Obama to honor Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act
AUSTIN, Texas President Obama has tried to model Abraham Lincoln's team of rivals and Teddy Roosevelt's power of the bully pulpit. He's lauded Ronald Reagan's communication skills and linked himself to the Kennedy clan. He's praised his onetime nemesis, George W. Bush, as well as his onetime adversary, Bill Clinton.
But Obama has rarely cozied up to the predecessor some argue did more than any other modern president to pave the way for his election as the nation's first black president: Lyndon B. Johnson.
Five years into his presidency, Obama will head to Austin on Thursday to remedy what some Johnson admirers have described as a "pattern of omission." At a ceremony at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Obama will honor Johnson and the Civil Rights Act, signed 50 years ago this year.
But it is other elements of Johnson's legacy that have confounded and irked the Obama White House. As a president who tried to end two wars, Obama was not inclined to align himself with a president who escalated the Vietnam War.
More recently, any mention of Johnson and Obama in the same sentence is typically a comparison of their legislative prowess and Obama comes up short. In the age of partisan gridlock, the master of the Senate, as Johnson became known during his time as majority leader, has become for many Democrats an example of how a president once used government to do big things. By comparison, the current president has become a symbol of how little government can get done.
But the story of Obama's and Johnson's legislative records is more complex and with a more similar arc than sometimes described. Both passed sweeping legislation in short order, taking advantage of early political momentum, mindful, in Johnson's words, that a newly elected president is "a giraffe; six months later, he's a worm."
Both also faced great frustrations and backlash in later years. And like Johnson, Obama hopes history will prove his earliest major legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, to be his most widely embraced.
For now, the White House is quick to note the many differences between the two presidents and their times.
Most obviously, Johnson benefited from large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress when he pushed the Civil Rights Act, even as the country mourned John F. Kennedy. Those majorities jumped to a whooping 295-140 in the House after the 1964 election. When Obama passed his healthcare overhaul in 2010, Democrats had 253 seats.
But Johnson also embraced the sort of parliamentary maneuvers and horse trading that today would have good government advocates screaming about legislative payoffs and backdoor politics. And thinking Obama could wine and dine his way to moving his legislative agenda is to misunderstand the current political climate, White House aides argue. Political polarization has diminished common ground between the parties and left few moderates to woo.
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