Yeah, I read it a while back in the book Taking Charge. Funny sorta-LBJ story. Back in Freshmen year history at SWT, we were discussing the JFK years. Our professor was going on about how the selection of LBJ fit your typical VP selection theory. "JFK was from the Northeast, LBJ from Texas. JFK was born into a wealthy family, LBJ was not. JFK went to all the good schools, LBJ did...um well." Class erupted into laughter.
That is freaking hilarious. Nothing like hearing the President say bunghole. Is this the same Haggar that makes men's clothes you can buy like in department stores and what not?
Oh, that is just classic LBJ. Thanks! There will never be another like him. Pure Texan, and a Democrat. Is there a lot of stuff like that out there on LBJ? A lot of folks don't remember what he was really like. The guy could work a room and make a deal like few before or since. People talk about how Kerry's record in the Senate has been used against him, but LBJ is an example of using that experience to your advantage in the White House. He got much of JFK's proposals, as well as his own, passed, when the odds were not in his favor. I would never say that Kerry is in LBJ's league as a politician, but I see his experience helping him work with Congress. He knows how it operates. LBJ played by his own rules.
Here's an excerpt of a phone conversation that's also on that site, between LBJ and Rev. Martin Luther King. Lyndon Johnson took office in 1963, pledging loyalty to Kennedy's policies, especially expanded federal protection of civil rights for African Americans. In July, 1964, President Johnson signed a landmark Civil Rights bill outlawing segregation in public facilities. Six months later, Johnson went even further, using a racial crisis in Alabama to pressure Congress into backing the historic Voting Rights Act. On January 2, 1965, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in Selma, Alabama, demanding the right to vote for black people. Selma was known as one of the toughest places for African Americans to register. Of Selma's 15,000 black adults, only 300 could cast a ballot in 1965. Lyndon Johnson saw an opportunity. To pass a voting rights bill, LBJ needed the nation to see a vivid case of discrimination against black people trying to register. He called Reverend King in Selma on January 15, 1963. LBJ: If you can find the worst condition of being denied the right to cast a vote…and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio and get it on television, and get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon, the fellow that didn't do anything but drive a tractor will say, "That's not right. That's not fair." And then that will help us on what we are going to shove through in the end…And if we do that…it will be the greatest breakthrough of anything…The greatest achievement of my administration….So that's what we've got to do now. And you get in there and help us. MLK: That's right... http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/c1.html
LBJ knew that the Voting Rights Act would make the South go Republican and it did. That is what we need more of. Moral courage to do the right thing. Not just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Johnson was a riot.
