowing up the world. That cooler heads prevailed doesn't absolved JFK for having fomented the crisis.) LBJ was political mature on DP when he took office as president and JFK was a rookie, but he looked good on camera.
In many ways LBJ is like Sanders. Domestic policy is in their well-earned wheelhouse and foreign policy isn't something either of them spent much time, effort, thought on in the process of developing their political careers. Sanders had access to a higher regarded college education than LBJ did, but it may have left Sanders more ill-prepared to enter the political arena as a young man. If his post-2016 FP statements aren't merely political calculations, Sanders is only half as shockingly weak on FP than Hillary. What FDR (and perhaps Lincoln) had that LBJ and from what I've seen so far don't is an uncanny ability to select the right person, at the right time, for the right job. LBJ had the advantage of not being exclusively a one-man band in his time, and thus was able to push forward and expand upon the vision and spirit of the New Deal. but the window of opportunity was narrowing and it shut a few years later.
A side note - I won't forgive or overlook LBJ for treating HHH in the same manner JFK had treated him. There's no reason for that sort of cruelty towards someone on one's team. That's one way in which Sanders is a better man than either JFK or LBJ.
On the JFK-LBJ
relationship, two points. 1) You might want to consider the thinking from the other side -- that the JFK camp was none too pleased with the way Johnson ran his brief 1960 attempt at the nom, esp his camp's nasty invocation of father Joe K.'s past. Also as important, the way LBJ bullied his way onto the ticket (see RFK's oral history for the full true story). That was brutal, and put JFK in a no-win situation, virtually forcing him to accept Johnson as his VP when he refused to decline what was intended as a mere pro forma, courtesy offer (made b/c JFK knew Maj Ldr Lyndon would be greatly offended in not at least being asked).
Some prefer to believe the fairy tale, oft repeated in American Heritage and PBS recountings, that JFK knew he needed TX. Balderdash. JFK knew enough of the real Lyndon from being in the senate with him for 8 yrs to know he didn't want that sort of maverick, dubious character and wheeler-dealer type. JFK undoubtedly was aware of Johnson's long-running bag-money operation he ran out of his ML office, and of course his overall crude, bullying style.
2) JFK even as a president who didn't much care for his VP, tried to treat him with respect. But it was clear from their first extended meeting at Hyannis post-convention that LBJ would be a difficult person to just be around for a few minutes. Set in his ways, a poor listener, easily offended by slights or perceived ones, someone who was clearly not comfortable taking orders. (see again, RFK oral history, and the Busby book, which has some fascinating anecdotes) JFK nonetheless tried to involve Lyndon in discussions and decision making, but ultimately found the process more trouble than it was worth.
There was also a sense from the two Kennedys that given LBJ's difficult and peculiar behavior, there was clearly a question of his honesty and loyalty. After the first year, as his sec'y Evelyn Lincoln later noted, JFK cut back on his solo meetings with Johnson in the Oval and largely tried to find things to keep Johnson busy. EEOC, Nato trips abroad, other foreign visits -- eventually more and more foreign trips that nicely kept him away. JFK had enough major problems, DP and FP, on his plate, and didn't need the added headache of a difficult person lurking around. We've all met these types in our own lives -- they are energy-drainers and best kept at a distance.
Re Caro, yes I've read most of his volumes. He has not been quite as good lately as he was in his early volumes. One author working in this general field told me he knew RC back in the day, the 70s and just as the first volume was being published. He says it's clear to him that this is not the same dogged independent researcher looking only for the truth, but rather one with a keen eye fixed on producing an establishment-pleasing book which can garner book awards and get him booked on the usual tv shows.
In that author's view, despite the many Caro volumes, we have yet to see a complete, honest look at LBJ the politician, VP and P. Too much of the dark side has been overlooked, glossed over by the likes of Caro, the fellow who thinks Dallas was carried out by one lone nut. Of course, when you're trying to curry favor with TPTB, that is exactly the position you must take. Although it doesn't make for honest history.
