Opinion of Lyndon B. Johnson?

What are your opinions on the 36th President of the United States?

 

I was drafted into the army when LBJ was president. I think when it came to domestic policy, LBJ is at the top. Foreign Policy, he left a lot to be desired. LBJ was obsessed with the idea of not going down as the president who lost Vietnam. He had seen Truman tarred as the president who lost China. An enigma of a president, a hard sob who would punish his political enemies in a heartbeat while rewarding those who remained loyal. LBJ is ranked 13th in the historical rankings, which may be in my opinion a bit high. I would put him at 17 or 18, but it is close.

 

LBJ, a pure Democrat political hack, only got the position because JFK needed the $$$$ he brought in donations. He was also responsible for the second biggest boondoggle in American history, The War on Poverty. Trillions later and the poor are still poor and the divide between haves and have nots has only grown.

The 1st? The stupid War on Drugs.

 

I ranked him as "Good" - he would have been "Great" if not for Vietnam. I always say to anyone interested in politics that the best way to learn it (before you actually "do" it) is to pick an administration and study it inside and out - it's successes and failures, why the President made the decisions he did and what he could have done differently. Get down in the weeds with it. Once you do that and you feel you have a solid feel for that administration, then you have a solid basis on which to compare any other administration. Well, for me, that was the Johnson Administration. I've been studying it for over 20 years now, and I'll tell you honestly, I still have no idea what he could have done differently on Vietnam and come out with any better a result.

Domestically, I think he was pretty spot-on - he could run Congress like a well-oiled machine.... if you're a student of Congress, and you can read between the lines, the way he ran the Senate in the 50's was a thing of beauty. And you could still he the evidence of his influence there when he was President. If you ever read the Great Society speech from May of 1964, it gives you a vision of what America could be. He harnessed the prosperity of post--war America and set it to work to bring it's benefits to all. Thanks to the War on Poverty, the overall rate in 1959 was cut by half by 1979 - and there's no way you can tell me the economy was twice as good then. The civil rights acts eliminated the apartheid system we had in place and finally allowed everyone their full rights as citizens. Freedom finally became a fact under Johnson. Medicare freed seniors from the crushing burdens of healthcare at a time in their lives when they needed it most but could afford it the least.

On the economic side, he oversaw a strong and vigorous growth..... he cut taxes when he needed to and he raised taxes when he needed to. Sometimes, you need to do a little of both. I think what is pretty unheralded, though, is the fact that so many baby boomers entered the work force during the 1960's, and yet he still managed to keep the unemployment rate to under 4%. That's pretty impressive when you think about it. (And no, they didn't all get sent to Vietnam). Of course, on the other side of the coin (no pun intended), inflation did start to pick up under him.... although, he did take steps to head it off late in his administration - for instance, he balanced his last budget to try to bleed off some of the steam from the overheating economy. I think if he had been able to get another term, you would have seen more steps to try and keep inflation from getting out of hand.

So, all in all, I'd say Good.... if you had a "Near Great" category, I'd put him in there.

 

"When I took over the presidency, Jack Kennedy had left me a stock market of 711. When I left the White House, it was over 900. Now look at it. That's what happens when the Republicans take over—not only Nixon, but any of them. They simply don't know how to manage the economy. They're so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the richest corporations the biggest break, that the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket." - LBJ, 1971.

"Keep all your money in cash. Nixon will have us in an inflationary recession before his first year is over." - LBJ, 1969.

 

Like most presidents LBJ had some good points and some bad points. His heart was in the right place regarding the Viet Nam war but he should have let the generals execute the war to win it. His heart was also in the right place in his War on Poverty. But he failed to understand when people are propped up most will forever depend on the prop and be satisfied with their lot in life. Plus many more people will want a prop for themselves.

 

My opinion of LBJ is that he is dead. if anyone has any evidence that I am wrong in my opinion about LBJ please present your case to us. thanks, PART Z

 

I agree completely with this assessment, well said.

 

Funny how Nixion had to clean up LBJ's mess in Vietnam. There was the recession of 1969-70 directly linked to deficits partially caused by the spending on LBJ's insane war.

Just stop already.

 

Don't forget, Johnson's experience with "letting the generals execute the war" was MacArthur in Korea which very nearly led us into World War III. I think he pretty much gave Westmoreland and Abrams a free hand in running the war the South. He only really directly intervened in picking bombing targets in the North just to avoid a possible escalation. No matter how much or how little we bombed North Vietnam, though, the war was still going to be won or lost in the South.

I disagree with your "propping up" theory - sure, there are "hard-core" welfare recipients, but, by and large, experience has shown that most people will stay out of poverty once they get out of poverty. That's what the War on Poverty was about - a hand up, not a hand out.

 

To have credibility first you need to prove he ever lived.

 

Johnson would have a cease-fire in 1968 if Nixon hadn't sabotaged the peace talks by telling the South Vietnamese they would get a better deal from him. Guess what? They didn't. We had four years of that war that we didn't need to have because of Nixon.

