In Depth: Robert Caro (Three Hours of LBJ on C-SPAN2)

C-SPAN2

[leadpenny]

C-SPAN Schedule

Started at Noon (Eastern)

[leadpenny]

Phone calls begin in about 10 minutes.

[AdvisorB]

I've read Caro's tomes on LBJ and admittedly, Caro is a very gifted biographer. However, I can't stomach the idea of spending three hours learning what most of us already know about LBJ, to wit, LBJ was your typical dimocrat: corrupt to the core.

[roachie]

I couldn't handle watching it either. I have a new television and I don't feel like tossing a brick at it or urinating on it.

[leadpenny]

LOL from you two. He does avoid all questions about LBJ's relationship with J. Edgar. Says it will be in the next book. We're all going to be gone by the time someone finally reveals that Hoover's and LBJ's fingerprints are all over Dallas in November 1963. JMO.

[breakem]

Johnson stole the senate election with 10s of thousands phoney votes.

[Theodore R.]

The descendants of the LBJ Democrats in TX are coming to the polls in the April 9 party runoff to choose a senatorial candidate, ironically to fill the Senate seat once held by LBJ himself. The Johnson political descendants are divided -- into black and brown camps. The "blacks" favor Ron Kirk, liberal former mayor of Dallas and secretary of state and "like a son" to former liberal Governor Ann Willis Richards. The "browns" favor gadfly school teacher Victor Morales of the Dallas area. Almost forgotten are the "whites," sitting on the sidelines and unsure what to do. Some of them are probably longing for a new LBJ to emerge. People outside TX don't understand the admiration many traditional liberals have in this state for LBJ. Even those who opposed his Vietnam policies, like Doris Kearns Goodwin, still revere him. It's a peculiar attachment. This year the Democrats actually think they can regain the Senate seat that LBJ vacated to become vice president in 1961 -- the seat held for 41 years by two Republicans, John Tower and Phil Gramm. It could be that the overconfident Republicans are facing an unexpected defeat in the fall, as improbable as such a scenario might otherwise seem. John Cornyn, the Republican nominee, is practically a stealth candidate at this point of the campaign. I don't think he has sufficient name recognition, though he has been a low-key attorney general, to expect to win the Senate seat without a fight with the Democrats, whose morale is the greatest in TX in 20 years.

[breakem]

I think many liberals will always revere LBJ. He was their last great push. Clinton couldn't hold a candle to him. I will never forget his address to the nation when he said he wouldn't run. Shakespeare would have taken pen in hand.

[Pompah]

I don't have the stomach to sit through one hour of anything concerning LBJ, let alone three hours.
The vast majority of names engraved on that black granite wall in Washington DC were put there by that man.
And that will always be his legacy to me.

And a lot of others of my generation.

[leadpenny]

You're preaching to the choir, my friend. LBJ is such a fascinating failure. I fear that the truth will never be told because he ensured so many degrees of separation from it, but I'm convinced that he set something in motion (read J. Edgar) to do away with Kennedy. November 23, 1963 was followed by his strong-arming (maybe blackmailing) Warren and others into NOT looking for the truth. When the dust settles on the 20th Century, LBJ and x42 are going to be tied for 1st place as the worst President, with FDR running a close second. JMO

[AdvisorB]

"Landslide" Lyndon was such a great guy, such a tower of integrity, that he was bedding down one of his best friends wife. He was a clintonoid before clintonism was cool.

[Pompah]

That would be a "Surething"Trifecta no doubt.
And just think, we lived through all three of those sons-a-bitches.

[aristeides]

In LBJ's time, it was still possible for people of some intelligence and honesty to believe in liberalism. Even the leaders of the movement, like LBJ, with half their minds believed in their cause, even if they were con men in the other half of their minds (And there were people like Hubert Humphrey who were almost entirely sincere, even if deluded.) Their followers were not really aware of their leaders' partial duplicity.

So it may be true that liberalism in LBJ's time was a more dangerous movement (because people could believe in it,) but liberalism in the Clintons' time has become a much clearly evil force. People who are both intelligent and honest can still be leftists, but I do not think that anyone who is both intelligent and honest can any longer support the palpably corrupt version of institutionalized liberalism that is Clintonism. I.e., you can tell whether a leftist is honest by whether he opposes Clintonism, even if only from the left.

I believe Caro's own politics are liberal, and the excerpts from the new volume that have so far appeared in the New Yorker suggest that the new volume may be more favorable to LBJ than its predecessors, perhaps because Caro is going to want to support the civil-rights and Great Society aspects of LBJ's presidency once he gets around to dealing with that.

Did Caro indicate whether his projected fourth volume will deal with both LBJ's vice presidency and presidency, or only with the vice presidency (or maybe the 1960-64 term, as another possible dividing line)?

Anyway, however favorably Caro may deal with the later stages of LBJ's political career, the man is irredeemably damned by the LBJ tapes that C-SPAN is running (at least on C-SPAN Radio -- I don't have cable, so I can't say whether they're also on one of C-SPAN's TV channels.) The sycophancy and duplicity on display in those tapes can never be erased.

[aristeides]

My brother, who worked in Washington at the time, tells me that in 1963-4 all of in-the-know Washington privately believed LBJ was behind the JFK assassination.

[Timesink]

My brother, who worked in Washington at the time, tells me that in 1963-4 all of in-the-know Washington privately believed LBJ was behind the JFK assassination.

Yeah, but they were also all patrician Kennedy butt-kissers that almost literally considered LBJ to be subhuman because he was from Texas.

[aristeides]

I just thought my brother's report was worth posting. You may be right that mere snobbishness explains Washingtonians' opinion at the time. I don't know.

What I think is clear is that, whatever JFK's faults may have been, LBJ was a far worse president.

[Theodore R.]

Jack Valenti says that LBJ had him sit in the bedroom while LBJ and Lady Bird slept for several weeks after November 22, 1963 Why? Because LBJ was afraid that an assassin would come after him; therefore, LBJ wanted the protection of his friend Valenti, whom he implicitly trusted. Valenti could be making this up, but I always thought Jack was among the more fair-minded liberals, if there is such a thing as a "fair-minded" liberal. There is about as much evidence that LBJ was behind the death of JFK as there is that George Corley Wallace ordered the shooting of MLK, Jr.

[Theodore R.]

Wasn't Hoover "close" to LBJ politically and "distant" from JFK and Nixon?

[Ditter]

LBJ WAS subhuman, read both of Caro's book on him, & you'll see. You will also see that LBJ had Kennedy killed. He had to, it was the only way he would ever become president, & he HAD to be president.

[breakem]

Caro made a big point about voters rights saying it was LBJs cornerstone. Said best president for blacks since Lincoln. Hope Clinton doesn't get jealous.