On the 64 CR Act,
fine. But first, was he (or any other Dem prez this side of Strom Thurmond coming into office under the unusual circumstances) really NOT going to push it forward in Congress -- this the most important unfinished piece of legislation his murdered predecessor had left on his desk? With rumors even then swirling around Johnson's possible involvement in Dallas, he wasn't about to create more suspicion by not promoting the JFK-initiated legislation.
And, probably knowing he would soon have VN to have to promote and defend, he didn't want to have to fight a huge battle on his left flank over CR. This and other liberal bills later to come were in part put forth to Keep the Liberals Happy while he prosecuted his little war (for political benefactors Brown & Root and other TX corporate interests).
Finally, on the process of the bill passing through Congress, I believe he allowed Mansfield, Humphrey and AG Bobby Kennedy to take the spotlight publicly and working it in Congress. This is b/c LBJ wasn't at all sure it would pass, and he didn't want it identified too closely to his name if it failed. Had that happened, he was positioning himself to say he was trying to push Kennedy's bill, which was always going to be a difficult sell. If it succeeded, he would of course take credit, and it would be his bill (he had added a few changes to make this argument plausible, in the event).
Hard to say how much LBJ actually cared about the substance of the bill. I think he was always about whether something was good for Lyndon. Never a liberal for sure.
Close to being the worst president ever.
That other Johnson from a century earlier also deserves mention in this dubious category.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was Johnson's thing
because the 1957 Civil Rights Act was his thing. Johnson was pretty instrumental in pushing through both of them.
Bad President because of escalation; not worst President ever.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Yes, as was Medicare/Medicaid
On domestic policy LBJ was up there with the best.
It was Kennedy's thing
that Johnson added to, somewhat "stamped his LBJ brand" on, if you will (in the event it passed). The 1957 toothless CR bill was again Johnson and politics -- a way for the Southerner to score liberal points with Northren liberals as he anticipated the 1960 election. (in private, LBJ told somewhat nervous fellow southern Dems approx just that -- it's a lot of bones, not a lotta meat.)
On the war, it wasn't just a huge tragedy over there for all concerned -- there was also that Tearing the Country Apart thing domestically. And the way Johnson and his buddy J. Edgar Hoover spied on , infiltrated, and attempted to destroy and discredit the antiwar movement stateside. Lyndon Johnson actually thought the protesters were literally being controlled from Moscow.
Kennedy would never have gotten the civil rights bill passed
Johnson's persuasion and the outpouring of sympathy after Jack Kennedy's death were what got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Johnson was also largely responsible for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Immigration and Naturalization act of 1965 which removed national origin quotas, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which banned housing discrimination and extended rights to Native Americans. He also created the Office of Economic Opportunity, passed the Food Stamp Act of 1964, established Head Start, etc., etc. He did more for Black Americans than any President in the 20th Century by far (and that includes FDR). With the possible exception of FDR, he was the most progressive President of the 20th century. It is not correct to say that he was not under pressure to stay in Vietnam and, indeed to escalate the war. Many forget, but there was a massive military industrial complex pushing the domino theory, anti-communism pervaded the very fabric of the nation and polls showed that the American people strongly supported the war. Johnson was being fed shitty information by the military and the intelligence services. He came to realize that he was being lied to but not until after a lot of harm had been done and he didn't have a good way out. He may have also been afraid of the CIA and the security state after what happened to JFK. Johnson hated the Vietnam war, but he did not have the courage to end it, and for that he has the blood of two million people on his soul. Nixon and Kissinger could have ended US involvement in the war at the beginning of his term on the same terms as it was eventually ended, so they are responsible for about a million unnecessary deaths, maybe more. GW Bush lied about Iraq and started a war that has resulted in about half a million unnecessary deaths and ongoing misery. Wilson's suppression of information about the 1918 influenza outbreak resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American. Bill Clinton had the opportunity to abolish NATO and open a new era of peace and chose to do the opposite.
So yeah, the US has had a lot of evil Presidents.
Thank you.
I'm imagining today's identity politics idiots confronting LBJ: "Omigod he's a ray-cist!" Indeed LBJ WAS a racist. No doubt about it.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
I nominate Clinton for tie of worse president Evah!
