In response to my earlier post on Obama and LBJ, Laura Clawson at GOS writes:
But if Obama could look at the history and see that that kind of arm-twisting is what it took to get big, good domestic legislation passed, shouldn’t he at least try? Is his personal style of politics that much more important to him than the substance of getting people in this country the health care they need?
I think that the fact that Obama brought in Rahm Emauel and tried to bring in Tom Daschle is a sign that Obama knew he would have to twist a lot of Congressional arms. That’s why it was a good idea to try to bring those two aboard, even though they’re assholes and possibly crooks. If you were a president with limited Washington experience and you wanted to emulate LBJ’s success, Daschle and Emanuel are the two guys you’d want on your team. And it’s quite possible that things would be going better with Daschle at the helm, as others have suggested.
I also tend to think that Obama’s personal political style is a carefully managed stage piece, modeled after Reagan, the idea being that the president should appear to be a bit above it all. Clinton liked to scream at people on the phone. Obama has Rahm Emanuel do it for him. “I don’t get tough with people, Mr. Gittes, my lawyer does.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling the Obama White House plays tougher than people think. I also have a feeling they’re just plain nowhere near as good as it as LBJ was. But who is?
donovong
What is it with all the fucking LBJ worship? The bst thing that asshole had going for him was the fact that JFK was assassinated, providing LBJ with politcal capital galore to do any damn thing he wanted – including get us assdeep in Vietnam.
The Civil Rights Act was more the product of the country’s response to JFK’s death than anything else IIRC.
donovong
I sure could use that edit feature about now!!
Max
Maybe it doesn’t matter in the argument, but LBJ came into power following the assassination of a President. Obama is the first black president in a country that is still very racist.
I thought Obama was going to be FDR. Now, we want him to be LBJ. I can’t keep it straight. But then we’re told that this is Camelot 2, so in that case, he’s JFK.
WTF?
DougJ
What is it with all the fucking LBJ worship?
He got what he wanted, politically, that’s all.
BFR
I also have a feeling they’re just plain nowhere hear as good as it as LBJ was. But who is?
I’m not all that sure about the LBJ love of late. I think a lot of his success had to do with the national mood after the Kennedy assasination.
LBJ took advantage of his situation but let’s not forget that his administration was in a ditch after about ’65.
Alan in SF
It seems that they were the two exact wrong people to bring in — people who knew how to make the Senate and the Congress knuckle under to corporate interests while entirely shutting progressives and reform supporters out of the debate.
DougJ
I thought Obama was going to be FDR. Now, we want him to be LBJ. I can’t keep it straight. But then we’re told that this is Camelot 2, so in that case, he’s JFK.
You left out Lincoln with the team of rivals.
Alan in SF
It seems that they were the two exact wrong people to bring in — people who knew how to make the Senate and the Congress knuckle under to corporate interests while entirely shutting progressives and reform supporters out of the debate.
PS: Donovang: Read Caro’s book on LBJ and the civil rights years. I was there in the 60’s and I hated LBJ for the war, but Medicare/Medicaid and the Civil Rights Bills were enormous achievements against tremendous resistance — far, far more of a sea change than the relatively modest and, in a sane world, uncontroversial reforms Obama is attempting with health care.
gwangung
Um, exactly which progressives and reformists are able to make people knuckle under?
Quaker in a Basement
Also Biden. Yes, the guy can be an incredible bozo in his public pronouncements, but he does have reach on the Hill.
Bob
Maybe. I might be dreaming, too, but I have to wonder if Obama backing off the public option was a way to light a fire under the butts of the left.
Here were were getting screamed at by nutjobs ont he right and losing our asses, while the left pretty much expected Obama to carry the load. Not so much anymore.
Leelee for Obama
All the JFK memorial stuff agreed to and put aside, LBJ was the most cut-throat Senate Majority Leader in modern (at least) history. He not only knew where the bodies were buried, he was perfectly willing to put you in a grave that he made you dig for yourself. I’m not saying Obama is quite that ruthless, but the man made it in Chicago politics, and he beat the Clintons in the fight of their lives, all the while not even breaking an obvious sweat. I think he is perfectly capable of letting Max Baucus know what’s what, and I believe he started to do that last Friday. I don’t need Barack to throw down in public, but I do believe that he’s doing plenty of smoke-filled room talking-I just don’t see him as OBambi-never did. I’m an idealistic shithead, but I think there’s steel there.
