Swimming with LBJ.

My son Chris sends that passage from "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (by Doris Kearns Godwin (commission earned)).

Chris is reading biographies of all the U.S. Presidents, as you may remember from earlier posts. Someone emailed asking for a list of all the books in that project, and, though I don't do everything you might ask, I did do this. 

First, Chris sent a photo of his bookshelf:

"I'm not sure why WaPo covered this, but ignored trump wearing a wig that is styled like his mother's hair during her last year of life."

That's the top-rated comment (by far) on the WaPo article, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s freezing her eggs/The Democratic congresswoman, 36, said she made the decision to undergo the fertility procedure to 'feel more in control of my life'" (gift link).

I was trying to figure out whether and how to blog the AOC story. I saw her video yesterday:

AOC is starting her journey for freezing her eggs!

Sharing her doing the shot.

"Don't be weird about this even though I know you all will be".

She knows the internet so well. pic.twitter.com/2ywzN8R5d9

— Winter (@LeftyWinter) August 9, 2026

I haven't seen such a display of political abdominal flesh since the days of LBJ and his gall bladder surgery:

Still wondering how to blog that. But what's all this about Trump and his wig?

It reminds me of the time LBJ saw a portrait of himself and said "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."

Trump on Truth Social: "Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They 'disappeared' my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?"

Quoted in "President Trump accuses Time magazine of deliberately using the worst photo ‘of all time’ on a cover praising his peace deal" (NY Post).

As for that LBJ portrait, you can see it at "The Presidential Portrait That Was the ‘Ugliest Thing’ L.B.J. Ever Saw" (Smithsonian).

As for Trump's question, "What are they doing, and why?" I think he answered it, they were going for an artistic effect — "a floating crown, but an extremely small one."

"Every other recent president has said that he saw his role as transcending partisanship at least some of the time, to serve as leader of all Americans..."

"... even those who disagreed with him. George H.W. Bush talked of ushering in a 'kinder and gentler nation.' Mr. Clinton vowed to be the 'repairer of the breach.' The younger Mr. Bush spoke of being 'a uniter, not a divider.' Barack Obama rejected the idea of a red America and blue America, saying there was only 'the United States of America.' Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for ending 'this uncivil war.' None of them succeeded at achieving such lofty aspirations, and each of them to different degrees played the politics of division at times. Politics, after all, is about division — debating big ideas vigorously until one side wins an election or carries the vote in Congress. But none of them practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump...."

From "In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission/President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans" by Peter Baker, in the NYT.

Who is taking an accurate measure of the consistency and ferocity of the divisiveness of the various Presidents?

My prompt to ChatGPT: "What are the most ferociously divisive things Presidents have said in all of American history? Give me a top 10, with just the quotes, not the explanations."

The list [NOTE: I did not verify the accuracy of these quotes. What follows is with ChatGPT gave me and the entire thing could be hallucination. Proceed with care!]

"Biden drops out!"

That was the news exactly one year ago and the title of my blog post on the occasion.

I said: "My longstanding tag — 'biden drops out' — has come true."

Actually, I believed Biden would resign the presidency within a few weeks of his inauguration in 2021, but I didn't use my "biden drops out" tag for that. I didn't begin that tag until January 30, 2024, when the Washington Post published "Biden faces treacherous political choices in answering deadly attack/Republicans demand that Biden attack Iran. Some warn that risks a wider Middle East conflagration" (WaPo).

I found this line deeply disturbing:

"And you could have my two daughters on this call who know that when I die, my ashes are to be spread at Camp Mystic."

"It runs that deep for people who went to that camp. It was a very, very safe space. You know, it just was a, a clean slate. No one knew what you were like at school every day. No one knew that I was the geeky kid. I just was a can't-miss-it girl. I didn't even have a present father. I didn't know what anybody else's father did or how much money or the size of the house they lived in. It was a space where people could come and it was a level playing field.... So I did not have an idyllic childhood. I had a privileged childhood. But, you know, just because you're privileged doesn't mean that things are always going well at home. And I think a lot of kids were grappling with themselves and they came to Mystic and it was just a place to be a child.... I had an older brother and he was great. But I looked up to girls. I don't think I understood that at the time. It was also a place where you could just be silly. And I don't know that I would've been silly in front of boys at that age...."