He royally f'cked us after the Cold War ended. We could have gone on a path to peace and the world would be much better today if he hadn't chosen the path he did. Whichever president did worse than that he still gets the top spot.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Too much there
to reply to, so just a few comments.
On the 64 CR Act, it was Mansfield's master legislative stroke, quietly disregarding LBJ's suggested traditional approach, which got it done. Having read bios of Mansfield, Humphrey and LBJ, it is quite clear that the first two, along with RFK and Sen Dirksen, who were the driving forces behind getting the bill ultimately passed. Lyndon, as I noted above, didn't want to publicly commit too much for fear the bill would fail and he would lose political face.
Re the VRA of 65, LBJ was seen to be stalling (as he did as VP when JFK wanted to introduce the CR Act in 63), and even Gov Romney (R-MI), who was involved in public demonstrations for a voting rights bill, called out Lyndon for his inaction.
On VN, I repeat there was no major push publicly for a ramped up war effort, and it was entirely LBJ's decision. Forget the sob story about getting lousy info from advisers* -- he knew exactly what he was doing, decided to go ahead anyway, for various reasons, many of them to repay TX corp benefactors, perhaps one to Pentagon/CIA elements to placate them not in any general powerful MIC sense but possibly b/c Lyndon owed them. Maybe too LBJ, always jealous of Kennedy, saw a way that he too could become a sort of war hero. Then there was the notion, common to swaggering TXans, that he would not be the first president to lose a war.
*replying to a couple of posters here: McN et al were first clearly given their marching orders on the War -- Lyndon told them, or they gleaned it, that he didn't care much for "the president's" (i.e. Kennedy's) policy of pulling out -- thought that was weak. Make no mistake, LBJ laid down the law to McN, Bundy and the rest. Bundy was later fired when he began to doubt the policy, and the same may have happened to McN (he was never sure if he was fired). Johnson always liked, and always kept on, Dean Rusk, the always hawk on VN, never in doubt, never wavered. And loyal.
I think we've already established here --
that LBJ sucked. You seem obsessed here with adorning the fine points with your opinions (without, I might add, a ton of substantiation -- if you're going to get all specific on us, your readers are going to want to see PLENTY of documentation.)
All of which seems to move away from the focus of this diary as I've laid it out. If you want to establish that LBJ is the worst President ever, fine, but the fact of the matter is that without the 1964 Civil Rights Act we'd still be fighting the early battles of the Civil Rights Movement, and we'd be doing it on a terrain that has been a losing one since the early Seventies. An inferior President would have vetoed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Would Donald Trump have signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, if it had been placed on his desk?
America's failure to insist upon good Presidents has led us to the current vortex of suck. And in this regard it's beginning to look like an awfully deep vortex of suck, with no plug at the bottom. Strategies for our situation would be gratefully welcomed.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Oh I made
several cites to books to check out all assertions. Beyond that, sorry, working only from memory, don't have books handy, and wouldn't know if those books are available online for easy reference and citing.
As for LBJ, when you sum up my comments and the various awful things he did -- unnecessary costly war, allowing dozens of US sailors to die, perhaps a foreknowledge of his predecessor's upcoming assassination -- a fair argument could be made as to his being the worst president. But I would just say he's easily in that argument.
Re the CRA of 64, the more proper hypothetical under those unusual circumstances in which he came to power would be whether just about any other DEM president (this side of a Dixiecrat) elevated from the VP spot would have put that bill forward. The answer is YES. And the bill would have passed with about the same filibustering obstruction from the southern racists. It would have passed because, as I noted, it wasn't some legislative genius by LBJ but some clever maneuvering by ML Mike Mansfield that ran counter to Johnson's advice that saved the day.
So, the 64 bill was about what we would have gotten anyway. And after the 65 landslide, which also would have happened with just about any D president in that Goldwater race, we would have similarly seen much liberal legislation during the 65-6 period. It wasn't just a 2-1 Dem majority in those 2 yrs -- it was a liberal working majority. Not seen since the ND days. Did we need an alleged legislative genius to pass good liberal bills in those circumstances? Congress would have initiated them if the D president hadn't and quickly passed them.
Problem is, with the good legislation passed b/c of a good congress, we also got the war, and great political division at home. And that particular war would NOT have happened with any other Dem president in office.
