(Outside of Vietnam) Was LBJ a good President?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No, he was a great liar and manipulator of the press who used tactics similar to Nixon but unlike him managed to keep the press on his side and was never held accountable.


Not to mention the fact that his policies did what Slavery and Segregation never could, destroy the African American family.

He was an F on all fronts and an F- on Vietnam which he both escalated and subsequently lost for the US.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No, he was a great liar and manipulator of the press who used tactics similar to Nixon but unlike him managed to keep the press on his side and was never held accountable.


Not to mention the fact that his policies did what Slavery and Segregation never could, destroy the African American family.

He was an F on all fronts and an F- on Vietnam which he both escalated and subsequently lost for the US.

Well you figure while he escalated over Vietnam he only presided over the war from 65-69 (as that's when the war went from just being military personnel to ground troops), Nixon and Ford had the war from 69-75 and presided over the middle and end of it and tried different strategies and still weren't able to win.

And I love that you basically say his policies were worse than segregation and slavery. Slavery did destroy families. Families were split apart at auctions and sold to different masters.  They were token on boats away from their families where many of them became sick and died Slavery dehumanized the African American people as nothing more than a possession, a thing to be bought and sold. It was a hateful, humiliating existence for them.

And I guess the ones who were lucky enough to not be sold to different masters did stay together as a family since slavery was, you know, a generational thing. The son or daughter of a slave was by birth also a slave. But you go on comparing the Great Society and Civil Rights Act to slavery and those black voters will keep turning out 90% GOP every election.

 I love that old Republican "They destroyed the African American family" Sort of like the Welfare Queen Reagan spoke often of, or how Republicans say Blacks vote Democrat because they're brainwashed and don't know any better. I'd say in the last 30-40 years Conservatives have a much more dark record on race.

1. We did win Vietnam. Nixon certainly did. It was the Johnson administration and the liberal Democratic controlled Congress in 1975 that lost it.

2. I wasn't talking about the Civil Rights Act, one of the few things he did get right albeit far later then most Republicans. All but three Republicans voted for CRA while every Southern Democrat voted no including Al Gores father and J William Fulbright, who the left loves for opposing Vietnam, and Sam Ervin, who the left loves for supporting impeachment of Nixon. Don't ever condescend or read to much in what I am saying, you will catch hell from me. Especially on this issue. You have obviously never paid attention to what I have posted or written on this topic and as the old saying goes, "If you don't know, don't guess".

3. I know all about Slavery, and I feal insulted by your assumptions of my position on this issue, and I demand you apologize to me immediately. If you have read any of my posts about the CSA in the Civil War thread you would know that.  I would have strongly supported both the end of Slavery and Segregation. One of my favorite losing Presidential candidates was John C. Fremont and Lincoln one of my favorite Presidents. I also like Martin Luther King Jr and his methods of using non-violence and both the systems of American Democracy and American capitalism to bring Segregation to its knees.
 I am insulted that you have insinuated me to be some right wing hack on this issue when you clearly haven't the slighest idea what the hell you taking about. I am also one of the few Republicans who feels it necessary to try and win at least some black votes.

4. Now you have descended the steps of Dante straight into bottom of hell. I was referring to the quiet change in the Welfare programs (not even the Welfare itself, you really are out of bounds on this one) that made it financially beneficial to get divorced or not marry. It is very strange the rise in out of wedlock birth rates, divorce and the destruction of the black family in general skyrockets in the late 1960's to 1970's. Blacks, a large number of them have been brainwashed into thinking that racist latte Liberals trully care about them. When their policies have made them dependent on the gov't and a guarrenteed voting block. The issue which has kept African Americans from advancing financially and led to high rates of crime among African Americans is the collapse of the African American families and Democrats haven't done and don't seem capable of doing a damn thing about it. When your party addresses this issue, then you can say something about it, but untill then you are party of the status quo in the African American community not their advancement.   

Inspite of slavery, African Americans were able in many cases to maintain familial bonds though many times they were not, most of the time they were able to stay together. To deny that is an outright lie and an exaggeration. That and faith were among the few things that kept them going to the day of their liberation from tyranny and opression. The great truth of LBJ's Great Society is he removed the last shackle of Segregation on the one hand but tore assunder the one thing African Americans had going for them, their strong sense of family. Nice going Liberals.


I demand an immediate apology for your assumptions, insinuations, mischaracterizations and overall insulting attitude which you have exhibited toward me in this thread.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Oh yea, I am so supportive of slavery that I justify the use of state's rights to defend it, oh wait 



My thoughts are the same on segregation as well.  Read it carefully Moderate Dem.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He also was horrible period and lacked any sense of ethics. He had a win at all costs mentality. Look at the 1964 campaign which he was guarranteed to win from the start. He even went so far as to bug Goldwater's campaign headquarters, yet no Watergate scandal or anything even close. Not to mention running some of the most vicious campaign attack ads in history, all in an election in which he himself regarded as a mere speedbump along the away.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He also was horrible period and lacked any sense of ethics. He had a win at all costs mentality. Look at the 1964 campaign which he was guarranteed to win from the start. He even went so far as to bug Goldwater's campaign headquarters, yet no Watergate scandal or anything even close. Not to mention running some of the most vicious campaign attack ads in history, all in an election in which he himself regarded as a mere speedbump along the away.

There are many similarities between Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. I am convinced that those are probably the only two presidents we've ever had who genuinely did not give a sh**t about the fate of the country and its people. True sociopaths.

