Current Health Care Bill but with LBJ

[JSojourner]

I've been wondering.  I realize numbers would be different, but how would LBJ have steered a controversial health care reform bill through Congress? 

What did he have that Obama does not seem to have?  Was it just a larger majority?  Was the American psyche more prone to stand by the President who succeeds a slain icon?

I don't know.  LBJ, more than any other U.S. political leader, had an uncanny ability to read his friends and foes.  Perhaps some of that mystique is bullsh**t...but I've heard too many stories about him giving stubborn Congressmen or Senators "the treatment".  (In some cases, the treatment was candy and roses...in some cases, it was a fire and brimstone sermon about doing the right thing.)

I know he worked well with Mansfield and Dirksen. I also know Republicans then weren't the government-hating Michelle Bachmann types.  But still...is this exercise of comparison a futile apples and oranges thing? 

Or is there something President Obama can learn from Johnson about passing legislation?

[Frodo]

Apples and oranges -Lyndon Johnson succeeded in large part because most Americans still believed in the federal government.  That most definitely is not the case today.  He operated in a more congenial climate when the New Deal coalition still called the shots -Obama, on the other hand, is still having to deal with the Nixon-Reagan legacy. 

[Dr. Cynic]

Before Vietnam - It would've passed. Republicans were more moderate and Johnson was still very popular.

During Vietnam - No chance in hell.

[Mechaman]

This may seem like an odd comparison but I would liken LBJ to another well known president from Texas: George W. Bush.

Both men were very successful in getting key legislation passed in the heyday of their popularity. LBJ had the death of Kennedy and the rising popularity of the Civil Rights Movement benefiting him the most for the first parts of his presidency. However, after Vietnam went to sh*t LBJ became very demonized by everyone from college professors, far left activist organizations, right wingers who felt he was doing it wrong, liberal Republicans, hell almost everyone and their mother and their mother's dog were pissed at LBJ. The same could be said about George W. Bush's years in office: During his first year 9/11 happened and the nation got mobilized behind it's president and Bush pushed legislation after legislation through Congress to further the aims of the War on Terror. It should be noted that only one US Senator voted "Nay" on the original US Patriot Act (tribute music starts playing)......Russ Feingold. Despite what some may think Bush's popularity actually lasted a while, in fact I would say that it only started to die off once he attempted to partially privatize Social Security. And then gas prices exploded and Katrina happened as well as the War in Iraq going bad (just like LBJ). The legacy of George W. Bush's second term would be one of some of the lowest approval ratings in history.

I'm not denying LBJ's political ability, but I believe that as president he was just a product of his time. Sure, Civil Rights might have been passed had Kennedy not died, but I doubt any Civil Rights Act of 1964 proposed would've been as far reaching as the one LBJ pushed through Congress if Kennedy had lived.
That isn't to say though that Obama should pray for some tragedy that creates a "rally around the flag" effect for him, Obama still has plenty of advantages he could use. For one Obama is a former US Senator, he knows how the US Senate works (not as well as LBJ maybe but 4 years in the Senate surely he has learned something) and therefore has a distinct advantage no president since Nixon has had when dealing with the US Senate in particular. Also, Vice President Joseph Biden had been a senator for well over thirty years, another indirect plus to Obama when it comes to trying to pass this legislation. Pretty much he has every advantage at his disposal to try to pass this through the US Senate, it's just he's just getting used to be at the front of Congress and not sitting at the desk next to Dick Durbin. Once he gets into the presidential mood and makes a common connection to his former comrades in the Senate (which is kind of what I have the impression of LBJ doing once president) he should be in a better position to get what he wants done. After all, almost three years passed from the time LBJ was last Senate Majority Leader to when he became president, maybe during that time he was trying to find a way that he (as Vice President and President of the Senate) could reconnect and find a new spark with the Congress as he did earlier as a Senator.

Anyway, that is my rant on the matter.

[JSojourner]

Good rant, Mech.  Thoughtful. 

[Kaine for Senate '18]

He'd have gotten single payer through already.  LBJ was the greatest politician to occupy the White House in history.  He could do things no other President could when it came to Congress.