I agree with that, that is when the left built their power. Talk about not letting a crisis go to waste, they didn’t.
I don’t know that Johnson was such a pariah- to conservatives of course and especially to Vietnam Veterans who knew the truth but he really wasn’t with the left. The left has been many years covering for him- to the point many younger people don’t know he had anything to do with Vietnam, they only know him as the “Champion of Civil Rights” which of course he was not that either. The left has been teaching for years that Vietnam was “Nixon’s War” and getting away with it.
Johnson family sure did get wealthy off of Vietnam, that is a fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Shivers
Johnson was ‘conservative’ Texas Shivercrat in the 40’s and 50’s. He won the 48’ Senate campaign supporting Taft/Hartley to curtail the power of the unions.
He was derided by democrats at the time as being too much in the pocket of Eisenhower when he was Majority Leader of the Senate.
When he became president, he became that ‘Great Society’ liberal that everyone is familiar with but Democrats didn’t trust him and Republicans loathed him.
It’s still amazing after all these years that Democrats haven’t made any effort to rehab his image although they’ll fight to the mat for his programs like Medicaid.
JFK, Clinton, and Obama are their heroes, with Johnson its ‘Who?’