My two cents. Over and out ...
I neglected to mention
one other nasty evil deed from Lyndon, mostly from a recent book Blood in the Water (Joan Mellen): his plan to sacrifice the large Navy crew of the USS Liberty for his own political benefit wrt the upcoming 1968 election. Quite a story, from a very credible academic author who does careful research. Read for yourself, or listen to a few of her interviews about it at YT.
After Tonkin, I wouldn't put it past Lyndon to have conjured up another scheme, as another election approached, to again assure his victory. In mid-67, he was getting plenty nervous about the recent downturn in his usually rosy polls (which he carried around, literally, in his jacket pocket). If he got away with the Big Lie about Tonkin and VN, he could surely pull off this one and continue for another 4 yrs in the office he always wanted.
Lyndon Johnson covered-up Kennedy's murder
Lyndon Johnson perpetrated the greatest lie and fraud in U.S.History by covering-up the Kennedy assassination. Our Country was fractured by that crime, and it never recovered -- because corruption was allowed to win and stand without any consequences. And look at the people he chose to be on his (widely discredited) "commission":
. CIA architect Allen Dulles who Kennedy had fired!
. John J. McCloy President of the World Bank (WTF?)
. Gerald Ford - keeper of CIA & FBI secrets (later protected Nixon's multiple criminal offenses)
These people were enemies of President Kennedy (and Deep State operatives).
There is also evidence to suggest that Johnson himself was involved in the assassination.
Lyndon Johnson opened the doors to the CIA being allowed to perpetrate runaway criminality and face no consequences. And Johnson immediately reversed Kennedy's NSAM that called for a withdrawal of troops and involvement in Vietnam -- and Johnson forced a new policy that dragged Country through a massive bloodbath in Vietnam for 10 years, and set the "template" for U.S. Foreign Policy and its involvement in corrupt, futile Proxy Wars ever since.
It was John Kennedy who drafted and created and promoted the Medicare policy, and the Civil Rights policy. Kennedy just did not live to see it passed. The Bill was Kennedy's initiative (Johnson just got the "credit" for it, because it passed Congress after they had murdered Kennedy).
Lyndon Johnson, like the Bush crime family, and Woodrow Wilson ("Federal Reserve" Economic Monopoly, World War I) was a thug of the highest order.
How many have died in Venezuela cuz of sanctions
How many have died in Iran cuz of sanctions
How many have died or been scarred for life at the border
How many meriKans have died from lack of food stamps
How many meriKans have died committing suicide on his watch
How many meriKans have died irt lack of opioid action
How many meriKans have died in Puerto Rico
How many meriKans gonna die due to his denial of climate change
How many meriKans gonna die due to lack of response due to Covid19
I'm sure something has been missed, but the reality is since Kennedy
the progression of the downward spiral continues unabated
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I like the information but not the conclusion
Your distillation of the corruption and vileness of "modern presidents is great. 100% agreement.
But your essay is unfortunately concluded with Tulsi cancellation.
To the expected jeers of many, I repeat, Bernie is spineless, refusing to call out the chicanery. See what good his kissing of H. Rodent Clinton's ass did him? "Nobody likes him" said the Rat.
There is only one person in the public arena, although remorselessly shrouded in a blackout. TULSI.
Tulsi 2020. Accept no substitutes (but we may have to wait until 2024 to collect).
I'm down with Tulsi.
I'm also down with Howie Hawkins, the only one of those two whom I've met in person. In a better world, they'd be the only candidates on the ballot. First, though, we must establish a political "us" which will survive defeats.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Isn't Howie,
oh-for-24 in elections, also a bit of a Russiagater?
Howie is a reliable socialist and a union man.
Sure he's 0 for 24. He gets that for his refusal to run as a Democrat. Party-building is a tough grind in a majoritarian electoral system when everyone is convinced that membership in the Vichy Party is the prerequisite to any sort of victory.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Vichy party
Yes, yes. The sell outs. But almost all our politicians are sell-outs.
For this comment's musical coda, I thought of Political Man by Cream. Very pertinent. But I am torn between two choices:
Tell me what you think is better.
