Posted on 02/16/2013 7:09:33 AM PST by JohnPDuncan
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he would strive to be like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat famous for expanding the U.S. welfare state through the "Great Society," if he were elected president.
According to the Miami Herald, Bush made those comments Wednesday night in San Antonio, Florida at Saint Leo University, while speaking about education, immigration, and energy policy.
Bush did not address Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty programs, about which Ronald Reagan once famously quipped, "We had a war on poverty, and poverty won."
Instead, he was referencing Johnson's mastery of the so-called sausage-making process in Congress.
He vowed to approach the presidency as "master of the Senate," as biographer Robert Caro described Johnson.
“He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen,’’ Bush said of Johnson. Bush cited Caro's latest book about Johnson, The Passage of Power, which covers the first part of Johnson's presidency.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The South could have given up slavery. Lincoln could have given up the Union. Neither would; that’s why they had a war.
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