The Worst Ex-President

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 5/06/04 | Jamie Glazov

[RBroadfoot]

LBJ didn't do much harm AFTER he stepped down, though.

[RBroadfoot]

Yeah, I'd substitute FDR, the guy who undermined the Constititution to expand the power of government and, thereby, extend the Great Depression, for Truman.

[NathanR]

The thing is, that Habitat for Humanity, was all he had for many years. (Or so it seemed.) However, when Nixon died, he got his own personal wake-up call, and decided to work on 'peace'. (I don't remember when his so-called "Carter Center" was actually created.[actually 1982])

His problem is that he thinks that appeasment leads to peace, not war or destruction.

[BibChr]

BUMP

[RetiredArmy]

I had just read this earlier on their site. Danged good article.

[neverdem]

LBJ didn't do much harm AFTER he stepped down, though.

You're correct. The hour was late, and when I start to think about Johnson, I start getting emotional, not thinking very clearly. I was thinking of president, not ex-president.

[what's up]

"ranks Carter number one among the worst"

I don't know...I think LBJ either ties or beats Carter here.

[neverdem]

Johnson's worst perfidy was that he wanted to fight in Vietnam only because he believed it was the only way he could get enough GOP co-operation to enact all of his domestic agenda. He really wanted to back out of Vietnam once he took office, but he was certain that if he was the first president to bug out of a war, then the GOP would never parlay with him.

He hoped that he could get a deal with the North Vietnamese. He thought that with a gradual application of power that the enemy would tire soon enough when combined with a promise of aid for development after they signed a peace treaty. He never understood the North Vietnamese, and after the Tet Offensive he thought he was up the creek without a paddle.

It's only within the last few years or so that I learned what LBJ was thinking at that time by listening to some of the audiotapes and some historians on C-SPAN. Robert Dallek is a historian who is working on a multiple volume biography of LBJ. I think the volume he's working on now is how Johnson dealt with Vietnam. It will be interesting to see what he says.

Here's the link for the following:

Johnson, like Kennedy before him and Nixon after, tape-recorded many of his meetings. On May 27, 1964, he said to Bundy (as transcribed by Michael Beschloss in his book Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-64):

It looks to me like we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with, once we're committed. I believe that the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home. … I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think that we can get out. It's just the biggest damned mess that I ever saw.

If you go to Washington D.C. and visit the "WALL", please remember the Great Society and all the other liberal follies those folks paid for. I believe LBJ completed the transformation of the rats into a socialist party that was started under FDR. I think Clinton is evil, but not as bad as LBJ.

[Waco]

It's likely that thru most of our history, 45-48% of the public would give this nation to any tryanical despot who wanted it, simply because he said he wanted it!!!

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

"I believe LBJ completed the transformation of the rats into a socialist party that was started under FDR. I think Clinton is evil, but not as bad as LBJ."

I respect that opinion. LBJ was a disastrous wartime president. And his war against poverty was a cancer. You are absolutely correct about that.

Now for the sink-meister: a single nuclear missile from China, with Clinton's vile impramata stamped on it, could have destroyed a US city. China is now exporting technology to other rogue states. His pardon of a crack dealer for cash, his pardon of FALN terrorists for votes, his debauchery of the US military, his weak responses to terrorism, his "Carter Compromise" with North Korea.... Clinton was the worst ever, I think.

And when the Arkansas Flu becomes fully understood by the general populace, people will realise the long term damage he caused to us.

What's really scary about Clinton, however, is he wanted to go much further than he did. It took a lot of hard fighting to slow him down. I'm too young to know if Johnson was a black hole of tyrannical desire the way Clinton was.

FReegards....