CDT
I’d like to think that Obama’s aloof and conciliatory style is all an act, and a means to progressive ends. The evidence to date suggests that he values the style more than the results, however. I would be delighted if all of this happy talk about bipartisanship was simply intended to give him cover to cram down what he (and we) wants. I fear that, whether if started out that way or not, he’s bought into his own talk and essentially Broderized himself.
valdivia
@Bob:
this is what I think. Look what happened: some comments were made that were very like what came before but not as committed, then the left went apeshit and the republicans overplayed their hand by revealing that they want No reform whatsoever. And voila now we are having a very different conversation than we did last week no?
MBunge
LBJ operated in a radically different political environment than what Obama faces. What he was able to accomplish may be inspiring, but I’m not sure there’s a heck of a lot to be learned from how he did it when applied to today.
Mike
eric
I will write this for the 100th time. Obama has already won. this gets to confernece it is game over. The only way it does not get to conference is something cataclysmic. He was losing the message war to the crazies and had to fight back a little. The public option may have been a trial balloon but I think it larger kabuki theater to dominate the newscycle even if awkward. The guy has balls. Not shout and stomp balls. Balls that let you play the long con
valdivia
@Leelee for Obama:
yes this too. why do you guys think he went to Montana for? His health?
Warren Terra
@ donovong, #1
I think that if Robert Caro had written three books about the life of Bob Novak I might be worshiping him, instead …
Less flippantly, he was a narcissistic, weak, amoral, and deeply flawed man. But for all that, he was brilliant, incredibly effective, and he seemed to have a genuine vision that he could achieve immortality by being responsible for creating a better, fairer society, and he was incredibly effective in service of that goal (the goal being, of course, the immortality rather than the society).
He also got us mired in a war that killed 55,000 Americans and millions of Southeast Asians knowing that nothing good could be achieved but nonetheless unwilling to pay the political price of admitting defeat; again, narcissism in action, to horrible effect.
So, in short: not a hero, not actually worshiped, but LBJ seems to rightly be held as being the touchstone of legislative achievement. Can you name someone who was more effective?
lamh31
Why the Public Option S**t Storm is Great News
“…I have no idea whether the administration intended to shift its position on the public option over the weekend (you can make a plausible case that it didn’t), and, if so, what it hoped to accomplish. But what it has accomplished seems really important and helpful. Prior to all the apoplexy on the left, the two poles of the debate were the president, who wanted a reasonable, fairly moderate set of health insurance reforms, but was nonetheless being branded a socialist or whatever, and a lot of lunatics on the right screaming about death panels and enemies lists and home invasions.
Around the conference table at TNR, we’ve been saying for weeks that what Obama really needed was a group of equally vocal, equally zealous critics on the left, pulling the debate’s center of gravity in the other direction. And, wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly what’s happened over the last 48 hours. We’ve now got a pole on the left to match the intensity of the pole on the right. (Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting a moral equivalence between the two. As far as I’m concerned, the critics on the left are basically right and the critics on the right are either insane or deeply cynical.) From a sheer tactical perspective, I think the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress have dramatically improved their position…”
Jay B.
Alan in SF is right. LBJ brought home what was out there and JFK let dangle (although seemed to be coming around on when he was killed) — namely measures on Civil Rights and Medicare, to say nothing of the rest of the Great Society, which dwarfed JFK’s New Frontier proposals.
And he may have done part of it (namely the Civil Rights Act) in the name of a martyr, but he delivered much of the rest of it on his own.
Also note that “his Administration pretty much died out starting in 1965” isn’t really the case — I’d put it in 1967 — but it’s entirely because of Vietnam and NOT his massive domestic undertakings.