Boston: Television politician
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQj2IbBimHM]
Rory Gallagher: Bought and Sold
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kuweOp2Xqc]
FDR deserves more than a mention
for the internment camps. That wasn’t as bad as the genocide of Native Americans or the pointless deaths of millions in Asia, but it’s pretty bad. On that point he was a very bad person.
Yeah
In the diary I am mostly concerned with refuting Bernie Sanders' claim that Donald Trump "is the worst president" blah blah blah. He might be a good politician but he's not giving his public much of a history lesson.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
The camps were pretty bad
but largely in keeping with the racist wartime tenor of the times.. I don't recall sufficient or any pushback from liberal-minded Ds or Rs, and in fact it was liberal CA AG Earl Warren who strongly advocated for them. We were just entering war, and it was one of those bad things that happen, and don't get debated, b/c we are at war with an enemy that just attacked us, and who is going to politically risk anything as the Homefront is put on a war footing.
A black mark against his name, perhaps, but not enough to put him remotely in the Worst Presidents category.
It was a property grab on
the left coast by a cabal of wealthy men and property developers.
Few, if any, Japanese in HI and states other than CA, OR, and WA were interned. Just as very few Germans were interned.
Another thing that people forget about the internments
is that such a climate of racism had been stirred up against Japanese that Japanese Americans really weren't safe. Also after the Rape of Nanking, Chinese Americans harbored a great deal of animosity against Japanese Americans. I am not trying to justify the detentions, but just reinforcing the point that the times were different and the world would not have been a wonderful place for Japanese Americans had they not been detained. Incidentally, Japanese Canadians were also detained (90% of all Japanese Canadians!).
A lot of racism against
Japanese by Dec 7, 1941, adding to what anti-Asian racism existed before. Racism against blacks of course, and Mexicans. Then there was the rampant antisemitism, which is another issue FDR had to deal with.
Just different times socially and politically. And FDR had that weird political coalition he felt he had to keep together to get his ND legislation passed.
he's wrong, and he should know it
I like to classify Trump's government not as a "regime" or "junta", but as a "regency"; keeping the throne occupied until a "real" head of the Imperium can be reinstalled via the proper ceremonies (or until we finally get our miracle and install a PRESIDENT!). Point being, he's been the most stable occupant of the White House in the 21st Century, with the fewest gut-punching surprises to offer. W dragged us down to a new low. Obama ratified it in direct betrayal of the popular mandate that elected him. Trump has mostly just continued playing by their rules.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Millions dead
As the COVID-19 virus spreads we will lose a few millions of people due to Trump's lack of timely response. He will be the worst in modern times, followed by every other dangerous, deadly and destructive president of the late 20th and early 21st century. Tied for the near worst of the worst is GWB, Reagan, Clinton, GHWB, LBJ, and Truman and Obama. Tied for mediocre bad is Eisenhower, JFK, and Carter, and the one and only unelected, undistinguished, worthless, unskilled, brain dead president - Gerald Ford. Perhaps there is something wrong with the way that we elect presidents? Consider that it looks like our current two choices will continue this trend unabated.
Ironically the one candidate being ignored by the party and the MSM is by far the only statesperson of considerable stature, Tulsi Gabbard. I get it, you get it and Tucker Carlson from the Right gets it. Perhaps we get the president that we deserve because we are dumb and too lazy to intellectually evaluate our choices, instead letting the MSM lead us by the leash.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Only on Trump:
the unfolding C19 situation could be his undoing -- it's still too soon to tell how bad it will get -- and is shaping up to be the major factor determining the outcome this November.
Assuming he doesn't call off the elections.
Uh,
Perhaps obvious to half the populace early in '68, but half of that half wanted to throw more bombs and bodies at it.
On March 31, 1968 LBJ publicly acknowledged that it wasn't working by halting the bombing of Hanoi and opening the door to peace negotiations. Those began on May 10 in Paris. On April 2 LBJ announced that he wouldn't run for reelection. So, the war should have ended in 1968 or before LBJ left office, and before two of my classmates and so many others lost their lives because of Nixon.
My choice is Reagan.
