I don't pretend to have the gospel truth answer. Yes LBJ did make an impact with his Great Society Programs and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
I thought it was pretty good and Cranston was great (he's come a long way from being Tim Watley) in it. I don't know a lot about Johnson so I don't know if it was an accurate portrayal or not.
I don't pretend to have the gospel truth answer. Yes LBJ did make an impact with his Great Society Programs and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
Like I said, his legacy is open to debate
its rare that you'll find many people that all agree that any modern day president is universally good, much less great.
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
funny you mention him. it seems to me (and I'm not really a big political guy) as I get older a lot more people look back on his presidency a lot more fondly than in the past.
One day the scholars will dig into the Reagan years
We all will be long gone, I hope the Country will honor the Man for his judgement and the power of his convictions. He deserves a monument in DC other than an Airport. He really should be on Mt Rushmore.
History will remember a great man at a desperate time.
I don't pretend to have the gospel truth answer. Yes LBJ did make an impact with his Great Society Programs and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
Like I said, his legacy is open to debate
I'm a liberal, and I agree with this. Credit for VRA and war on poverty, but Tonkin and further escalating the war in Vietnam. LBJ's not on the shortlist for Mt Rushmore.
I saw this on Broadway, and I liked that version better. Cranston is really good in both.
Or maybe we should just talk about the movie. I thought the Daisy ad was too central, even if it was brilliant and a pivotal piece of the '64 campaign. Felt like TV people focusing on TV - i.e. a little narcissistic. Cranston was fine. He's a star. His involvement probably helped get the film made.
Or maybe we should just talk about the movie. I thought the Daisy ad was too central, even if it was brilliant and a pivotal piece of the '64 campaign. Felt like TV people focusing on TV - i.e. a little narcissistic. Cranston was fine. He's a star. His involvement probably helped get the film made.
This is History not Politics. Who Cares what party they followed.
Good but not great. It's a fascinating warts-and-all portrait of LBJ, showing him as a man with truly high-minded principles and yet a coarse, cruel bully.
It's certainly an interesting riposte to "Selma," which seemed to paint LBJ as an obstruction to the Civil Rights Act. It paints him as a deal-maker who always had one eye on the next election, but also as someone who truly wanted to end Jim Crow, for the sake of all southerners, black and white.
Its portrayal of LBJ's thinking on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the start of the Vietnam war is very interesting -- a major long-term blunder made for what seemed to him to be good reasons.
Cranston's performance is arguably a little broad for the camera. He won a Tony playing the part on Broadway and a little of that stagy-ness creeps in. Melissa Leo is superb as Lady Bird, however. Lots of good supporting performances, but Anthony Mackie seems miscast as Martin Luther King Jr. Not bad, exactly, but he just doesn't seem to inhabit the role, and he certainly doesn't evoke Dr. King himself.
Robert Schenkkan's script is also a little stagy -- not surprising since his greatest fame is as a playwright. It's a story about politics, so it's bound to be talky, but it never entirely takes flight as a movie script.
The overall tone (especially the score) has the slightly old-fashioned, reverent tone we have come to expect from Steven Spielberg projects. He didn't direct (Jay Roach did) but he was a producer and his touch is unmistakable.
A lot of the above is pretty critical. Yet I'm glad I saw it. But I'm kind of a politics and history nut.
nor Selma. LBJ deserves a lot of credit on the big Civil Rights Bills of the era - CRA in 1964, VRA in 1965 and Fair Housing in 1968. From what I gather Selma portrays him as reluctant on VRA but this is nonsense. True the activists in the South are the real heroes but as far as politicians go LBJ did about as much as any POTUS possibly could have to pass these bills.
Vietnam obviously killed his reputation. He only cared about foreign affairs as far as they impacted domestic politics. And politics dictated that a Democratic president couldn't let Vietnam go red because the Republicans would have had a field day like they did when Truman "lost" China. So he went in full blast and nearly tore the country apart and did tear his beloved party apart.
Shadow: Your view that we're all breathing because of Ronald Reagan is speculation, not history. Containment had been the consistent policy of the U.S. for more than three decades when Reagan was elected, through Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Reagan sustained that policy, with relatively minor changes, and it worked. That's history.
Before we get into hair-splitting about containment vs. detente...
I think you have two really great presidents Lincoln and FDR and maybe Washington for different reasons and really bad presidents like Buchanan. Somewhere between those poles you differing degrees of success and failure. As someone who leans center-left I would agree that Reagan was the right man at the right time to pull the US out of its post-Vietnam post-Watergate malaise, but I would not agree that his accomplishments were in the realm of greatness. Also as a Trained Russian historian it seems to me that there is a great deal of arrogance embedded in the idea that Reagan or even the US itself was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end the USSR collapsed under its own internal contradictions some of which were enduring factors in Russian not just Soviet history. In the end the spark that led to the collapse was the kremlin's inability to manage its restive nationalities which prompted the 1991 putsch.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
can talk about any POTUS pre-Reagan without it getting too too political but Reagan is the dividing line right now. How you view him pretty much gives away your current views. Not for everybody of course but probably for most people.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
Truman rates very highly with historians and his reputation seems to keep going up and up. Both conservatives and liberals think highly of him today. Conservatives mostly for his anti-communist foreign policy, liberals because he was a New Dealer and desegregated the military.