At any rate, even if you really do believe it was all because of circumstance (and ignore LBJ’s possibly even more amazing delivery of the 1957 Civil Rights Bill in the Senate, even though it was watered down, which was truly a political feat for the ages) — Obama has that too. He doesn’t have a martyr per se, but he has the actual fact that health care sucks and the economy was ruined by the Bush Administration. He should, theoretically, also have the fucking votes. People HATE Republicans, even now. Instead, he gives them a seat at the adult table only to watch as they throw the mashed potatoes, their diapers and cry throughout dinner.
HighLlama
To be fair to both LBJ and Obama, LBJ didn’t exactly triumph on the health issue. Medicare was a watered down piece of legislation. If he could have covered everyone, I’m sure he would have done just that, but even that was beyond LBJ’s power and influence.
JWC
Obama has to be true to who he is. It got him this far. I do believe he is tougher than some think, but he could not have any success if he appeared to be an “angry” black man.
He is no LBJ for sure. And if he tried the LBJ tactics, the rage against him would be even higher.
I worry about his safety and wish him well. He sure inherited one heck of a mess.
Leelee for Obama
@Warren Terra: Only FDR to be honest, and that was at a time of extreme national peril. And he had “people”. Not that LBJ didn’t, but a lot of the arm-twisting was the man himself. He loved it and wouldn’t delegate unless necessary.
Zifnab
@Alan in SF:
Which just goes to show we need to go big or go home. Why fiddle around with half-assed insurance handout mandates and environmental baby steps? The GOP isn’t going to back anything you put forward. The moderates are still going to need their arms twisted behind their heads. Might as well go all in.
Fuck it, bring on the real full blown European style socialism. Then, when the Reich Wing decides to scream “He’s raping capitalism!” we can argue about the last twenty years of “capitalism” rather than refuting bullshit talking points.
FoxinSocks
Disagree that things would be better with Daschle. My mother met him once and talked to him for a good half an hour. Now, it was just one meeting, but she’s a top-earning saleswoman and she got that way by being able to size up a person right away.
This was back in the Bush presidency. My Mom’s a big liberal, Daschle told her everything she wanted to hear. Told her the Dems were going to fight hard. When he walked away, my Mom turned towards a colleague and said, “That man has no spine. He’s as soft as a marshmellow. He’ll never stand up for us.” And she was right.
Now Rahm is a completely different story….
Leelee for Obama
@Jay B.: Yes, the juveniles are misbehaving at the grown-up table, and they are being seen doing it. Obama knows he will NEVER get the right-wing-he’s after the Independents, as ,and those people don’t even like their kids and grandkids to behave as badly as the Rethugs are now.
lamh31
An addendum to what I posted earlier:
The left, energized
“Opposition always seems to be more energizing than power, and even as the White House struggles to flip the switch on the old campaign apparatus, the left is clearly gathering steam around its frustrations with the possible abandonment of the public option in health care reform…
Another indicator: the progressive fundraising site ActBlue is hosting a burgeoning “Standing up for the Public Option” drive — [a Firedoglake project] — and has raised more than $46,000 so far today for members of Congress who back a public option. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has raised another $50,000 for an ad pushing Ben Nelson on the issue.
Where this leaves the legislation is anyone’s guess at this point. But while the fervor on the right rose quicker, the next wave seems to be coming from the left.
ALSO: MoveOn sent out an email this morning under the heading, “The public option is NOT dead…”
Warren Terra
@ Leelee, #22
In addition to (though not independent of) being able to push for legislation to address an enormous and persistent state of national crisis, FDR also had inconceivable margins in Congress – with Democrats holding an incredible 80% of seats in both houses at one point. While both LBJ and FDR’s numbers are a bit overstated because they included conservative Southern Democrats, the so-called “Dixiecrats” had become if anything more recalcitrant by the 1960’s than they were under FDR.
