What Obama's Great Society challenge is, says Great Society historian
Hold on to the audacity of hope but shun the arrogance of over-promising.
That's the message from a scholar who says President Obama can learn much from the success and mistakes of another ambitious attempt to remake America.
Robert Weisbrot, co-author of "The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s,'' says the Great Society revolution was "tremendously liberating" for members of the most vulnerable groups in America.
The Great Society was President Lyndon Johnson's sprawling legislative attempts in the mid-1960s to lift Americans out of poverty, erase racial injustice and clean up the environment.
But historical circumstances won't permit Obama to push through his own Great Society, Weisbrot says.
"Obama is living in a different age," Weisbrot said. "The circumstances won't permit him to be another Lyndon Johnson."
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That's the message from a scholar who says President Obama can learn much from the success and mistakes of another ambitious attempt to remake America.
Robert Weisbrot, co-author of "The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s,'' says the Great Society revolution was "tremendously liberating" for members of the most vulnerable groups in America.
The Great Society was President Lyndon Johnson's sprawling legislative attempts in the mid-1960s to lift Americans out of poverty, erase racial injustice and clean up the environment.
But historical circumstances won't permit Obama to push through his own Great Society, Weisbrot says.
"Obama is living in a different age," Weisbrot said. "The circumstances won't permit him to be another Lyndon Johnson."