Said Erin Paisan, describing her years as a camper in the 1970s, in "A Love Letter to Camp Mystic," today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast.

And over at The Washington Post, there's "'The camp of our dreams’: LBJ’s daughter remembers her years at Camp Mystic/Lynda Bird Johnson Robb recalls how the Texas camp shaped her childhood" (free-access link): "The camp, which opened in 1926, had a legendary reputation among Texans of privilege. Parents were known to put their daughters on the waiting list at birth.... Girls in their cabins could look up and see the names of their mothers and aunts and grandmothers carved into the rafters.... The bonds formed there could help assure that a girl would get into the right sorority at the University of Texas, marry well and find entry in elite circles."

"The search for parallels between then and now often includes the juxtaposition of Mr. Trump and Mr. Nixon, the president often relegated in popular memory..."

"... unfairly, I believe — to a symbol of what the ’60s rose up against.... Scandal followed Mr. Nixon throughout his career, as it has Mr. Trump. Both scrambled back to the forefront of politics — Mr. Nixon until he was felled by Watergate. ('He left. I don’t leave. A big difference,' is Mr. Trump’s take.) Both positioned themselves as victims of liberal elites and champions of a silent majority; both maintained an enemies list of people and institutions they wanted to punish.... But... Mr. Nixon entered the fray only at the tail end of the ’60s.... His predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, were far more responsible for the upheavals of that time.... Mr. Trump, by contrast, defines what is happening today. The troubles of the country and world, whether the Gaza protests, the war in Ukraine or unchecked immigration, may predate his second term, but the way he has incorporated them into his broad assault on American institutions and values stamps this era with his brand. Mr. Nixon never came close to anything of the sort...."

Writes Serge Schmemann, in "It May Feel Like the 1960s. But It’s Worse" (NYT).

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson are held responsible but Obama and Biden are not. Why not?! The obvious difference between Nixon and Trump is that Trump is currently in power and the opposition to him is happening now. There's no political cost to holding Kennedy and Johnson accountable now. But when Nixon was in power, he was hated and demonized, quite effectively. The big difference between Trump and Nixon is the one Trump is quoted as saying: "He left. I don’t leave. A big difference."

"And and when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside — allies — they already see this as a resounding success."

"You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hegseth. Maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down. But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not going to tolerate dissent. They're not going to tolerate opposition to Donald Trump during his return to Washington. And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year. As Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish, the Trump team is sending out the message. Now, there will be a very steep cost if you go against Donald Trump."

Said Jonathan Swan at the end of today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue." 

The episode concentrates on the effort to win support from Senator Joni Ernst. You can listen to that. I won't summarize. I am blogging this because I want to say that when I heard the part quoted above, I thought: Sounds like "Master of the Senate." 

Makes me want to reread Robert A. Caro's great book about LBJ. (Commission earned.) 

I hope Trump gets his Robert A. Caro some day. 

"[Nixon's] men broke into the Democratic National Committee in 1972—so what?"

"Lyndon B. Johnson’s men almost certainly bugged Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane in 1964. The John F. Kennedy administration authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. for its own political reasons. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration surveilled Charles Lindbergh when the famous aviator led the America First Committee and contemplated a presidential run in 1940. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well, Roosevelt successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents such as William Randolph Hearst, Huey Long, and Charles Coughlin. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under previous administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency, surveilling troublesome journalists such as Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Indeed, a probably core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971, for complex reasons, obliging Nixon to use amateur investigators for the Watergate burglary and other black-bag jobs that, under past administrations, the FBI would have conducted for the president...."

Writes David Frum in "Richard Nixon Was Unlucky/The Watergate scandal forced his resignation 50 years ago. Today, he’d probably have gotten away with it" (The Atlantic).

Nixon gave his resignation speech 50 years ago last night.