Nixon to his credit went in with strategy for the war and most of his actions with regards to Foreign policy were related to the objective of getting the US out without NV takeover and he succeeded  having most forces out by 1972 with the conflict ending in 1973.

Nixon also beefed up the nations nuclear arsenal which had falled behind under Johnson with Submarine based launchers and then anti-missile missiles. He however screwed up when he signed Salt 1 which took away a key US technology advantage for little in return.

Other then that, Nixon made a lot of mistakes especially domestically not to mention ethical lapses that proved to be his downfall. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Funny how I only see reference to his ''bugging'' of Goldwater's HQ on Conservative websites such as Free Republic and the Heritage Foundation. Not exactly unbiased sources.

I still think he was one of the best, personally.

And divorce rates climbed overall in the 60s and 70s for all races, I don't think it had as much to do with LBJ as it did with the growing social openness and liberalism. I've read divorce dates in the late 60s doubled, and they've been rising ever since. I think it was just a facet of the era, rather like the Hippie movement, which was nothing more than a Communist inspired 50s Beatnik & 1920s Bohemian movement on steroids.

Indeed, but the movement was disproportionately among blacks in the era. In 1950, the percentage of intact White families was 88%, for blacks it was 78%. Over the twelve years following 1967, the percentage of blacks dropped to 59% while Whites were still at 85%. Most of the decline came after 1967. You can't dispute that the black family 1) collapsed in this period 2) if did, what else caused it to drop so much compared to whites. Certainly the things you mentioned had an impact and certainly didn't help but financial incentives are powerful forces and in an environment in which family and marriage were being challenged by social changes, one can be sure that it had a large impact. Keep in mind blacks are overall much poorer and thus more likely to need assistance and so the effect of it would be much larger on them.

Bugging was fairly common in that era before laws were enacted following Wategate. J Edgar Hoover used them against Martin Luther King Jr. This source mentions the "bugging of Goldwaters campaign plane" and is hardly a right wing source either and it is describing a passage from a book which it names above

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He was a socialist who used the poor, elderly, and minorities for his own political gain. If it weren't for the GOP the civil rights bill would never have been passed.

The segregationists were unfortuantely brilliant tactically in using States Rights as cover for their ideology of hate. Even so, the GOP even the Conservative wing went strongly Pro-CRA. Only three Senators, Milton Young (R-ND), John Tower (R-TX), and Barry Goldwater voted no. Republicans since have failed to even try and work for black votes so they let Democrats take advantage of the fact that Goldwater was the nominee to win 90% of the black vote. And I saw this earlier in ModerateDemocrat's statements that we have reached a point in which to oppose Liberalism means to oppose "African Americans".  I think he is being more racist then he knows in claiming that African Americans are uniformly liberal and for denying them the ability to decide for themselves what ideology is best. It should also be noted the horrendous treatment of Conservative blacks and even apolitical blacks who take a somewhat conservative position. The truth is that every election the GOP ignores them largely and the Dems keep them in line whenever cracks appear with ridiculous assertions like the ads run in 2000 and subsequent ads run by CBCers in majority black districts they would never lose barring a scandal claiming that if their opponents won churches would be bombed and crosses would be burned. The condition among African Americans will never improve untill they are a voting bloc coveted by both sides hence the Democrats lack of concern for the most pressing issue facing the black community, the collapse of the family, and the Republicans lack of effort to win their votes. Republicans have got to fight for them. Even getting 15% to 20% can provide the key to winning in a state like Ohio or Michigan.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes that is a real quote from LBJ in the 1940's. He was a Senator from Texas afterall.

And indeed Goldwater had a strong record on Civil Rights prior to 1964.


The point was that even with the support Northern Democrats and the Rockefeller Republicans, LBJ didn't have enough votes to pass the bill in the Senate. He had to get support from Everett Dirksen and the Conservative Taft wing of the Republican party to actually pass the bill over the fillbuster of such people that left adores today like Al Gore Sr., J William Fulbright, Sam Ervin, and Robert Byrd.

A great book to read is Bruce Bartlett's, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Burried Past". While somewhat of hit piece on the party it is a rather accurate description of the despicableness of many of the Dixiecrats like Bilbo, Watson, Eastland, and many others as well as to highlight quotes from Robert Taft illustrating the support that both wings of the GOP Conservative and Liberal had for Civil Rights and thus the timing of the Conservative resurgence and the decline in black support is not due to the ideology of conservatism taking over the party but events of the time and unwillingess of Republicans to fight back against the left's attempts to portray them as "anti-black" and maintain a 25% to 33% voting block among black voters that they had come out out of the Depression with and lost in 1964 largely due to Goldwaters opposition to the CRA based on certain sections of the bill not the whole idea and motivation behind it and most Conservative Republicans voted Yes.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

No, he was a great liar and manipulator of the press who used tactics similar to Nixon but unlike him managed to keep the press on his side and was never held accountable.


Not to mention the fact that his policies did what Slavery and Segregation never could, destroy the African American family.

He was an F on all fronts and an F- on Vietnam which he both escalated and subsequently lost for the US.

And I love that you basically say his policies were worse than segregation and slavery. Slavery did destroy families. Families were split apart at auctions and sold to different masters.  They were token on boats away from their families where many of them became sick and died Slavery dehumanized the African American people as nothing more than a possession, a thing to be bought and sold. It was a hateful, humiliating existence for them.

If you haven't read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", you should.

Chapter 9, Page 177:

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