FDR’s Congressional majorities:
1933-34: 317 Representatives, 61 Senators (of 96)
1935-36: 332 Representatives, 71 Senators (of 96)
1937-38: 346 Representatives, 79 Senators (of 96)
1939-40: 258 Representatives, 73 Senators (of 96)
1941-42: 273 Representatives, 68 Senators (of 96)
1943-44: 226 Representatives, 59 Senators (of 96)
LBJ’s Congressional majorities:
1962-64: 259 Representatives, 63 Senators (of 100)
1965-66: 295 Representatives, 68 Senators (of 100)
1967-68: 247 Representatives, 64 Senators (of 100)
Obama’s Congressianal majority:
256 Representatives, 60 Senators (of 100)
donovong
@DougJ: He got what he wanted politically? Really? Is that why he decided not to run for a second term?
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
This “toughness” debate is idiotic. If there’s anything powerful legislators dislike more than being pushed around by the President, it’s people SEEING that they’re being pushed around by the President. Witness how even Pelosi (who’s presumably more on the WH’s side than any speaker in recent history) doing very visible, vaguely hostile things like barring Rahm from caucus meetings, requiring him to get permission from her to talk to Democratic congressmen, etc.
I think the left has been too quick to explain by malice/corruption that which is adequately explained by ego. Sure, the President can push legislators around, humiliate them, and make them do what he wants; but publicly “humiliating” them is a one-way ticket to a dysfunctional relationship with Congress.
I think Max Baucus, like many other senior legislators, has an incredibly inflated sense of his own importance and historical significance. He sees a “great, wise bipartisan compromise” as his ticket to Solomonic immortality in Senate annals. Moreover, his close personal relationships with Republican Senators (where they’re very loathe to be hostile to his face, like most friends) combined with his ego allows him to believe that there is a “wise” compromise to be had. Having Reid tell him to cut off the “negotiations” would be a huge blow to his ego, and likely poison the well as far as his support of reform would go.
lamh31
Reform Supporters Outnumber Critics At Town Halls
Okay, so I don’t know if it’s true about the public options or not, hell, I’m not
even sure I understandi the issue that well, but here’s what I’m observing:
Before all the public option hoopla, GOP protesters were more organized, and more visible than liberal supporters. It seemed to me that only a few steady advocates were still 100% engaged in the healthcare “battle” particularly in the lib blogosphere. There was a number of issues that lib weren’t happy with, so no one was getting “fired up”. Enter a “slip of the tongue” about the public option, and now liberals are fighting mad. There are back to being engaged. They are pissed at Obama, but they are finally engaged in this debate in visible ways. Now you are seeing more reporting about how the liberal base has “come alive” over the public option. It kinda seemed to me that some of us libs were becoming complacent, we “know” that our way is a good one, and we “know” that our way is popular, but we forgot that when a small wild animal is backed in a corner, they fight back like a large predator…that’s what these protesters are.
Now that it seems that a the plan that libs liked may be in jeopardy, now we are energized. I’ve become something of a blog-fanatic, so I frequent alot of liberal blogs, and in all this, I don’t think I’ve seen as much visible passion about healthcare as there is now. It seems we libs have woken up, and finally decided to fight back against the GOP.
Now if we could only set our sites on the ConservaDems in the House and the Senate, ya know the people who are actually the ones who will be writing the law, and not fighting amongst ourselves, then we’d be straight.
donovong
From the slightly off-topic front, but not. Nelson has whined about the pressure he is getting from “the left,” responding to both Arlen Spector and Ed on MSNBC.
Look like it is working!
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/political-media/after-senator-nelson-called-to-complain-he-and-msnbcs-ed-schultz-have-yelling-match-over-public-opion/
You Don't Say
“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
donovong
@Alan in SF: I will read the book by Caro for sure. I may be letting my view of Vietnam color my memory – I was quite young at the time – but I don’t believe LBJ could have accomplished any of the social legislation without JFK’s ghost hanging over the country.
Gwangung
What did folks think would happen if the only visible pressure wasfrom right wing crowds????? Pressure HAS to come from the left as well, and Obama ain’t in charge of that….WE ARE.
Gwangung
@donovong: Ya don’t say….
josefina
@donovong: Agreed. But he didn’t have to use JFK’s ghost in that way. It’s not like JFK pushed hard for civil rights, or social justice in any form, during his 32 months in office. LBJ could’ve easily used the assassination as an excuse for moderation, for incremental progress. He didn’t.