BTW - LBJ balanced his last budget.... it was the last balanced budget until the Clinton Administration.

 

I don't know what experience you are referring to. Human nature is to take the path of least resistance. Why are food stamps recipients up, more and more people on assistance, while our national debt has doubled in 7 years? Half our population now receive some form of assistance from the government. Research what the War on Poverty has cost the hard working tax payer -- Do you think that $22 trillion (that is with a t) in 50 years has moved people out of poverty?

 

LBJ absolutely did not balance the budget, he ran deficits to fund his war.

There would have never been a peace deal in Vietnam, without the complete capitulation of South Vietnan.
LBJ sent half a million Anericans to fight in a war that we should have never been involved in with the first place. You're trying to polish a turd, just stop with the history revisionism already.

 

It's not the same framework that we had in the 60's and 70's, though....until Reagan started dismantling Great Society programs, it was a more comprehensive approach - that's why poverty was cut from 22% in 1959 to 11% in 1979. When Reagan made his cutbacks it broke the links between the different programs - money spent on welfare wasn't directly linked to anything else....like community development or job training, for instance. Once you break those links, then there's no plan to move people out of poverty - whatever you spend just boils down to throwing money at the problem.

 

The Fiscal Year 1969 Budget was balanced.... it was submitted by Johnson in 1968 and covered spending from July 1, 1968 until June 30, 1969.

The Paris Peace Talks started in April of 1968 and by October Johnson had a peace agreement in hand. The North Vietnamese signed on to it.... all he needed was South Vietnamese approval, which Nixon sabotaged. This is all historical record - Anna Chennault was Nixon's contact with the South Vietnamese.

 

Sleazebag creep of the worst kind.

 

You're right 1969 had a surplus of a whole 0.3%, lol. Which mattered very little since the country went into recession that very same year do to deficit spending the previous years to support LBJ's war. But keep trying to gloss over the fact that LBJ escalated that war to beyond insane. LBJ owns Vietnam, that's factual.

 

I only claimed it was balanced.... you can laugh all you want, but the fact is that you were incorrect about it never being balanced. And yes, the economy went into recession at the end of 1969, but that was also the first recession it had had since the Eisenhower Administration - I never claimed Johnson repealed the laws of economic reality.

I don't deny Johnson's share of the responsibility for Vietnam.... frankly, I'd put most of the blame on the North Vietnamese for invading the South in the first place, but I do think that if you're going to cast blame on Johnson for his conduct of the war, you at least ought to have the decency to say what you would have done differently if you were in his shoes.

 

Wall Street isn't Main Street.

 

Where did you hear that from ? Is this more of PC revisionism.

LBJ micromanaged the war in South East Asia, he rebuked his generals and admirals. The Vietnam War could have been won in 1965 or early 1966 if LBJ wasn't micromanaging the war from over ten thousands miles away with insane PC rules of engagement that he forced upon the Air Force and Navy over North Vietnam.

Obama made the same mistakes that LBJ made, except Obama has Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice who have been micromanaging the wars in Afghanistan and today in Syria and Iraq.

The Effects Of Restrictive Rules Of Engagement On The Rolling Thunder Air Campaign

excerpts:

The Rules of Defeat:

The Impact of Aerial Rules of Engagement on USAF Operations in North Vietnam
1965-1968 -> http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/digital/pdf/paper/t_drake_rules_of_defeat.pdf

 

http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/71/1969

This is the 1969 Nixon and not Johnson budget

 

Even with all of the bombing restrictions, we dropped more conventional bomb tonnage on North Vietnam than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined in World War II. There just weren't all that many strategic fixed targets in North Vietnam. We didn't need to bomb Vietnam back into the stone age - they were already there! The simple fact of the matter was that I don't think it would a difference how much we bombed the North, it wasn't going to make a difference to the war on the ground in the South. So if you acknowledge that fact and you agree the bombing was just a stick to get the North Vietnamese to agree to the carrot, don't think it was wise of the President not to make sure the stick didn't lead to an escalation of tensions? We had the Cultural Revolution going on in China at the time.... mobs of frenzied red book waving Chinese young people were fanatically dedicated to Chairman Mao. How much encouragement do you figure he would have had to give them before they were turned loose against us in Vietnam? Or if we started sinking Soviet-bloc ships in Haiphong..... why wouldn't the Soviets be justified in sending in their own air force units to help defend North Vietnam? There was a lot of different ways this could have gone against us if Johnson had just turned Curtis Lemay loose on North Vietnam. It seems to me the only prudent course for a President to take would be to weigh the risk when thinking about the reward.

 

Johnson submitted and Congress passed it in 1968.... Nixon was only President for the last 5 months of the Budget - it wasn't enough time to implement any policies that could have affected it one way or the other.

 

Ever hear of Occam's razor? LBJ murdered JFK.