ADDED: The Atlantic homepage has a link to Hunter S. Thompson, "He Was a Crook/A scathing obituary of Richard Nixon, originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994."

"Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the latest dance craze was the Frug, Washington high society was transfixed by..."

"... Barbara Howar, a sparkling socialite from North Carolina who helped the first lady do her hair, mingled with a visiting Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and turned her Georgetown home into a center of Swinging Sixties entertainment.... Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene. Reflecting on the private life of Henry Kissinger, one of many diplomats and politicians who frequented her parties over the years, she quipped, 'Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 miles an hour when he drops you off at the door.'..."

From "Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89/Initially known as a Georgetown hostess, she became a best-selling author with her candid 1973 memoir, 'Laughing All the Way.' She later interviewed celebrities for 'Entertainment Tonight'" (WaPo)(free access link).

Howar launched her writing career with a 1968 Ladies’ Home Journal story called "Why LBJ Dropped Me." Looking (unsuccessfully) for a copy of "Why LBJ Dropped Me," I stumbled into this cool photograph, "Singer Bobby Darin sits with his girlfriend, Barbara Howar." I love her shoe. Grommets — so 60s! Ah, well, the 60s are long gone, and here I am, a creature of the 60s, entertained by obituaries, saying goodbye to everyone who was tormented by LBJ and danced the frug.

You don't see the phrase "enfant terrible" so much anymore. The OED says it's "A child who embarrasses his or her elders by untimely remarks; transferred a person who compromises his or her associates or his or her party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally." We used to celebrate the enfants terribles. Didn't we? Do we still? Answer without saying "Trump" or you are too boring to wear pajamas to an embassy gala and drive an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park.

"As a Black woman, I am bracing for the inevitable racist and sexist attacks on her and have mixed emotions about us asking her to sprint a marathon and do something unprecedented in an impossibly short timeline."

Said Jasmine Clark, a Georgia state representative, quoted in "Harris seized the moment. Can she translate that energy to victory? After an extraordinary debut as a presidential candidate, Vice President Harris must now prove she can wage a winning campaign to defeat former president Donald Trump" (WaPo).

"Sprint a marathon" is a good expression, better than, say, "backwards in high heels," because Harris has been tasked to accomplish in 100 days what is normally done in something more like 1,000 days. Now, the competition was swept out of her path — by others. And the limited time we have to listen to her may work to her advantage, but Jasmine Clark is on her side, and "sprint a marathon" aptly expresses how she feels.

It made me think of the famous Lyndon Johnson line:

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

Now, I think Kamala Harris has led a very privileged life, and she's been boosted ahead of others, not held back, and I don't want her or her supporters to play on our empathy about race and sex to excuse her shortcomings. But she is beginning the race at the starting line when her opponent has been running for years. And yet that might be to her advantage. If she'd been exposed as the frontrunner candidate all these months, she might have many more strikes against her (if I may mix the sports metaphors).

One thing that's held against her — I see this all the time — is her awkward statement about equity:

"So there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, 'oh everyone should get the same amount.' The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place."

She was carelessly loping along in a race to paraphrase LBJ and she took a header and fell near the finish line.

"We’re told the decision to act this way came last week but that Biden wanted to keep it quiet until he delivered his speech commemorating the Holocaust...."

Writes John Podhoretz in "Biden’s Shameful Betrayal" (Commentary).

Last week, the administration’s line was that it needed to see a plausible evacuation plan from Rafah—a statement indicating that it still supported the overall aim of eliminating Hamas and that the problem going forward was primarily logistical. So that might simply have been a lie....

But if his primary aim is to limit civilian casualties, his methods of doing so are insane. The munitions he is holding back would in part allow Israel to hit sites and areas in Rafah with great precision. That is how you limit casualties. Which leads me to believe that Joe Biden is literally trying to freeze the conflict in place permanently....

And why does Biden want this anyway? To what end? Unless your purpose is to prevent an Israeli victory, it’s nonsensical. And if he doesn’t want an Israeli victory, why did he spend months pushing for aid? Why? Why?...

