Talk:Lyndon B. Johnson

Talk:Lyndon B. Johnson/Archive1

OBVIOUS REVISION / CONTRADICTION

It says at top he withdrew because "his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of turmoil in his party." But later in the article it says he withdrew because massive antiwar sentiment (29% public approval is the figure cited) stood in the way of him being renominated.

Why lie at the top and tell the truth at the bottom?

Let's do this:

"Turmoil in his party" is a nice and uncontroversial (therefore fair) reason to give, so it should be preserved in it's present place. However, the bottom section will need to be gutted and something more optimistic, but not contradicting to earlier revisionism, be published instead.

Here is an example of what nobody would like to see at the top: "...his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of widespread public disapproval with the war".

Warren Commission

I removed the biased and somewhat irrelevant paragraphs about the activities of the Warren Commission, those are best addressed elsewhere, not in the "policies" section of this bio. Kmerian 01:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I tried, but I guess an admin though that the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist were relevant to the Policies of LBJ. Kmerian 01:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Domino Theory Speech

The article says he alluded to this theory in a speech. Does anyone know the date?--HistoricalPisces 16:58, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

he often referred to it private (recorded in the LBJ tapes) but I don't know of any public reference.

Caro Quote

Does anyone know about this vote rigging from Caro? It's a controversial thing to put in here, but if he really did prove it then it's certainly noteworthy. DirectorStratton 02:21, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how we can possibly assert that an author proved something like this "beyond a reasonable doubt". That's clearly POV. I'm leaving in the reference but deleting the passage that tells the reader what conclusion to draw. JamesMLane 22:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Caro interviewed numerous people and presents a huge amount of evidence, but "proven" is a strong word. The man's dead, so he has no way to answer the charges. I don't know that there's anyone who challenges it though.

I did make a minor correction, the vote rigging was alleged to have occured in Duval County not Jim Wells County. 16:59 10 April 2006

Some Additions Needed

New to this but I think someone needs to add some more details re: LBJ's civil rights initiatives and his work to help get the bills passed. This article, like much LBJ history unfortunately, dwells too much on a Vietnam war inherited from Kennedy and not enough on the positives. Someone should also mention his Whitehouse taping system and the remarkable historical record they are (as well as foreshadowing considering the trouble Nixon got into with taping.)

Regarding the earlier question about Caro's comments on the 1948 primary, Caro's assertions have been reported by others for years. I wrote a term paper on Johnson in the 1970's and found multiple sources that said the same thing as Caro. I would agree that Caro saying he clearly proved the allegation is solely Caro's opinion. Even as a Democrat who admires what Johnson did on domestic agenda, I still think the allegations need to be noted. Maybe more sources need to be cited for the allegations.

The above comments about Johnson's domestic agenda being expanded upon are correct. As the History Channel's series The Presidents, which re-ran the week of Thanksgiving, argued the programs Johnson created and the bills Johnson signed whether you like the measures or not probably had more change on our society than any president in the 20th Century other than Franklin Roosevelt.

The discussion on Vietnam is something that could take 20 pages. Actually the first Americans were sent to Vietnam by Eisenhower and the first American was killed in Vietnam in 1959.

Many who have studied Johnson believe he agreed to the escalation in part because he didn't want to appear as soft on Communism. Democrats beginning in 1950 were constantly being charged as soft by people like Joseph McCarthy as silly as those allegations seem today. Look at what was said about Harry Truman and why he had a 23% approval rating near the end of his administration. I saw on C-Span a replay on political conventions a number of years ago and the Republicans at their 1960 convention in Chicago railed against the Kennedy-Johnson ticket as soft on Communism.

Daisy

I think this link belongs in the 1964 election part. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_%28television_commercial%29

Vietnam War: LBJ ordered assassination of Diem?

In the section on the Vietnam War, Wikipedia states:

"While still Vice President, President Johnson ordered the execution of the president of South Vietnam in 1963, which he discusses in a White House recording made in 1966."

Has this ever been proven? The Vice President has no authority to give such orders.

You're quite right and I removed it. Rjensen 22:05, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

All The Way Campaign

As an Australian, the only way I know this man is the 'All the way with LBJ' campaign used, I'm not even sure whether it was an election campaign or a campaign for the continuance of the Vietnam war. Perhaps the authors and editors of this article could incorporate that, which, for the rest of the world outside of the United States, is possibly the only way this man is known and in what context it was used. 211.30.80.121 01:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

It was a slogan in the 1964 election campaign. I'm surprised that that's what you know about him; it's not particularly prominent. Instead of adding it to this article, I've added it to U.S. presidential election, 1964, and added a wikilink to that article in this one. JamesMLane 06:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Bitchcunt?

Lets clean this up my fellow Wikipedia, the man was a great man, i mean yes he suxed bad when it came to war, but in domestic programs he was the man, he highered standards that all of us take for gratite(sp) today. HP465 19:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I r gay. lol!

"At the same time, Johnson was afraid that too much focus on Vietnam would distract attention from his Great Society programs, so the levels of military escalation, while significant, were never enough to make any real headway in the war."

This is opinion rather than fact. Regardless of the fact that Johnson stuck in a hell of a lot of troops, there is absolutely no indication that ANY level of military escalation would have made headway in Vietnam.

Bias

It's amazing how biased this article is against Johnson. It said he an egomaniac and vain on the trivia, for example. I took out most of the POV and streamlined some text to make it flow better. Hadoren 20:45, May 26 2006 (UTC)

               Well, he did give the pope a bust of himself.

GA on hold

I'm about ready to confirm the article's nomination but before I do so I think the trivia section should be eliminated. Important personal information like his baptisim should probably go in his "early years" section; overly personal information like his height and bathroom habits should probably be axed. TonyJoe 14:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I would definitely advocate keeping the part about the bathroom. It is a fairly well known (infamous?) portion of "the Johnson Treatment". -Fearfulsymmetry 01:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Failed

For being on hold for over a week.--SeizureDog 11:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Bricker Amendment

For some time I have been working on revisions to the Bricker Amendment article. I finally posted it and have a PR at Wikipedia:Peer review/Bricker Amendment. I'd welcome comments. I know all those references may seem extravagant, but I'm hoping to get it as an FA and those voters want lots of footnotes. PedanticallySpeaking 16:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I added the Howard University commencement address

As requested in the merge suggestion. Morris 04:15, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

a few points and some Con/NeoCon propaganda

I see it's getting a few dozen changes a week. Never a good sign for an article about an ancient topic.

Where it writes "Johnson once revealed on tape his strategy in making African Americans feel obligated to the Democrats, by transforming them into the party of welfare dependency, rather than self sufficiency:" one has to remember that (1) the quote does not justify the connection, (2) the actual distinction between movements was "let blacks vote" and "don't let blacks vote", (3) many blacks and mexicans were not experiencing "self-sufficiency" so much as near-synonym "denied education and work by discrimination and left to starve" the explicit motivation for the Great Society, (4) whites were the primary benefactors of public assistance into the Reagan Era, though blacks may have had disproportionately high representation per population, they had disproportionately low representation per their much higher poverty rate.

Another quote directly contradicts the propaganda reading above, by being explicitly about self-sufficiency "I'm going to try to teach these Nigras that don't know anything how to work for themselves, instead of just breeding. I'm going to try to teach these Mexicans [that] can't talk English to learn it, so they can work for themselves." Our article attempts to misread the clause "that don't know anything" as an appositive (i.e. as a redefinition of "Nigra"), but of course it's not. It's a direct statement that uneducated "Nigras" need education, not to be left to rot.

And of course this and other articles try to make hay of his use of "Nigra", as if there were a widely accepted, well-used alternative, or as if the term had already developed the explictly pejorative modern sense of "Nigger" (pre-NWA, of course). Any white alive in the era remembers how hard it was to figure out what phraseology was acceptable each week (Black Race, Black American, American Black, Afro-American, African American, etc.).

Discussion of failure of Vietnam war can't be complete without reference to Nixon's intentional sabotage of Paris Peace Talks (for which there is no article and hardly any mention) through the agency of [Anna Chen Chennault] (no mention of this incident) and the GOP mole in the Paris Peace talks [Henry Kissinger]. (Googling "Chennault Nixon Thieu" gives a few hundred references, or just read her autobiography or Kissinger's.) Also, [J. Edgar Hoover]'s FBI taped Nixon's communication with Chennault but declined to inform Johnson (it was leaked to him about a week before the election).