Do we really want politicians like LBJ? (+ Nixon, Cuomo, Christie, Perry, etc.)

[Blue3]

Very interesting article

http://news.yahoo.com/we-want-our-politicians-to-act-like-lbj--but-not-really-083854348.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[King]

Christie is the only one you listed I would call close to LBJ and it's pretty far off.

LBJ wasn't simply just a backroom wheeler and dealer. Any corrupt DCer can be that guy. What made him special was ability to unapologetically scam HP to get things done, only to leave them with nothing in the end. It was a very principled behavior.

[memphis]

Johnson was fantastic at passing lefty lesgislation. Medicare. Civil Rights. Fair Housing. Voting Rights. Public Television. Federal aid to public schools, including the school lunch program. An expanded national park service. Rural development. And so on. If only we could get another president like him. Minus the war in Vietnam, of course.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I am becoming convinced that the proof of honesty of public officials is gridlock and inaction.  I'm really not sure I want to know what it really took for the great Presidential accomplishments to occur.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Johnson was fantastic at passing lefty lesgislation. Medicare. Civil Rights. Fair Housing. Public Television. Federal aid to public schools, including the school lunch program. An expanded national park service. Rural development. And so on. If only we could get another president like him. Minus the war in Vietnam, of course.

It helped that he had a strongly Democratic Congress, o/c. The New Deal coalition was still pretty powerful in the 60s (even though it was beginning to unravel, particularly in the South...) And a lot of those Great Society programs had waste, corruption, etc.-problems that provided an endless supply of outrage for conservatives.  And what of the race riots in the 60s in Northern cities-what did LBJ do to make that chaos better?

Furthermore, a  good deal of what LBJ did both domestically and in foreign policy (for better or worse) was already proposed/planned by JFK. But after JFK's assassination, America was so  traumatized, that people longed for a President who could move the country forward-part of which was getting things done in Congress. LBJ was a master political operator, so in some ways, he was the right man at the right time.

Having said all that, it is important to remember how much political and social pressure there was on the US government in the 1960s; ranging from the civil rights movement, liberal intellectuals, and  labor unions earlier in the decade, to student radicals, the anti-war movement and the 60s counter culture later on, as well. The kind of mass, grassroots organizing, agitation, and activism of the 60s simply does not exist anymore in the US; certainly not to the same extent.