I hesitate to attempt to answer, but my working theory would be that Joe Biden has prioritized his own reelection. And he's not even performing well at that. Ironically, his reelection theme seems to be that he — and not Trump — is a man of integrity. I would recommend that the old man step back from the tawdry exercise of getting reelected and actually behave with integrity.

But I suspect he's too far gone to give us that. May I recommend:

"Is there an ‘L.B.J. Moment’ in store? Don’t count on it."

Asks Peter Baker (at the NYT).

Back in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation — and many of his own advisers — by adding a secret 90-second bombshell finale to an Oval Office address on Vietnam that he was pulling out of the presidential campaign. With war raging, he said, he should not “devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes.”

No one should expect President Biden to emulate Johnson during his State of the Union on Thursday night, no matter how much some Democrats and commentators have floated the idea.... 

The SOTU is still over an hour away, but please put your SOTU comments on this post.

"Thousands of protesters participated in the rally, some carrying signs that read: 'No votes for Genocide Joe,' 'Biden has blood on his hands' and 'Let Gaza live.'"

"Biden has been a supporter of Israel and approved an 'emergency sale' that sent nearly 14000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106M to the Jewish State last month...."

From "Pro-Palestinian protesters chant ‘f–k Joe Biden,’ damage fence outside White House" (NY Post).

OVERHEARD AT MEADHOUSE:

ME: Maybe the chants will get to him, like they got to LBJ, and he'll withdraw.

MEADE: Stop making me like Joe Biden.

I'll have the usual!

Or unusual! Comment on whatever you like..

And merry Christmas, everybody.

In the land of LBJ.

We drove out into the hill country to see the birthplace of President Lyndon Johnson:

 

"I remember that day well" — the day Roe was decided — "because it was also the day when former president Lyndon B. Johnson died."

"I was one of the editors of the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan, and we had a passionate argument that went late into the evening over which should be our lead story. Should it be legalized abortion across the nation? Or the man who sent tens of thousands of young Americans to die in the Vietnam War? Most of the female editors saw the historic importance of Roe and understood the impact it would have on women’s lives. Most of the male editors — myself included, I confess — could not see past Vietnam and pushed hard for LBJ. We won, sort of: The paper ended up stripping Johnson’s death across the top of the front page and putting the Roe decision right beneath it, still above the fold, with a boldface two-line headline. For history’s sake, I thought that was the right call. I was spectacularly wrong. Johnson was indeed a towering figure, but he’d been long out of office and had to die at some point anyway. Roe was like a bolt from the blue, and with it the nation took a giant stride toward treating women as full and equal citizens under the law. The decision’s impact continues to this day — but perhaps not for many days longer."

Writes Eugene Robinson in "If the Supreme Court throws out ‘Roe v. Wade,’ it will tear the country apart" (WaPo).

I was a student there at the time, so I know I read that edition of the Michigan Daily. I didn't follow the Supreme Court, and I remember being completely surprised that the Court would do something so dramatic, to change so much about our experience of life. 

Isn't it interesting that the editors split by sex — everyone dominated by the  importance of sovereignty over one's own body?

As for the assertion in today's headline — who knows? Will overruling Roe "tear the country apart"? More than it's already torn apart? We may find out. I think it will help the Democratic Party, but you don't hear Democrats expressing hope for this gift of overruling.

"It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years."

Writes Jim Tankersley in "Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill/A plan for the economy, education, immigration, climate and more binds disparate Democratic lawmakers, but the proposal risks sinking under its own weight" (NYT). 

If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.... Republicans say the breadth of the bill shows that Democrats are trying to drastically shift national policy without full debate on individual proposals.... 

Ted Kaufman, a longtime aide to Mr. Biden who helped lead his presidential transition team, said the core of the bill went back much further: to a set of newsprint brochures that campaign volunteers delivered across Delaware in 1972, when Mr. Biden won an upset victory for a Senate seat.... 

Margie Omero, a principal at the Democratic polling firm GBAO, which has polled on the bill for progressive groups, said the ambition of the package was a selling point that Democrats should press as a contrast with Republicans in midterm elections. “People feel like the country is going through a lot of crises, and that we need to take action,” she said....