Agree, too, with the earlier poster who said that LBJ knew where the bodies were buried. That’s one advantage Obama lacks.
buggy ding dong
Think Bush would have gotten a little bit more of his agenda through if he had 60 Republicans in the Senate?
SnarkyShark
So you think Rahm’s a tough guy? Don’t forget those are his dogs, put into power buy undercutting real progressives.
And he can’t make HIS dogs come to heel?
Telling some bloggers and unions they are fucking stupid for having to do his job aint my idea of tough.
And don’t get me started about his petty little feud with Dean about being so damn wrong about the 50 state strategy.
Imagine if Dean was HHS. Tactical mistake over personal shit. That makes him weak, not tough.
Leelee for Obama
@josefina: I’m not sure that it’s true that Obama doesn’t know where the bodies are buried, but if it is, he has people around who absolutely do. I think the Clintons are completely on board for this Reform bill, just for the pleasure of sticking it to Newt Gingrich, if nothing else. And they really are public servants at heart. Tom Daschle, Rahm Emanuel, Madam Speaker, Teddy, when he can.
@Warren Terra: I meant FDR had people working for him, not the numbers in Congress. I do see what you mean about numbers-but again, his aides did alot of the arm-twisting that was needed back then.
BillCinSD
Daschle is generally a nice man, but I’m pretty sure his middle name is Milquetoast. He is a horse trader not a butt kicker. This may still get things done, but he was awful as the Senate Democratic leader. I voted for him in every election I could because his opponents were usually extraordinarily bad, but he should neve have been more than a back bencher
CalD
—————-
“I also tend to think that Obama’s personal political style is a carefully managed stage piece, modeled after Reagan, the idea being that the president should appear to be a bit above it all. Clinton liked to scream at people on the phone. Obama has Rahm Emanuel do it for him…”
—————-
I think you’re dead on the money on both points.
—————-
Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling the Obama White House plays tougher than people think. I also have a feeling they’re just plain nowhere near as good as it as LBJ was. But who is?
—————-
Again, if you’re wrong about either point then we both are. The latter was always one of my two main reservations about Mr. Obama — i.e., that he hadn’t been on politics very long. I was never under any illusions about how much arm twisting was going to be required to accomplish some of the things that he (and every other Democratic candidate) was promising. But I took his choice of Rahm Emanuel in particular as a promising sign that he knew that as well as I did.
I actually think they’re doing pretty OK so far anyway. This is and always was going to be a long, grueling uphill battle. It’s the nature of our political press to want to call every fight in the first round. We’re not a patient people. But I’m assuming this one is a long way from over. I also think you get points for having made a show of bending over backwards to play nice with Republicans at the point when it becomes necessary to steamroll over them to get something done.
(Note to all the Republican congresspersons out there loudly proclaiming that you’ll never vote for anything, no matter how good it is: Please keep that up!)
Mnemosyne
AP gave us our very own analysis today and ignored the teabaggers:
Analysis: Liberals tired of health care compromise
Anyone still think that this weekend’s trial balloon was just a slip of the tongue?
Laura Clawson
As my father rightly points out, LBJ also had significant and very oppositional social movements pushing him hard on all this stuff. Not to say there isn’t a left trying to make it happen now, but…well, that’s a subject for a lot of historical comparisoning.
CT
I’m actually kind of curious whether Sebelius’ comment was an inadvertent slip or an intentional match tossed onto the progressive community. It is working to change the tone of the debate, and, I think he actually wants to pull us into the action instead of just voting and forgetting about it.
Right now, the Repubs are starting to remind me of kid I ran track with back in high school-no sense of pacing at all. First time he runs the 800 he takes off like a bat out of hell and is just killing the whole field after 400. At 500 meters he starts to look a little less smooth, by 600 the bear jumped on his back, and by the end of the race Strom Thurmond’s reanimated corpse would have smoked him. He finished last by a loonnngg ways.
