My title was a chant Lyndon Johnson was chided with during his presidency.
It was in an email I received this morning. A fellow I know is in the midst of reading a book on Vietnam and has decided he hates Lyndon Johnson who he feels in 1967, escalated the war.
His rant left me wistful since, though LBJ isn’t in my top 5 of favorite American Presidents, I do have a warm place for him. When I attempted to relate this to my friend, he went off the rails before slamming down the phone.
My feeling, before you judge a man too harshly, one needs to examine the whole board.
Make no mistake that Johnson was at times, a crude behind the scenes manipulator, but what you find out reading about any politician with perhaps the exception of John Quincy Adams, they all on some level have at least that second trait.
Even Lincoln letting William Seward, his Secretary of State, convince him to shove his Emancipation Proclamation in a drawer until the Union Army had a victory, would be considered shrewd.
What always comes to mind about Lyndon Johnson who became the 36th President replacing our gunned down 35th, was how he treated Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband was so brutally killed.
The Secret Service petrified of losing another man on their watch, wanted to whisk him out of Dallas ASAP, but he and Mrs. Johnson refused leaving without Jackie who wouldn’t leave without the body of her husband.
Dallas officials wanted JFK’s autopsy done there causing quite a stir, along with what could have been a deadly delay.
“It was a fucking photo op,” hollered my friend. “Johnson wanted her on the plane taking his oath to make him look good in her bloody suit.”
“It’s my firm belief, he didn’t leave her for a photo op,” I said, “but because he had two daughters of his own, and if you know anything about southern men, especially Texans, they have chivalry cemented in their bones.”
CLICK!!! went the phone.
The Boeing 707 that took John F. Kennedy home is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. ![]()
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As far as the iconic photograph of Mrs. Kennedy in her bloodstained suit standing next to President Johnson, Lady Bird tried earnestly to get her to change her clothes, but she refused saying…I want them to see what they have done to Jack.
The infamous suit is stored in the National Archives with Mrs. Kennedy’s explicit instructions not to be put on public view until the year 2103.
It pays to know your history, in my humble opinion.
SB