All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first address as President to a joint session of Congress (November 27, 1963)

The 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was born on this date in 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas on the Pedernales River. Coincidentally, it is also the date on which LBJ accepted the 1964 Democratic nomination for President. (Senator Hubert H. Humphrey was his Vice Presidential nominee.)

In some respects, history and time have been kinder to Lyndon B. Johnson than his tortured Presidency –and certainly the critics of his day—would have possibly suggested. A power broker extraordinaire during his days in Congress, especially during his twelve years in the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson challenged John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 primaries, and then accepted Kennedy’s offer to become his Vice Presidential running mate.

Johnson was credited with helping Kennedy win Southern votes and ultimately the election. 

On November 22, 1963, history and America changed and Johnson became President, taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy, the dead President’s widow standing beside him. 

Driven by a rousing sense of social justice, born out of his youth and upbringing in hardscrabble Texas and Depression-era experiences, he had become one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most loyal New Dealers. First in a federal job, then in Congress and later as “Master of the Senate.”

As President, Johnson set the country on a quest for what he called the “Great Society,” looking for ways to end the great economic injustice and bitter racial disparity that existed in America in 1963. But his vision for a “Great Society” was counterbalanced, and ultimately overshadowed by his doomed course in pursuing the war in Vietnam.

With the country’s troubles at home and an  increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan, I have been thinking about Johnson’s tortured Presidency of late. He was so eager and committed to do the right thing in correcting the social ills he saw in America. But it all fell apart in the disaster of Vietnam. All of the parallels between the two conflicts –Vietnam and Afghanistan– are obvious.

In the midst of the war,  recent tapes reveal  Johnson confided–

I can’t win and I can’t get out.

Are we in the same place again?

Here is a link to the Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas –well worth a visit if you are nearby.

http://www.lbjlibrary.org/about-lbj/timeline.html