LBJ: Hero or Not ... A debate between David Greenberg and Michael Kazin

Michael Kazin (link):

Michael Kazin is editor of Dissent and teaches history at Georgetown University. His most recent book is "American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation."

Of course, to remember what the United States, during LBJ’s tenure, did to Vietnam and to the young Americans who served there does not cancel out his domestic achievements. But to portray him solely as a paragon of empathy, a liberal hero with a minor flaw or two, is not merely a feat of willful amnesia. It is deeply immoral.

In 1965, as Johnson was pushing Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act and Medicare, he was also initiating the bombing of North Vietnam and signing the orders which eventually sent over 500,000 U.S. troops to occupy and fight to “pacify” the Southern half of that country. At the time, liberal Democrats who opposed the war condemned the hypocrisy of a President who could help millions of Americans win their rights and a degree of medical security while he oversaw the destruction of what he called “a raggedy ass little third rate country.” Fifty years later, powerful Democrats in search of a usable past would just prefer to ignore the contradiction.

David Greenberg (link):

David Greenberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic, is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.

Should LBJ be remembered as a “liberal hero”? If in labeling someone hero, we’re presumed to be ignoring or airbrushing his faults—then of course not. Does anyone really have heroes anymore, at least in this sense? My generation, born at the tail end of the 1960s, has never been able to regard any leader as a hero the way earlier generations did. Our sensibilities and our politics have changed too much since the 1960s. No one can overlook anymore (for example) Washington’s and Jefferson’s slaveholding, Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policies, Lincoln’s and Wilson’s wartime civil liberties records, or FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans. We know these men to be deeply flawed, in some cases to the point where celebrating them produces in us considerable unease. But, ultimately, we still recognize them as remarkable presidents whose finest feats transformed the nation for the good. So if in calling someone a hero it’s also possible to simultaneously acknowledge his failings, even terrible failings, then Lyndon Johnson deserves a place in the pantheon. 

But maybe we don’t need to label Johnson a hero. Maybe it’s enough to say he did some heroic things, and that, as the state of American politics today suggests, is rare enough.