You know the old saying: Do something, everything. Including whatever was in those 1972 Delaware newsprint brochures. Come on, man! Biden's waited half a century to do whatever it was he claimed he wanted to do when he was 30. We've got to just do it in one fell swoop or none of it will ever get done. It's all or nothing. Take it or leave it. Don't you love it when your options are presented to you so clearly?

“This is our moment to prove to the American people that their government works for them, not just for the big corporations and those at the very top,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday. He added, “This is an opportunity to be the nation we know we can be.”

I'll accept his assurances if he'll explain what's in the bill and proves that he knows what he's talking about. And what is "the nation we know we can be"? Other than the one that is governed by people who support what they don't even begin to understand, because why not just combine everything into one inscrutable package? Actually, I do know we can be that, and it scares me.

By the way, it was only last April that I blogged a NYT article with this passage:

Invoking the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Biden unveiled a $1.8 trillion social spending plan to accompany previous proposals to build roads and bridges, expand other social programs and combat climate change, representing a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The Times used the same comparison to LBJ and FDR and it was only $1.8 trillion. It's $3.5 trillion now! Who knew you could equal the Great Society or the New Deal spending a mere half of what they're proposing now? This new thing is like the Great Society PLUS the New Deal. 

"The effort by Ms. Harris to address the root causes of migration, which can take years, is..."

".... unlikely to quickly produce the swift action demanded by Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the overcrowding at the border."

From "Biden Names Harris to Work With Central America on Migration/The president gave the vice president a prominent role in the politically charged issue at a time when thousands of children are being detained in facilities along the border" (NYT).

The "root causes" language is a reference to something Harris said: "While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law. We also — because we can chew gum and walk at the same time — must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek."

Walking and chewing gum at the same time is a metaphor,* initially designed to insult someone who can't do these 2 relatively easy-to-do things simultaneously. It doesn't work too much as a brag, unless you're saying that the 2 things are easy to do at the same time. 

What are the 2 things? There's a huge difference between wanting people not to come + caring about root causes and effectively enforcing all of the law restricting the border + changing the conditions that are causing people to come to the border. 

The first set of things is easy to do, damned near effortless. The second set is nearly impossible, done together or done one at a time. Might as well laugh about doing them together because you know you're not going to make much progress at all on either.

_________________________

* "The term is recorded in a Texas newspaper in [1964]. President Lyndon Johnson allegedly said that then-Congressman (and later president) Gerald Ford couldn’t 'fart and chew gum at the same time.' As early as the 1900s, it was observed that women talk a lot and chew gum a lot, but don’t 'talk and chew gum at the same time.' Entertainer and cowboy philosopher Will Rogers was described in 1926 as 'the only man in the world who can chew gum and talk sense at the same time.' It’s probable that the saying 'walk and chew gum at the same time' developed from the earlier 'talk and chew gum at the same time.'" That's at Quora. To speculate more coherently: People said women can't "talk and chew gum at the same time," then some crude fellows thought it was funner to say "walk and fart at the same time" — because walking and farting is a very funny subject. (I've seen George Carlin demonstrate the hilarity.) Then it got turned around for fun to LBJ's "fart and chew gum at the same time." Then it got cleaned up into the present-day corruption, "walk and chew gum at the same time."

"The give-them-cash solution to poverty is nothing new. It was conventional wisdom in Democratic Washington toward the end of the Johnson Administration."

"In 1968, a petition signed by 1,300 economists (including James Tobin and John Kenneth Galbraith) urged a 'national system of income guarantees.' LBJ didn't like the idea, but when Richard Nixon became president Democratic holdovers in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare served him up a no-work-requirid cash-dispensing scheme that became Nixon’s 1969 Family Assistance Plan. It almost became law, failing after a fringe West Coast politician named Ronald Reagan called it a 'megadole.'"

That's Point #2 in Mickey Kaus's "Five (5) quick points on the new Biden Dole" (Substack).

Kaus goes on to contemplate whether there's any Republican around these days who's capable of playing the Ronald Reagan role.