He did not invent racism or kleptocracy, but he institutionalized them, in fact he made them acceptable, expected, even laudable. Coolidge was similar. If America becomes a murderous, racist, fascist police state it will be Obanma's fault for refusing to prosecute killer cops and bankstrs and increasing the power of the security state.
On to Biden since 1973
Thank you.
People here are missing the point, which is to say that the idea of Donald Trump as the "worst President evah" appears really dicey when it's subjected to scrutiny because a lot of them are really, really bad. Perhaps the "worst President ever" argument is an item in the arsenal of fools who think that Joe Biden is a sure shot to be better than Donald Trump was. It's definitely not a guarantee regardless of how bad Trump turns out to be, and he's definitely mishandled the coronavirus problem.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
LBJ backstory
Roger Stone might not be the most popular guy around here, but his book on the JFK assassination The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ is well worth a look (even if you don't agree with his ultimate conclusion that LBJ dunnit) for his account of Johnson's career from early on. It's pretty shocking - makes Bill and Hillary look kind of tame by comparison, if that's imaginable..
It was
Harry Blackstone Sr, magician and father of the more famous Jr, who worked in Johnson's Austin TX radio station in the 50s, who noted how much he learned about the art of misdirection from "the master of deception, Lyndon Johnson".
LBJ certainly showed those deception skills with his Gulf of Tonkin Res, which had long been in the planning and was ready to roll out at just the politically opportune time (just after the Repub convention and a short while before the Dem convo). Many liberal anti-escalation senators were fooled, including Humphrey, Wm Fulbright and George McGovern.
I haven't read the RS book, b/c, as you note, his credibility is definitely in question. However, other authors in recent times with far more cred have hinted at LBJ's possible involvement with Dallas. Yet most do so not in print but in oral comments made at lecture Q&As and interviews. For 25 yrs I have shared these suspicions -- there in some circumstantial evidence, but hard to prove BARD.
One suspicion I've had is how hard it is to believe that Johnson, always keenly aware of what was happening politically in his home state, would suddenly be unaware of certain elements acting there, probably over a period of months, which would greatly benefit his political standing (indeed, events which would bail Lyndon out of a great deal of political trouble, corruption investigations in the senate linked to him, and his personal trouble with JFK, whom Lyndon thought was going to dump him from the ticket in 64, which would mean the end of his career.)
On the latter point of being closely aware of matters happening in TX which involved him, note the comments made (in a posthumously published book of memoirs) by loyal Johnson aide Harold Busby in the chapter about the Nato trip to Brussels that Kennedy sent him on in Oct 63. Johnson, hearing by phone from a loyal source back in TX, gets word that a large group of journalists, many national reporters, were going around TX trying to find dirt on LBJ corruption. The hint given in the Busby book, speculation from Busby as Johnson never really told him who he thought was behind it, was that LBJ thought this was a Bobby operation, to get dirt on him to force him off the ticket. Johnson was furious, and greatly worried as Busby could clearly see, that not only was his political career over, but that he might also end up in prison.
Perhaps it was sheer coincidence, dumb luck, that just a month later events would occur to suddenly remove these worries for Lyndon. But I doubt he was an innocent beneficiary.
Deep
rabbit hole...
FWIW - the link in my post is to google books and has portions of the book, but not all of it, if you have reservations about enriching Stone or Amazon.
I've only read parts of it myself, but am convinced by that and checking reviews that I need to get it and read the whole thing. You might want to have a look at this review, for example, as well as the comments on it - quite a few other books mentioned there including on the Dulles brothers - Devil's Chessboard - recommended elsewhere by others on C99 is mentioned...
One thing to keep in mind about Stone is that he knew important political players from that era - including the Lodge family (Henry Cabot Lodge was appointed by JFK as ambassador to S. Vietnam and knowledgeable about Kennedy's conflicts with them over Vietnam policy). And Nixon, of course, from whom he found out that Jack Ruby used to work as a paid informant for HUAC (House Un-American Affairs Committee) - having been introduced by LBJ (Nixon served on HUAC - his first term in the House was Johnson's last).
For a (thinly) fictionalized account of that era - roughly 1959-1969 James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy is pretty riveting stuff.