Doris Kearns Goodwin has gravitas… and is also a scrappy, in depth biographer who writes serious works with great humor and humanity for her subjects, their foibles and their featured triumphs in life. She’s written [1991] a fascinating bio of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and captured so well what a backcountry statesman, a man of great insight into human nature, a man of heart, and of clever pol views, and some stunningly far-seeing actions, and some grave failures… is made of. Kearns’ work is a must read to seeing the presidency–any presidency, really- from the inside out.
What I offer here about LBJ is only a small cloisonné view from a person who was young and so without opportunity as a single welfare mother striving to gain an education just after LBJ’s administration–just after he had put amazing legislation in place that would change many of our lives. Life changed for the better for many of us because LBJ signed papers giving us ‘chances.’
Many of us took them and have paid back in money, time, love and service to the world, 1000’s of times MORE than we ever received during the time we had such desperate need. Only because we had, for the first time, ‘chances.’ And even though the ‘chances’ were sometimes kept ‘secret’ by those from upper strata, we still found the way through.
So, in summary, in the first place is this: There are many who cared deeply for LBJ because with a stroke of a pen, he forced the states out of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries thinking that a caste system of untouchables by race, by poverty, by lack of educational opptys, was just fine. It wasn’t fine. Will never be fine. LBJ’s legislation allowed us all to pursue so much TOGETHER, instead of because of race, economic class, heritage, religion, and other factors beyond our control… to be left behind.
Remember Strom, the liar. Remember ax-handle Maddox. Remember the hateful in the same mold as the currently elderly fred phelps– were all around LBJ sharpening their only three teeth left to go for the jugulars of any who opposed their “I am king of the dirt hill and you are my slaves.’
Remember the huge tragedies of the murders of so many good people, Jewish, Black, White, who came to march together for peace and equality; remember the bombings of family homes, the corrupt law enforcement leaders, the pusillanimous church leaders, the cowards who killed little girls at their own refuge church and lied about it; the wheelchair life of the most race-baiting governor Wallace. Remember what LBJ was up against. Remember the civil rights act would protect many people from many different backgrounds. Remember how radical that legislation was, flying in the face of all the posturing belly-barrels who had clung to their offal-queen ways for millennia by keeping people down.
Did LBJ’s signature on civil rights legislation lift everyone? No. It gave ‘a chance’ for people to lift themselves. In ways never before heard or seen. I was there. I was a witness. One of millions. That was the point of his far-seeing legislation. Chances.
LBJ’s inheritance of the horrendous sinkhole of the war in VietNam can never be made different. Not ever purified. Only the people who sacrificed their young can love one another in a common grief across continents, that will last. As Shaun Mullen writes about LBJ and the war –as long as we live.
Nam will not be forgotten by us for we are the first-person witnesses. We were young, and barely written upon during Nam. Then to be carved til our blood flowed and tears flowed ceaselessly, our soles worn from marching, our souls shredded from sorrow– there, and here– such meaningless loss of lives of ALL. ALL. It will all remain as it was. As I write time and again, there are some egregious events we cannot change, we can only hope to find the holy somewhere within it, and to fasten ourselves to better and wiser, in regards, in the now.
And thirdly: There’s been much criticism of LBJ’s ‘Great Society’ legislation, [and the clean air act]. For those not old enough to remember the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s, we have a parallel condition in our time now– almost a doppelganger to what was going on back then in terms of acid disagreements politically. Much of the anti-equality, anti-opportunity screechers, back then, sound directly similar to those today who are upset about President Obama’s birth certificate, those who complain Clinton is a bad man, Obama is a bad man, Richard Nixon was framed, 49.7558 percent of the nation is ‘loser’, climate change is a hoax, and humans are not, not, not semi-intelligent apes [that last always makes me laugh when I hear it].
I repeat for it was such a life changer for so many of us: The ‘times of our times’ during and directly after LBJ’s admin, the ‘Great Society’ programs offered’ chances’ for the first time ever, and reliably so, meaning education for those of us who had nothing and no one. The often offered early childhood ed., an unheard of advantage for the young. Many states were inspired to enact legislation that would make it easier for war vets, single parents, the handicapped to seek and WIN a decent higher education. How amazing that was. Ignored, relegated to jobs requiring bones and blood for life, thought not worthy… we had suddenly, ‘chances.’
Often we were the first of our family to graduate from grade school, high school, and college? unthinkable. Except suddenly gaining a college degree was within reach for those willing to do the years and years of hard work– while raising children, while working for wages. LBJ gave us a chance. Many of us are forever grateful.
The final visionary point: The clean air act and other legislation LBJ stood behind were SO far ahead of his time. With the clean air act, we were given another kind of chance, an outside chance that we would live to be productive citizens, see our children and grandchildren grown up– have halfway decent health instead of dropping dead far too young from gagging on the disgusting ‘brown cloud’. For lung-sickening, lung-killing pollution had been brought to every city, every child, every mother and father, every teen, every grandmother and grandfather, uncle and aunt… by misuse of resources and greed of moguls who put money before mercy on everyone’s magnificent but fragile in many ways– bodies.
Yes, to many of us, that was LBJ’s legacy: Chances. He gave us chances. Where there were NONE before unless one was born to education, or adequate income, or ‘connections’ or had a sheltering loving mate or family. So many in our nation, had NONE of those ‘headstarts.’ I’d say LBJ cut doors in formerly blunt blank walls. Many of us flooded through, especially through education’s door.
I think of the presidents who ‘inherited’ other ‘presidents’ and ‘presidents puppeteers’ huge moral issues; such as unjust wars. Anyone who knows firsthand the wages of war which paradoxically sell human life far too cheaply and at far far too high a cost, will weep forever to remember any war… grief over loss of the young is not assigned to any one generation. Nor to any one nation.
LBJ shouldered what he inherited. He was roughcut. And yet… heartwise, in most matters his heart weighs out in pure troy ounces. And still, not as pall, but just as reality, there will always be grief about his time in office regarding the war. In many ways his time in the presidency is like looking at a magnificent landscape with a warm sun and reflective moon and sparkling stars… and also over there, too, a terrible ruin of something once beautiful,
…and yet there remains still– great beauty surrounding. Something like that. Something like that is the legacy of most souls on earth to varying degrees, including that of LBJ.