Will LBJ's reputation ever be rehabilitated?

[DemPGH]

I think LBJ is pretty polarizing - he's essentially GWB. My father and several uncles served in Vietnam, and I've had ancestors in every war from the Revolution (they received land grants in Somerset County) to Vietnam, and what my father says about LBJ I cannot post here. Because it's a string of curse words. He voted Nixon in '68 and '72 because of LBJ (and a lot of the unions endorsed Nixon in 1972), and then every Democrat after that, including Carter twice to Obama in the present, even though Ford effectively ended Vietnam. That was an awful time of corruption and war-mongering - the late '60s and most of the '70s.

So what about the great society. Basic civil rights? Lady Bird's billboard business? Fantastic, but I would say that the country was not only ready but demanding of basic civil rights at that point in time. There were going to be no "doughfaces" then, because half the country would have been burnt to the ground. Literally. A good friend of mine was a cop in indianapolis at that time as well, and his stories surrounding race riots and shoot-outs are a whole novel in and of themselves. I think people who want to talk up LBJ and Nixon as "moderates" don't really have any idea what was going on then.

How LBJ is remembered is probably far better than he should be.