LBJ’s Great Society Survives

By ROB PATTERSON

I am big on documentaries as I live by the adage “you learn something new every day.” Then there are those documentaries that are so elemental that you learn something satisfyingly new about what you – or thought you – already knew.

Chalk up “JFK & LBJ: A Time For Greatness” as a blue-ribbon doc experience. Since moving to Texas 30 years ago I have become an LBJ revisionist. No more, “Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” like we chanted back in the Vietnam War era. Now it’s been, wow, he did even more for Civil Rights than JFK, who gets the lion’s share of the credit.

This doc, which originally appeared on PBS in 2015, does the linkage to show how both great men share credit for that monumental shift in American laws, thinking and culture. Yet LBJ does earn first place. His ability to work the Senate from his 1950s run as majority leader enabled Johnson to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act through the upper house in the wake of JFK’s assassination.

It was nice to hear the words “liberal Republican” as part of the “yea” coalition and not, as they are today, a contradiction in terms. And witness “bipartisan” as something real that can help enact true progress.

Johnson had the cojones, as we say here in Texas, to push hard to get that bill into law even before his 1964 reelection run – a risky move, even if he did wallop Barry Goldwater in that race. (Wouldn’t it be nice to see such a forceful electoral repudiation of conservatism these days?)

I grew up and was paying attention during the events in this doc. Yet it is enlightening

One thing I did not know and was wowed to learn is how LBJ hired a Black woman as his executive assistant. And even more significantly, in these Texas things I have also learned about, took her when in the Lone Star State over the holidays to the University of Texas alumni 40 Acres club … a segregated club. The next day it found a new life as an integrated club.

Vietnam was Johnson’s undoing. And I feel like I still want to learn more about Johnson’s brave decision to not seek reelection in 1968.

Another eye-opener: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin asserting that we live in LBJ’s America, with Medicare and Medicaid, etc. That is, if tRump and McConnell haven’t succeed in dismantling it yet.

Instead of MAGA we need MAGSA: Make America a Great Society Again. All the way with LBJ!

He was hardly a perfect man. But we also didn’t know how good we had it back then. Here’s hoping the real Johnson spirit for fairness and social justice we learn about in this doc makes a big-time comeback.

Populist Picks

TV Documentary: “The Rise and Fall of Penn Station” – My memory can get hazy as I age, and believe I may well have watched and touted this in the past here. But it never hurts to be reminded of cultural monuments we have lost.

Movie: “The Spy Who Came In from The Cold” – This haunting 1965 film starring Richard Burton was my keyhole drug into the John le Carré espionage universe. Forty-five years later it still bristles with drama.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2020

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