• jaaake@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It’s weird that I know about Johnson’s Johnson long before I became aware of all the legislation that passed while he was in office:

    • Civil Rights Act
    • Voting Rights Act
    • Medicare/Medicaid
    • Food Stamps (and other social programs)
    • Immigration & Nationality Act
    • National Endowment for the Arts
    • Public Broadcasting Act (PBS/NPR)
    • various education & environmental bills

    That dick got a lot done…

    And also started the war in Vietnam…

    Kind of a complex legacy, but holy shit that’s a lot of good domestic work, ESPECIALLY for a single term president (plus the year following JFKs assassination).

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Civil Rights Act Voting Rights Act Medicare/Medicaid Food Stamps (and other social programs) Immigration & Nationality Act National Endowment for the Arts Public Broadcasting Act (PBS/NPR) various education & environmental bills

      Folks, the way you carry yourself and behave to others matters. Everyone thinks of LBJ as a generic president, or ,as a crude man. All that legacy, people don’t pay attention to. Similar stuff will happen to Biden’s presidency, he was more progressive than people give him credit for, but his “ice cream, Jack” and gaffes , alongside Trump’s bullying are getting him put to the sidelines of history.

      Also, among these lines, being an extraordinary gentlemen from an unexpected background and being sandwiched by two buffoons before and after his terms, does a lot for Obama’s image. He’s more middle of the road than he is perceived to be.

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      1 day ago

      He didn’t start the war in Vietnam, he just ramped it up way more than Kennedy did. The US would have been a much better country if Johnson had focused on his great society platform instead of Vietnam.

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      Agreed on the oddity of it. I definitely have known of the story about pissing on a secret service member’s leg (though the story said he was directly pissing on it, not that it was the ‘spray’) since I was a young kid. It made it into a trivia book I was reading.