Last August, weren’t we all talking about the Paris Hilton ad, et al? A new piece of crap from McCain every day, while some armchair strategists complained that Obama wasn’t getting down in the mud with him. But McCain shredded his wise statesman guise and ended up making Obama look like the only grown up on the stage. During this long recess, the Repubs went into full freak out over b.s. and now the pendulum is starting to swing back to the grown ups.
DougJ
As my father rightly points out, LBJ also had significant and very oppositional social movements pushing him hard on all this stuff. Not to say there isn’t a left trying to make it happen now, but…well, that’s a subject for a lot of historical comparisoning.
Good point.
J. Michael Neal
What I’m curious about is why Republican Senators like Kyl and Grassley decided to publicly drop the pretense. Given that I don’t think they have any deep seated commitment to honesty, something else was at work. The biggest practical effect of their comments is that they just hung Max Baucus out to dry. His cover just vanished.
valdivia
@J. Michael Neal:
I think they were stupid enough to buy the hype about the death of the public option, specially since Konrad made all the more credible. Now they overshot once again and revealed themselves for what they really are.
Brachiator
@Warren Terra:
Theodore Roosevelt.
donovong — I may be letting my view of Vietnam color my memory – I was quite young at the time – but I don’t believe LBJ could have accomplished any of the social legislation without JFK’s ghost hanging over the country.
I also strongly recommend the Caro biographies (his book on New York urban planner Robert Moses is quite good, also).
In the meantime even the Wikipedia article on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives a strong account of how LBJ and his allies had to battle formidable opposition to get the bill through the Senate.
John Kennedy had succeeded in getting the legislation through the House, but even given the changed mood of the country after Kennedy’s assasination, LBJ had to deal with statements like this from Senator Richard Russell: “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
Ironically, one of the primary opponents of the civil rights bill was Robert Byrd of W. Va.
But Johnson also had a number of tough senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and Senators Everett Dirksen, Thomas Kuchel, and Hubert Humphrey, who helped LBJ get around all the obstacles that were thrown in the path of the legislation.
By contrast, it is unclear whether Obama has any equally tough allies in the House or Senate who can back his play on health care reform.
Elie
Valdivia:
You said:
“this is what I think. Look what happened: some comments were made that were very like what came before but not as committed, then the left went apeshit and the republicans overplayed their hand by revealing that they want No reform whatsoever. And voila now we are having a very different conversation than we did last week no?”
And may I add the image of a few wackos walking around with assault rifles at health care meetings did not help the Republicans and will become a real ball and chain — esp as these folks are linked to right winged racial extremists. What a bunch of maroons! Talk about fucking up your own message by trying to pull out your dick to show how big it is but getting it caught in your zipper!
Totally Bush league — so to speak
I digress.
Hardball is commencing and we will see who can run and who has to stay under the porch.
This is history folks,, in the making right now. All due respect to LBJ, JFK and the whole damned alphabet. If you care about our country and if you are into history and public policy, IT DONT GET NO BETTER!!!!
Is O up to this?
Yes.
Basharov
LBJ also got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed in the teeth of Republican (and southern Democratic) opposition. This Act finally — 90 years after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment — made it possible for millions of disenfranchised black people to vote all across the South. In 1965, LBJ also passed immigration reform legislation and programs to provide federal funds to education. Together with Medicare and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, these accomplishments put most other Presidents — including Teddy Roosevelt — in the shade.
If he hadn’t let his ego get away with him and had pulled out of Vietnam (which he and his advisors — including General Maxwell Taylor — knew from the start could only, at best, end in a stalemate), he’d be remembered as one of our greatest Presidents; instead, he’s one of the most hated.
mai naem
I think Obama/Emmanuel made a huge mistake not bringing in Dean into the WH for some kind of role in healthcare. I have been watching him being that he’s been all over the tube. He’s a good salesman for healthcare reform. From what I’ve seen Weiner and Dean have been the clearest on why reform is needed and why the public option is needed. Clearer than any of the WH talking heads.
