Word: lyndon
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Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro. The second installment of what promises to be the longest and liveliest American political biography of modern times finds Lyndon Johnson transforming what were certainly not his finest hours into tarnished triumphs. To wit: avoiding World War II combat for as long as possible and then parlaying a few minutes under fire into a Silver Star; and stealing the 1948 Texas senatorial election with 87 questionable votes -- enough to earn him the nickname Landslide Lyndon...
...cost of 128 American lives, to draw him in. Had it not been for Pearl Harbor, America Firsters might have prevailed in keeping the U.S. out of World War II. The Tonkin Gulf incident, in which Washington claimed North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on U.S. warships, provided Lyndon Johnson with a pretext to secure congressional support of the escalation in Vietnam...
...Congress approved the moral equivalent of a war declaration with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized Lyndon Johnson to use whatever force was necessary to protect U.S. troops in Vietnam. Frustrated by the bootless escalation of that conflict, Congress nine years later overrode Richard Nixon's veto of legislation requiring a President to withdraw troops from hostile areas after 60 days unless Congress approves the deployment. Several Presidents have declared that War Powers Resolution unconstitutional, although none asked the courts for a ruling...
Former Democratic national chairman Robert Strauss, who has served as an occasional adviser to both Bush and Ronald Reagan, thinks the right-wing disaffection could spell real trouble ahead. Says he: "When a President lets his own troops take him on, he pays a big price." Strauss believes that Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter paid the ultimate price -- losing the presidency -- because of internal party fissures...
Vietnam changed the way Americans view the Presidency and foreign policy. Support for Lyndon B. Johnson's bombing in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident was widespread, despite doubts about the incident's veracity. Today, the media's former trust has been replaced with cynicism...