Word: lbj
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...matter how hard you look, it seems that the Nixon "nobody knows" is the same as the Nixon everybody knows: a man to laugh at, not to laugh with. LBJ, at least, could be pictured as a foul-mouthed reckless driver who in all probability pinched his secretaries' behinds. We must ask if out new Chief Executive--a man so intensely serious, so devoid of anything one associates with human warmth--can survive the pressures of the Presidency. Can we be led by a man who smiles like a zombie and whose idea of beauty is a replica...
...LBJ also learned about freedom. "Contrary to another impression given by recent demonstrators, the federal government has not the slightest inclination to defy or to stifle dissent...
Besides all of these insights, the book contains, as the front cover says, "32 pages of remarkable photographs." They are very good ones. The first shows LBJ addressing the UN (A man for all nations). The next shows him with a bunch of farmers in Tennessee (President of all the people). Then in a Philadephia ghetto (President of blacks, too). Then at Howard University (scholar). Then delivering his State of the Union message (upholder of the finest traditions of democracy). Then standing alone in the Cabinet room, seen from the back, silhouetted against the Rose Garden (the awesome responsibilities...
...most remarkable thing about LBJ's book, however, is that when he finally comes to talk about the future, he makes some uncharacteristically perceptive statements. He talks, for example, about the "different visions. . . different questions. . . different doubts" of the current generation of Americans. "Either we move into a new awareness of the new needs of our people," he writes, "or else many of the institutions and values imperative to our progress will become massive irrelevancies...
...There must be," he goes on, "far better ways to serve our goals and purposes than we now have." Forgiving for a moment the lousy writing which cripples the book from the start and forgiving the overall narowness of LBJ's mind, I think he may be groping toward the realization that has come to so many of us in the past few years: that the whole way of life in this country is fast becoming absurd and that until we face that fact we will be beating around the bush. It's only too bad--to the tune...