LBJ played Politics, not Golf

A press foto of President Obama chumming it up with GOP Senator Crocker triggered another memory in our mind,

one of several fotos showing LBJ leaning into and squeezing Republican and Dixiecrat opponents of the Civil Rights Act.

Now no one can fault a politician for shmoozing with the opposition.  No one can fault him for making nice and praising a creepture who otherwise makes him vomit.  Politics is the disgusting art of the possible.  

But when all is said and done, people expect those with power to use their power to get their avowed results.   Everything about Obama's shit-eating, I-made-it grin, tell us that he is not putting muscle into being the champion of Seniors, Students, the Sick, the Unemployed, the Homeless, the war-torn, the ecologically devasted.    Why should anyone think otherwise when he has in fact accomplished nothing that is anything  more than public relations chicken feed.

We have previously posted a synopsis of Teddy Roosevelts, Osawatomie Speech.  Likewise the video of Franklin Roosevelt's  Economic Bill of Rights.   We post now an interesting blog link [HERE] with transcripts and audios of Lyndon B. Johnson, squeezing the political flesh where it hurts -- amusing and admirable examples of cajoling Congress instead of doing  nothing and letting  it arrive at a consensus which inevitably subserves corporate interests.  We also post a link to his 1965 Address to Congress on the Civil Rights Act.

Johnson was no silver tongued speaker.  He was leaden and halting.  He could not hold a candle to Obama's silky, pre-vetted,  kneaded clichés.  But  what Johnson said in conclusion  was something Obama might well ask himself.

"What shall a man profit if he gain the whole world and loose his own soul?  .... There is no Negro problem.  There is no Northern problem.  There is no Southern problem. There is only an American problem."

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