I am surprised about the LBJ question at the top of the thread. Are you kidding? The Great Society programs and Civil Rights legislation in one term? Yes, he screwed up in Vietnam big time but this was during the Cold War. Lots of WWII vets still around. Post Sputnik. Mao in China. Post Red Scare. And a war technically started by JFK. I am not sure he had a choice at that point. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Mnemosyne
I have no worries about the House. Nancy Pelosi is keeping everyone in line and they will have a bill. It’s the Senate that’s fucked.
If you worry about Pelosi, remember what her response was to the Blue Dogs who kept asking her when she was going to release her Social Security privatization plan to counteract Bush’s: “How about never. Is never good for you?”
Wile E. Quixote
donovong
I’ve always maintained that the best thing that JFK ever did for the civil rights movement was to take a bullet in Dallas. Civil rights was going nowhere under JFK, he just didn’t give a damn. Yes, JFK’s ghost was hanging over the country, on the other hand it took a ballsy, skilled and committed politician to push through the act, especially Title II and Title III, which outlawed discrimination by entities engaged in interstate commerce and outlawed discrimination by state and local governments. It wasn’t as if Johnson went to Congress and said “Well, Jack Kennedy’s dead, Camelot’s over and you have to give me everything I want now” and they just rolled over for him.
Johnson’s push for the Civil and Voting Rights Acts is one of the greatest moments of political bravery of the 20th century. Johnson didn’t have to go as far as he did, he could have played it safe, he could have told Martin Luther King and the other civil rights leaders that the time wasn’t right for a broad and sweeping reform. Instead he went the other way and told King that the waiting was over and that he was going to give him everything he wanted.
I used to really hate Johnson because of the Vietnam War. My entire family lived in Dallas when JFK was shot and I grew up believing all of the hagiography of Camelot and how all of the bad stuff that happened in the ’60s was because JFK died and LBJ took over. It wasn’t until years later when I read Caro, and Taylor Branch, and learned about the American system of apartheid that existed back then and what Johnson did to dismantle that system. Now my feelings are more complex. Vietnam was awful, nothing more than a crime, but Lyndon Johnson’s work on civil rights made America a better and freer country.
oh really
Where on Earth did you get the impression that Daschle is tough or an arm twister?
He epitomized the spineless Democrat before Reid inherited the job.
Linkmeister
Rick Perlstein, who wrote that wonderful Sunday Outlook column linked here either that day or Monday, had a chat at WaPo today. There’s lots of good material in there, but he’s got a tag line he thinks we should use:
“in America, no one should have to go broke because they get sick.”
That really does say it all, doesn’ t it?
Mike D.
LBJ could do what he did ’cause he was all those Dem Senators’ Daddy for fucking YEARS before he was ever president. And the House? Pffft.
You know who else wouldn’t be able to to twist arms like LBJ? Hillary Clinton, that’s who. So get off it.
Bobby Thomson
Rahm’s play has always been to twist the arms of liberal representatives. Shit, he literally created the Blue Dog caucus. Daschle was such a milquetoast that Harry Reid initially looked like an improvement.
There will be no twisting of Blue Dog arms, and that’s what it would take to get anything substantial.
bob h
The argument I would be making to the likes of Nelson, Lincoln, et. al., is this: Look at the Viper Militias trying to intimidate people at the healthcare town halls; if you are going to vote against overhaul, you are conceding that these people won.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
LBJ pushed the 1964 Civil Rights Act through a 57-day filibuster. The man was a deeply flawed human being, but he had balls of steel.
thomas
LBJ got things done, but remember he didn’t have to deal with batshite crazy rethugs. Much of his problem was southern D’s (today’s batshite crazy rethugs). There actually were moderate republicans and Dirksen was someone who thought about what was good for the country and you could cut a deal with him.
neil
I’ve just finished laughing out loud at your rather preposterous assertion that Tom Daschle is somehow an “arm twister”. Hilarious.
Tom Daschle is a professional doormat – a complete wimp.
Rahm is a pit bull, yes – but Daschle? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
itsbenj
no, none of this would be going “better” if Daschle were involved. yikes!
Brachiator
@thomas: