Johnson was announced the winner by 87 votes out of 988,295, an extremely narrow margin of victory. However, Johnson's victory was based on 200 "patently fraudulent"[55]: 608 ballots reported six days after the election from Box 13 in Jim Wells County, in an area dominated by political boss George Parr. The added names were in alphabetical order and written with the same pen and handwriting, following at the end of the list of voters. Some of the persons in this part of the list insisted that they had not voted that day.[56] Election judge Luis Salas said in 1977 that he had certified 202 fraudulent ballots for Johnson.[57] Robert Caro made the case in his 1990 book that Johnson had stolen the election in Jim Wells County, and that there were thousands of fraudulent votes in other counties as well, including 10,000 votes switched in San Antonio.[58]
About the only other negative statements I see are,
Johnson is strongly criticized for his foreign policy, namely escalating American involvement in the Vietnam War.
He was described by friends, fellow politicians, and historians as motivated by an exceptional lust for power and control. As Johnson's biographer Robert Caro observes, "Johnson's ambition was uncommon – in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs."[43]
Johnson steered the projects towards contractors he knew, such as Herman and George Brown, who would finance much of Johnson's future career.[26]
US presidential historian Michael Beschloss observed that Johnson "gave white supremacist speeches" during the 1948 campaign, in order to secure the white vote.
In the 1948 elections, Johnson again ran for the Senate and won in a highly controversial Democratic Party primary against the well-known former governor Coke Stevenson.
Johnson was touched by a Senate scandal in August 1963 when Bobby Baker, the Secretary to the Majority Leader of the Senate and a protégé of Johnson's, came under investigation by the Senate Rules Committee for allegations of bribery and financial malfeasance. One witness alleged that Baker had arranged for the witness to give kickbacks for the Vice President. Baker resigned in October, and the investigation did not expand to Johnson.
Johnson continued the FBI's wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. that had been previously authorized by the Kennedy administration under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.[261] As a result of listening to the FBI's tapes, remarks on King's extramarital activities were made by several prominent officials, including Johnson, who once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher".[262] This was despite the fact that Johnson himself had multiple extramarital affairs.[41] Johnson also authorized the tapping of phone conversations of others, including the Vietnamese friends of a Nixon associate.[263]
Historian Kent Germany explains Johnson's poor public image: The man who was elected to the White House by one of the widest margins in U.S. history and pushed through as much legislation as any other American politician now seems to be remembered best by the public for succeeding an assassinated hero, steering the country into a quagmire in Vietnam, cheating on his saintly wife, exposing his stitched-up belly, using profanity, picking up dogs by their ears, swimming naked with advisers in the White House pool, and emptying his bowels while conducting official business. Of all those issues, Johnson's reputation suffers the most from his management of the Vietnam War, something that has overshadowed his civil rights and domestic policy accomplishments and caused Johnson himself to regret his handling of "the woman I really loved—the Great Society."[303]
Yet,
His overall rating among historians has remained relatively steady over the past 35 years, and his average ranking is higher than any of the eight presidents who followed him, although similar to Reagan and Clinton.[304] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson
Imagine the treatment by Wiki if he was GOP.
I thought I read one of the revelations of the most recent (2017?) de-classifications of some of the JFK assassination files was that “Landslide Lyndon” was a KKK member. I suppose this was pretty common for southern Democrats. (And all southerners were Democrats, basically)
In Basic Training as a rural midwesterner I was exposed to some interesting dichotomies. Chicago born Calypso Louis nutbars who wanted to fight, and southern good old boys who insisted the KKK was really sort of like the Elks Club or something.