Lyndon Baines Johnson was never one of my favorite presidents as a man—he seemed quite unrefined, especially compared with the suave John F. Kennedy whom he succeeded after JFK’s shocking assassination. Yet I’ve come to rank him among America’s most effective presidents, thanks to his unmatched legislative triumphs like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
Those of you who were born by 1950 certainly
remember Kennedy’s assassination on November 23, 1963, and Vice President Lyndon
B. Johnson’s sudden elevation to the presidency aboard Air Force One on that
fateful day.
Although Johnson ran for the Democratic
nomination for president, JFK (who was nine years younger) secured that
nomination on the first ballot at the July 1960 Democratic National Convention.
He then promptly selected a running mate, offering that position to Senate
Majority Leader Johnson, who had placed second in the presidential balloting.
Johnson thus became the 36th POTUS
and was elected for a full four-year term by a landslide in the 1964 election. By
that time, he was widely known as just LBJ, and in that presidential campaign
he widely used the phrases “All the way with LBJ” and “LBJ for the USA.”
LBJ was born in Texas in 1908, and in 1930 he
graduated from what is now Texas State University in San Marcos with a Bachelor
of Science in history and a high school teaching certificate. (TXST compares
unfavorably with the other two public Texas Universities, UT Austin and TAMU.)
He taught at Sam Houston High School in 1930-31 and also entered politics that
year.
Johnson served as a congressional aide from 1931
until 1937, the year he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where
he served for over 23 years. In 1949 he was elected as a U.S. senator, and
he served as the Democratic whip from 1951 until 1953.
In January 1953, LBJ was chosen as
Senate minority leader by his fellow Democrats, the most junior senator
ever elected to that position.
In 1954, Johnson was re-elected, and since the Democrats won the majority in
the Senate, he became the majority leader, and some say he was the
most effective Senate majority leader ever.
The first years after LBJ’s election as POTUS
in 1964 were highly successful. Many months ago, I first thought about writing
this tribute to Pres. Johnson upon thinking about the importance of the
legislation he was able to pass in 1964 and ’65. I didn’t realize at the time,
though, that it was partly because he was finalizing the legislation initiated
by JFK.
That connection was portrayed well by the 2016
movie LBJ. Although it premiered at the Toronto International Film
Festival in September, it didn’t reach theaters until November 2017. I wish it had
been released immediately after it premiered, as it could well have changed the
outcome of that very close, and very unsatisfactory, 2016 presidential
election.
The film, which I don’t know why June and I didn’t
watch in 2017, didn’t make me think any more highly of LBJ as a man; I didn’t
like his cussing and crudeness at any point in his life. But it did cause me to
think even more highly of him as a president and helped me to agree with a
recent ranking of Johnson as the ninth best president in U.S. history, one
notch above JFK.
If you are at all interested in learning more
about one of the most prominent U.S. presidents, I encourage
you to watch the movie LBJ, which was directed by Rob Reiner, who was
tragically stabbed to death two months ago (in Dec. 2025). It is available for
free streaming on Kanopy, available on DVD in many public libraries, and for rent
at just $4 at Prime Video.
LBJ, quite unlike the current POTUS, was a man
of integrity, who overcame his southern prejudices and signed the Civil Rights
Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In spite of his later over-involvement
with the Indochina War in the 1960s, he is a man well worth remembering and
honoring still.
And three cheers to LBJ for his role in creation of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1968 and the public funding it made possible for public radio and television. I encourage all your Thinking Friends, Leroy, to get to Austin to visit the LBJ Library. It is worth the stop if you go there.
ReplyDeleteThe above comment is from me. Forgot to enter my name.
ReplyDeleteThank you, David, for mentioning that important Act of 1968, just one of so many passed during LBJ's productive years in the White House. -- I am sorry to say that I haven't been to any presidential library except Truman's in nearby Independence--and that I will not be able to make another trip to Texas.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tribute to LBJ. As you know, cussing and crudeness are things I indulge in at times, and they usually don't bother me when others do. It seems to me that today we need some new thinking on language and vulgarity. Where lies the greater vulgarity -- hardcore cuss words or the deliberate lying by powerful leaders to manipulate a nation into submission to authoritarianism, even fascism? What was more damaging to the USA and the world, LBJ's cussing and crudeness or his lying about the Vietnam War? I apologize for my cantankerousness here. In today's MAGA-saturated political and cultural climate I have trouble controlling myself.🥹
ReplyDeleteAnton, thanks for reading this morning’s blog post and for sharing your comments, although I wish you had said more bout LJB rather than about my personal dislike for “cussing and crudeness.” As you surely noted, that did not keep me from highly evaluating him as the 36th POTUS. And I was not comparing his “cussing and crudeness” to anything else as I was simply stating my own preference for how people talk.
DeleteOf course, “deliberate lying by powerful leaders to manipulate a nation into submission to authoritarianism, even fascism.” That and using vulgar language are two completely unrelated issues.
