Half-Johnson or Full-Johnson?

[AdamSmith]

Lessons for Obama from the master...

Commentary: What LBJ would do

By Tom Johnson

Special to CNN

Editor's note: President Lyndon B. Johnson secured passage of Medicare, the Voting Rights Act and other milestone legislation. Tom Johnson, who served as one of LBJ's White House press secretaries, is former chief executive of CNN News Group and former publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

LBJ would:

Have a list of every member of Congress on his desk.

He would be on the telephone with members (and their key staffers) constantly: "Your president really needs your vote on this bill."

He would have a list of every special request every member wanted -- from White House tours to appointments to federal jobs and commissions.

He would make a phone call or have a personal visit with every member -- individually or in a group. Charts, graphs, coffee. They would get the "Johnson Treatment" as nobody else could give it.

He would have a willingness to horse-trade with every member.

He would keep a list of people who support each member financially. A call to each to tell them to get the vote of that representative.

He would have Billy Graham calling Baptists, Cardinal Cushing calling Catholics, Dr. Martin Luther King calling blacks, Henry Gonzales calling Hispanics, Henry Ford and David Rockefeller calling Republicans.

He would get Jack Valenti to call the Pope if it would help.

He would have speeches written for members for the Congressional Record and hometown newspapers.

He would use up White House liquor having nightcaps with the leaders and key members of BOTH parties.

Each of them would take home cufflinks, watches, signed photos, and perhaps even a pledge to come raise money for their next election.

He would be sending gifts to children and grandchildren of members.

He would walk around the South Lawn with reporters telling them why this was important to their own families.

He would send every aide in the White House to see every member of the House and Senate. He would send me to see Sen. Richard Russell and Rep. Carl Vinson because I am a Georgian.

He would call media executives Kay Graham, Frank Stanton, Robert Kintner, and the heads of every network.

He would go to pray at six different churches.

He would do newspaper, radio and TV interviews -- especially with Merriman Smith, Hugh Sidey, Sid Davis, Forrest Boyd, Ray Scherer, Helen Thomas, Marianne Means, Walter Cronkite, Phil Potter, Bob Novak.

He would threaten, cajole, flirt, flatter, hug -- and get the health care bill passed.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/24/joh...care/index.html

[RA1]

LBJ would do all that and more. He knew where each skeleton was in each member's closet. He had every one of them with a picture of a goat fully engaged in sex. There were no secrets from LBJ; he had been in Congress far too long and knew all the gossip and bad news on each and every one of them. He was the consultimate arm twister. He had long dead voters vote for him in TX, so he knew what all the other members of Congress had done. He took the assasination of JFK, a President who had a lot of trouble getting any thing enacted, and turned him into a martyr. He then used a guilty conscience or favors owed or whatever was available to further the legislation proposed by but not passed by JFK. He then added his own agenda which may have largely been influenced by his near end of career thoughts of last hurrahs and pushed very hard. He was very effective but also very ruthless. In the end it seems he realized that what he had wrought was not necessarily what was best for the country.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest Conway]

Not to mention that he would have had dead congress members return to vote on the matter.

[AdamSmith]

Not to mention that he would have had dead congress members return to vote on the matter.

LOL.

Progress Does Not Always Come Easy

by Jimmy Carter

As a legislator in my state

I drew up my first law to say

that citizens could never vote again

after they had passed away.

My fellow members faced the troubling issue

bravely, locked in hard debate

on whether, after someone's death had come,

three years should be adequate

to let the family, recollecting him,

determine how a loved one may

have cast a vote if he had only lived

to see the later voting day.

My own neighbors warned me I had gone

too far in changing what we'd always done.

I lost the next campaign, and failed to carry

a single precinct with a cemetery.

From Always a Reckoning, Jimmy Carter

http://www.amazon.com/Always-Reckoning-Oth...r/dp/0812924347

[JKane]

I've often felt LBJ was very underrated, he certainly had many great accomplishments.

But I worry that was a different time, one we'll never get back to.

It's hard to imagine most of the Republicans in congress responding with anything other than a snort to "your president needs you".

And it's not as if there was any reward for all the Democrats who went along with that kind of nation-first thinking post-911 and gave Bush everything he asked for right through the authorization for Iraq...

LBJ didn't have an inexplicably popular opposition media network of multi-millionaire talking-heads (owned by a multi-Billionaire) successfully convincing its' viewers (most of whom are within a few paychecks of being homeless) that the critical issues of the day were the DEATH TAX and NOT TAKING PRIVATE INDUSTRY PROFIT OUT OF HEALTH CARE.

But I agree with the sentiment that it sure would be nice if any of the democratic leaders (other than maybe Hillary ) had LBJ's balls.