Morning Awesome

I’m struck, now more than ever, by that announcement of LBJ’s in March of ’68, and how you simply would never see such a thing today. You’d never see a politician resolutely remove himself (or, more to the point, herself) from the serious task of national governance because s/he knew the task to be beyond his or her political grasp. In that speech, a speech that shocked the nation and led to Bobby Kennedy’s sudden but all-too-brief rise to glory, Johnson truly put his country first.As much as he clusterfucked us into Vietnam, at least Johnson suffered for his mistakes, recognized that the tide had turned against him, that he had no chance in a suddenly hostile Congress to pass the Great Society legislation that could and should have been his true legacy as President. This was a man that won all but six states in 1964 (SIX!!), kicking Goldwater in his asshole so badly that old Barry had to have a sphincter transplant*, and just four years later he announced that he wouldn’t even bother seeking the nomination. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a stand-up guy, and he knew what was best for his country. He knew he couldn’t handle the intellectual and political rigors of the job that awaited the next president and so he bowed out. He put his country first.Of course, that gave us fucking Richard “Tricky Cock-Face” Nixon, but we’ll ignore that part.My point is this: We’ll never see this sort of thing again. Sarah Palin knows she isn’t Vice President material. John McCain knows she isn’t Vice President material. Enormous thinking swaths of this country know she isn’t Vice President material. And yet John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather live the lie than put their country first. Politics meant something to LBJ — they meant everything to LBJ — but at the end of his exhausting first full term, he put his country first.* But the sphincter rejected him. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! POW! Oh I still got it, baby!

Elvis, you’re leaving out an important factor – there wasn’t much chance of LBJ getting the nomination. The upheaval in the country and in the world was so great that Johnson couldn’t have withstood a campaign on issues and the climate was such that a campaign based on fear & lies wouldn’t fly at all. It would have been personally humiliating for LBJ to be defeated for the Democratic nomination by Bobby Kennedy, which is where it was all headed. The guys who got college deferments from the draft were graduating, losing those deferments, and were of voting age. They weren’t going to vote for staying in Vietnam. (I admit it – I remember 1968 and it left its mark on me)You are right, it appears that LBJ put his country first. All accounts are that he was haunted by what was happening in Vietnam and wasn’t sure how to proceed AND he chose not to participate in the kind of campaign that McCain is running. Great analysis of that!However, it was the assassination of RFK that gave us Nixon….