Also, of course there is no reason to pit “LBJ's cussing and crudeness” to “his lying about the Vietnam War.” There is no point in making an evaluation of two issues that are not comparable in any way.
Indeed, Leroy! I should have said that I'm greatly appreciative of LBJ's domestic policies, especially on poverty, voting, and civil rights. He had vision for a society that gave many of us hope back in the day.
DeleteThis is very much my take on LBJ, Leroy. He looks like an engine for positive change, esp. compared to the unprecedented mess we have now. I, unfortunately, do regard him as a war criminal for signing off on military actions that resulted in over a million casualties in Vietnam, may of these unpleasant deaths. Then Nixon added another million while "winding down the war" between 1969 and the end of 1972. (Sources on request).... I enjoyed visiting LBJ's home near Austin several years ago. It was August-- a month that I would not recommend. His beloved Pedernales River was barely a trickle then.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your significant comments. I fear my statement about LBJ's "later over-involvement with the Indochina War in the 1960s" was not nearly strong enough or entirely accurate. Upon review, I find he was highly engaged from August 1964 (which I should have known) and, indeed, quite likely more than a million Indochinese civilians died because of his ramping up the war there. As you know well, the second Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by the U.S. Congress in August 1964, authorized Johnson to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war."
DeleteWhen I asked AI about how he could be ranked the ninth best president, the answer was that he often ranks along with two or three presidents for his domestic policies and the pursuit of justice. However, his foreign policy ranking is often in the bottom three. One ranking puts him at second in "pursuing equal justice for all" and "legislative skills," but 38th in "international relations." Putting those with other categories results in an overall rank of ninth best president.
Eisenhower ended his term in 1961 warning us about "the military-industrial complex." Too bad he only had eight years to do something about it. Seems like, if I remember right, that Biden said something similar at the end of his term. Too bad he only had four years to do something about it. Ah, here it is: https://www.google.com/search?q=biden+warning+about+military+industrial+complex&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1015US1015&oq=biden+warning+about+military+industrial+complex&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAtIBCTI2ODUzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:3a00caf1,vid:x8o2rwHd-us,st:0
ReplyDeleteI was first old enough to vote for President in 1972, when I voted for George McGovern against Richard Nixon. There is an American dream I have tried to vote for, but I have spent all of my adult life being horrified by Republican Presidents and disappointed by Democratic Presidents. Biden's farewell address just reminded me of how far short what they accomplished fell from what they needed to do. President Johnson was the same, laying the groundwork for the destruction of his Great Society in his failure to control the Vietnam War. I admit, this problem is older. I remember as a boy in Missouri hearing other kids shout "The South shall rise again!" We have never finished the Civil War. Indeed, it could be argued that we live not in the United States of America, but rather in the second republic of the Confederacy. Perhaps someday we will live in the second republic of the United States.
I read an article yesterday looking at the problem of the military-industrial complex through the lens of nuclear war. It was sad and frustration. You can read it here, including, if you stick with it to the end of the comments, my thoughts: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/do-you-trust-epstein-elite-with-nuclear-weapons.html
Craig, you regularly give me and other readers of this blog much to read in addition to the blog itself and the comments by my Thinking Friends. I opened both of the links you posted, but I heard/read only a small part of each one.
DeleteI mainly want to comment upon your comments about LBJ's failure to control the Vietnam War." After reading and doing more thinking and research about what Rick (FShiels), my friend from long ago, said about LBJ, I realized that what I wrote in the blog post about LBJ's involvement with Vietnam was completely inadequate. He was the one who sent ground troops there and the one responsible for the deaths of so many North and South Vietnamese. Thus, his being considered by some as a war criminal may not be far from the truth. My "memory" of LBJ was too one-sided and I am embarrassed that I did not say more about how wrong he was to have caused so many deaths in Indochina from 1964 to '68,
Not to minimize US errors with the Vietnam war, the calculus of anti-communist fear at the height of the Cold War overly influenced LBJ and the Congress. Who were we to think we could wage a conventional war in SE Asia except at extreme cost to our country and to the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Too, the US military and CIA had roles, however limited, even in 1945 and onward. Like it or not, we have never fully reckoned with the anti-imperialist motivations of parties that embraced communism if that is what it took to affirm their countries’ nationalist impulses. The history for LBJ and all of us reaches forward to us even from the nineteenth century. Would that our presentist capitalism and emergent fascism had heart and mind to see it. Alas . . . .
ReplyDeleteThanks for your lucid comments, Jerry. And just about the time you were posting your comments this morning, the news media was informing us about how the current POTUS had launched a new war against Iran. I wonder how long it will drag on, and how similar it will be to the Indochina War of the 1960s (in spite of the obvious differences) and to the foolish "preemptive war" against Iraq in 2003. The apparent killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though, is a "big deal," and it is going to be interesting to see what the aftermath of that will turn out to be.
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