Word: lincolnization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...been there for a strong President to use. When the Swiss examined the U.S. Constitution as a possible model for their own 1848 charter, they rejected it on the grounds that the presidency is a "matrix for dictatorship." Nonetheless, even the most activist Presidents have run into brick walls. "Lincoln was a sad man," F.D.R. once said, "because he couldn't get it all at once. And nobody can." At the end of one of his poorer days, Truman growled over a bourbon and water: "They talk about the power of the President, how I can just push a button...
Away from Consensus. At the moment, Johnson can hardly consider himself entrenched. The dump L.B.J. Democrats stand to his left, Alabama's George Wallace to his right, and a newly vigorous G.O.P. dead ahead. He has allowed the Democratic National Committee's once smooth machinery to rust. Indeed, whereas Lincoln's Cabinet complained that he carried his files around in the sweatband of his stovepipe hat, Johnson tries to carry the whole Democratic Party in his inside coat pocket. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara will soon be leaving him, and a debilitating exodus of top officials could follow...
...went so far as to declare that it would be in the "national interest" for the Johnson Democratic Party to "be ousted by a rejuvenated Republican Party." Notes TIME'S Washington Bureau Chief John L. Steele: "Historical generalizations are dangerous, but one is tempted to suggest that not even Lincoln who had to fight a civil war to preserve the Union faced such internal questioning, such intense and wide-ranging dissent as did Lyndon Johnson...
...honored sport among Americans where their Presidents are concerned. George Washington was called a crook and the "stepfather of his country." It was said of John Adams that "the cloven foot is in plain sight." Jefferson was berated as a mean-spirited hypocrite, Jackson as a murderer and adulterer, Lincoln as a baboon. With rare elegance, Teddy Roosevelt called Woodrow Wilson "a Byzantine logothete* backed by flubdubs and mollycoddles. " When the Depression laid Herbert Hoover low, newspapers were called "Hoover blankets," and a "Hoover flag" was an empty pocket turned inside...
Inspiration Gap. Johnson's "inspiration gap" is to some extent purely verbal. "The most eminent presidents have generally been eloquent presidents," wrote Stanford's Bailey in Presidential Greatness. "They were eloquent with pen, as Jefferson was; or with tongue, as Franklin Roosevelt was; or with both, as Wilson and Lincoln were." Johnson is eloquent with neither. Harry Truman helped overcome a similar deficiency with a roof-raising style on the stump, Dwight Eisenhower with an avuncular manner that inspired confidence and trust. Johnson's official verbiage tends to be dull, and though he can be pungent and forceful in private...