United States History, Law and Politics

President Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro, notes

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John F. Kennedy did little in the U.S. Senate; he spent almost the whole time running for President. Only one U.S. senator, in all American history, had gone directly to be President from the Senate: Warren Harding. Kenney explained why: "No matter how you vote, somebody is made happy and somebody unhappy. If you vote against enough people, you are politically dead." [p 48 of Kindle version]

Robert Kennedy "'was furious' spoiling for a fight ... One took place in a Cambridge bar where Bobby, celebrating his birthday with a group of friends ... was picking up everyone's bar tab. Another harvard student, John Magnuson, happened to be already celebrating his birthday there, and his friends began singing 'Happy Birthday' to him. Infuriated over what he apparently regarded as an intrusion into his celebration, Bob walked up behind Magnuson and hit him over the head with a beer bottle, sending him to the hospital for stitches." In another fight Bobby started "[He] would have killed him if we didn't pull him off. We had to pry Kennedy's fingers off his neck." [p. 62-63]

However, unlike his father Joe Kennedy, Robert was not anti-semitic. After graduation from Harvard (where he was a C student) dad paid for a tour of the Middle East. There Robert came to identify with the Zionist settlers, who he saw as brave and as superior to the Arab natives. [230-231]

Lyndon Johnson, in the Spring of 1963, was scheduled to appear in St. Augustine, Florida. Fannie Fullerwood of the NAACP contacted him and complained the two events were to be whites only. Johnson insisted that blacks be invited to the events, and they were. [251-253]

It was President Kennedy, son of a billionaire when there were only a couple in the world, who insisted on lowering marginal tax rates on the risk, but his bill to do that did not pass until after he died. The theory was that lower taxes on the rich would encourage them to invest and spend more, thus boosting the economy, thus increasing tax revenue for programs Kennedy wanted. [346]

The Civil Rights bill as well as the tax bill were being held up in Congress, particularly in the Senate. "The inefficiency of Congress was nothing new, of course -- the only period since the Civil War that the pattern had been broken in the Senate, the principal logjam, was the six years of Lyndon Johnson's leadership." [346]

"A preliminary plan for covert operations against North Vietnam had been approved at a conference in Honolulu two days before Kennedy's assassination, and it was decided at the meeting in 27 that when the plan had been refined, it would be sent to the President for approval." [calling into question the liberal myth that had Kennedy not been assassinated, he would have withdrawn U.S. troops from Vietnam. - WPM][401]

"Neither man [Kennedy & Johnson] wanted to go into the election as the one who either made war or lost Vietnam. If you could put it off, you did." [Quoting Bundy] [402]

President Johnson "told Lodge to return to Vietnam and assure its new government that his Administration would continue Kennedy's policy of helping Saigon to fight the Communists." [402]

Addressing some leaders of Congress soon after he became President, Lyndon Johnson said: "We have hate abroad in the world, hate internationally, hate domestically where a President was assassinated ... We have to do something about this hate, and you have to get to the root of hate. The roots are poverty and disease and illiteracy." [420]

Senator John McClellan of Arkansas was chair of a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, where he stalled Kennedy's appropriation bill as a tactic to ultimately stall the civil rights bill before the session of Congress expired and it would have to start the process all over again. "He had simply found a number of projects unrelated to either measure with which to occupy himself." Kennedy's legislative package, and particularly the Civil Rights bill, were dead because Kennedy and allies did not know how to go around the powerful racist southern Democrats who controlled most of the committees of Congress. [460]

 

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