What do you think of Lyndon Johnson ?

Question

What do you think of Lyndon Johnson ?

Answer 1

A man who should be written out if US history.

Warmonger, assassin and self promoter who would do anything to prove the might of the American Government at home and abroad.

More Republican than any true Republican. A stooge.

It took years to erase suspicion from true democrats faith

Answer 2

He dropped the ball on vietnam, but had a noble goal to end poverty.  

Answer 3

He did more damage to the black community with his "Great Society" than all the KKK ever did.

Answer 4

He was a victim of his own prejudices and the tragic events that brought him to power.  

He was a old-style, hardcore political animal without much charisma.  His answer to conflict was dirty tricks or carrot and stick, and this got him into considerable trouble.  He inhereted Vietnam, and tried the carrot and stick approach, completely misunderstanding the motivations of Ho Chi Mihn, and as a result, drug America into a vast, costly, unwinnable war.  His decisions in Vietnam make him one of the worst Presidents of the 20th century.  

However, in his defense, he was a pretty good domestic policy president.  He really wanted to focus on the Great Society here at home, but his vanity couldn't allow him to accept defeat in Vietnam.  He did help strengthen social welfare and civil rights at home, and in fact, the Voting Rights Act and the many strides forward made for Civil Rights in the 1960's are largely his doing.  Unfortunately, he will always be associated (and rightfully so) with the disaster and waste of Vietnam.

Answer 5

Ah, Landslide Lyndon, the pride of Sam Houston State Teachers College!

Throughout his life he wore a Silver Star lapel pin, which he in no way deserved.  He had his cronies get him the medal for going along as an observer on one, single bombing mission, and the plane turned back before reaching the target area.  Nobody else on the plane got any medals, but then they did not have Lyndon's connections, otherwise they would not have been stuck having to actually make a contribution and finish out a tour of duty.

Lyndon was a tool of the King family, which still owns the largest ranch in the world, covering most of the county named for them in Texas.  He got his "Landslide" nickname when he ran for state senate in 1948, and despite the King's frantic ballot box stuffing still won by only 200 votes.

Kennedy could not stand him but selected him as a running mate to give geographical balance to the ticket.  He was sent to Vietnam in 1961 and was greatly impressed by the South Vietnamese.  Apparently he was easy to fool, as this was the corrupt Diem regime he was meeting with.  When he became president there were about 3000 American troops in South Vietnam, but Lyndon truly wanted to help them, and within a few years there were half a million US troops in country.  The problem was, he wanted to micromanage the war from the Oval Office, instead of leaving it to the professionals who were on the scene.

He also wanted to embark on his "Great Society" programs at the same time, and he did not want to pay for any of this by raising taxes.  It was Lyndon who started the American economy down the slippery slope we are still bobsledding down today.  As an example, the cost of mailing a letter had not gone up in one hundred years when he took office, and today it costs FOURTEEN TIMES what it did then, reflecting the debasement of the dollar undertaken by Lyndon and continued by every administration since.  This does not seem to be something most voters are capable of comprehending so I expect the process to continue until the dollar is eventually worthless.

He seems to have been a man willing to do most anything to get into a position of power, and then he did try to do what he thought was the right thing.  Its just that his judgment was frequently far off the mark as to what the right thing might be.  Another answerer has already mentioned the harm done in destroying black families through well-intentioned social programs.  His "War on Poverty" continues to mostly enrich Federal bureaucrats.  Resentment over his ham-handed approach to Civil Rights turned the south overnight from the "Solid South", staunchly Democratic for the preceding one hundred  years, into the Republican bastion it is today.  Its no accident that the only two Democrats elected since are Carter and Clinton, and it took Watergate for Carter to win a squeaker of a narrow victory.

He was an embarrassment personally, like our current Texican, along with Lady Bird and Linda Bird and Lucy Bird.

I dont know what his tombstone says but it ought to read "Paved with Good Intentions".

Answer 6

He was a puppet of the people who assassinated JFK, namely the Zionist and IIluminati, and he was part of the conspiracy.