Thursday, December 29, 2022

Maybe A Little Less Grandiose?

LBJ is remembered for the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act (which barely exists anymore and is not likely to be legislatively resurrected soon); and the Vietnam War. The last is why he didn’t run again.

To say he’s one of the most consequential Presidents in U.S. history is like saying Thomas Jefferson edited an interesting Bible, or Ben Franklin wrote an interesting almanac. It sounds good, but it barely captures the man’s accomplishments in the White House. Put simply, most of modern government you can’t connect to FDR, is due to LBJ. I know that’s weak tea , too; but count the programs you can think of (Medicare; Fair Housing; education; PBS and NPR; generally government helping people who actually need government help): all LBJ, most of it directly LBJ. You’d be hard pressed to overstate his accomplishments.

And all forgotten in the furor over Vietnam. (Yes, we had a war there. Git off mah lawn, ya punk bastards!)

“Who controls the past controls the future”? Isn’t that like saying “The victors write history”? The victors who drove LBJ from office certainly wrote his history. Nobody’s reading Caro. His books on LBJ are “classics.” A book which everyone praises and no one reads.

Biden deserves better. He’ll probably get it considering who his opponents are:
I mean, seriously?

No comments:

Post a Comment