By MIKE MAGEE
That is the 52nd anniversary of the dying of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his fifth Coronary heart Assault. And two days in the past was the 39th anniversary of the primary celebration of a brand new federal vacation, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In signing that unique proclamation in 1983, President Ronald Reagan stated, “The majesty of his message, the dignity of his bearing, and the righteousness of his trigger are an enduring legacy. In a couple of brief years he modified America forever.”
The MLK federal vacation was not so “Kum ba yah” (“Come by right here”) this 12 months. President Trump was in no temper to be tutored on this 60’s phrase derived from an African American non secular made well-known by Pete Seeger. Fairly, he took benefit of the convergence of MLK’s day and his personal coronation to trash all things DEI (Variety, Fairness, Inclusion).
Of these supporting the 2nd time period President, from right here and past, few might have had a broader smile on his face than dearly departed (July 4, 2008) former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helm led the opposition to the MLK invoice, submitting a 300-page report that labelled King an “action-oriented Marxist” and a communist. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) was so enraged on the time that he declared the report a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate ground, after which unceremoniously repeatedly stomped on it.
So, as a nation, we’ve been down this highway earlier than.
As history.com experiences: “On the day of Nixon’s second inaugural celebration, Johnson watched sullenly as Nixon introduced the dismantling of a lot of Johnson’s Nice Society social packages… The next day, whereas Girl Fowl and their daughters have been in Austin, Johnson suffered a deadly coronary heart assault at his ranch in Johnson Metropolis.”
In yesterday’s Washington Submit, George Will supplied us all with a a lot wanted actuality verify by quoting Stanford professor of presidency, Stephen Kotkin, who within the lead as much as the election stated, “Who’s the ‘we’? Trump isn’t an alien who landed from another planet.”
“That is any person the American individuals voted for who displays one thing deep and abiding about American tradition. Consider all of the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Professional wrestling. Actuality TV. Casinos and playing, that are not simply in Las Vegas or Atlantic Metropolis, however in all places, embedded in every day life. Movie star tradition. Social media. All of that appears to me like America. And sure, so does fraud, and brazen mendacity, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. However there’s an viewers, and never a small one, for the place Trump got here from and who he’s.”
LBJ was 64 when he died. He could be 117 at this time. The Civil Rights Act that he signed on July 2, 1964, “altered the authorized, political, and social panorama of America as radically as any legislation of the 20th century,” in response to presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And but, LBJ outlined himself extra as a pragmatist than in heroic phrases. He stated, “I do know lots of people round these Georgetown events are saying that I wasn’t a lot of crusader for civil rights once I was within the Senate. On steadiness, they’re proper about me. I wasn’t a crusader. I represented a southern state, and if I bought too far forward of my voters they’d have despatched me proper again to Johnson Metropolis . . . Now I symbolize the entire nation, and I can do what the entire nation thinks is true.”
His remarks on that July 2nd night signing have been lofty:
We consider that every one males are created equal. But many are denied equal remedy.
We consider all males have sure inalienable rights. But many Individuals don’t take pleasure in these rights.
We consider that every one males are entitled to the blessings of liberty. But hundreds of thousands are being disadvantaged of these blessings-not due to their very own failures, however due to the colour of their pores and skin.
Nevertheless it can’t proceed. Our Structure, the muse of our Republic, forbids it…Morality forbids it. And the legislation I’ll signal tonight forbids it.
Now we have come now to a time of testing. We should not fail. Allow us to shut the springs of racial poison.”
That very night, LBJ speech writers, Invoice Moyers and Dick Goodwin, encountered their boss in a pensive temper. This was the anniversary of his huge 1955 coronary heart assault. Requested what was troubling him, he replied, “I feel we simply delivered the South to the Republican Celebration for a very long time to come back.”
A few years later, Dick Goodwin’s recollections of that evening’s occasions have been captured by his historian spouse, Doris Kearns Goodwin. He stated, “Who would have thought that the testing time that lay forward would nonetheless be with us greater than a half century later, that the springs of racial poison have nonetheless not been closed?”
Trump clearly desires his personal Kennedy, if solely a junior. However on this 52nd anniversary of his dying, I’m “All The Method With LBJ.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common contributor to THCB. He’s the writer of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