I think you have two really great presidents Lincoln and FDR and maybe Washington for different reasons and really bad presidents like Buchanan. Somewhere between those poles you differing degrees of success and failure. As someone who leans center-left I would agree that Reagan was the right man at the right time to pull the US out of its post-Vietnam post-Watergate malaise, but I would not agree that his accomplishments were in the realm of greatness. Also as a Trained Russian historian it seems to me that there is a great deal of arrogance embedded in the idea that Reagan or even the US itself was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end the USSR collapsed under its own internal contradictions some of which were enduring factors in Russian not just Soviet history. In the end the spark that led to the collapse was the kremlin's inability to manage its restive nationalities which prompted the 1991 putsch.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
As a Russian Historian You understand that in the fall of 1983 the world biggest death toll would have been reached and life as we know it today would be completely different for those that survived.
Reagan and his Advisers quick thinking and helping to overthrow a Leader(Andropov) and his hardliners, old men who didn't care if the World was here or not and wanted to First Strike and Strike hard at this Country and others.Were in motion to do just this. This would have set off a huge retaliation and other Countries would have been destroyed too. If He had stayed the course of the Cold War he would have destroyed us. The Fact he reversed course and allowed the "Russian Internal channels'" to handle it was the biggest bet in Cold War.All the time with the Most of World Oblivious to the whole situtation.
Which makes him One of the best Commander and Chiefs this country has ever had. Those who say he Played President had no idea how clever the man was and a good strategist. He knew when to listen to his insiders and when not to.
I think you have two really great presidents Lincoln and FDR and maybe Washington for different reasons and really bad presidents like Buchanan. Somewhere between those poles you differing degrees of success and failure. As someone who leans center-left I would agree that Reagan was the right man at the right time to pull the US out of its post-Vietnam post-Watergate malaise, but I would not agree that his accomplishments were in the realm of greatness. Also as a Trained Russian historian it seems to me that there is a great deal of arrogance embedded in the idea that Reagan or even the US itself was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end the USSR collapsed under its own internal contradictions some of which were enduring factors in Russian not just Soviet history. In the end the spark that led to the collapse was the kremlin's inability to manage its restive nationalities which prompted the 1991 putsch.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
Where would you rank Teddy? Curious who the rest of your top five would be.
I think you have two really great presidents Lincoln and FDR and maybe Washington for different reasons and really bad presidents like Buchanan. Somewhere between those poles you differing degrees of success and failure. As someone who leans center-left I would agree that Reagan was the right man at the right time to pull the US out of its post-Vietnam post-Watergate malaise, but I would not agree that his accomplishments were in the realm of greatness. Also as a Trained Russian historian it seems to me that there is a great deal of arrogance embedded in the idea that Reagan or even the US itself was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end the USSR collapsed under its own internal contradictions some of which were enduring factors in Russian not just Soviet history. In the end the spark that led to the collapse was the kremlin's inability to manage its restive nationalities which prompted the 1991 putsch.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
As a Russian Historian You understand that in the fall of 1983 the world biggest death toll would have been reached and life as we know it today would be completely different for those that survived.
Reagan and his Advisers quick thinking and helping to overthrow a Leader(Andropov) and his hardliners, old men who didn't care if the World was here or not and wanted to First Strike and Strike hard at this Country and others.Were in motion to do just this. This would have set off a huge retaliation and other Countries would have been destroyed too. If He had stayed the course of the Cold War he would have destroyed us. The Fact he reversed course and allowed the "Russian Internal channels'" to handle it was the biggest bet in Cold War.All the time with the Most of World Oblivious to the whole situtation.
Which makes him One of the best Commander and Chiefs this country has ever had. Those who say he Played President had no idea how clever the man was and a good strategist. He knew when to listen to his insiders and when not to.
Shadow your understanding of history is suspect at best. First, Andropov was not overthrown. He died of natural causes. Second, Andropov was not a "hardliner" per say. He was a reformer not in the same ilk as Gorbachev who simply lost control of the process. Andropov was selected to succeed Brezhnev by the Politburo with a mandate to modernize a system that had become zastoi or stagnant. Not the regime endangering overarching reforms Gorbachev would institute but steps to make the system more efficient. When Andropov died he was replaced by Chernenko another octogenarian who was simply being rewarded for being a good soldier and simply muddled through. The fact that a relatively unknown junior politburo member from Stavropol Krai would become Secretary General of the CPSU was recognition that things could not stay the same.
As for the 1983 war scare I am quite familiar with it. I use it as a case study in a class I teach. You have a much different version from reality. You ar entitled to your opinion about Reagan. I have no axe to grind but the facts are much different than you think they are.
But in here it would make no sense and you would paint me a "red herring". The fact Andropov was KGB alone should tell you he was in with the Hardliners(Those who believed first strike was the only answer) "Don't Miss"! being there government catch phrase at the time.. The Russians like to paint their history all in rainbows and flowers so be it. People die everyday some at opportune times and some for the good of their country.
Sometimes History paints events with luck and sometimes its made luck.
I wish you a good nite detente like I said would love to take your class.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
Like I said, his legacy is open to debate
I liked it a lot better than that Selma movie.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
Like I said, his legacy is open to debate
its rare that you'll find many people that all agree that any modern day president is universally good, much less great.
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
funny you mention him. it seems to me (and I'm not really a big political guy) as I get older a lot more people look back on his presidency a lot more fondly than in the past.
History will remember a great man at a desperate time.
However, I think you could legitimately question his handling of the Vietnam War and there are those who argue that he had to be dragged into backing the Voting Rights Act.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution doesn't look very good in perspective
If you watch the movie Selma, he does not come across very well.
Like I said, his legacy is open to debate
I'm a liberal, and I agree with this. Credit for VRA and war on poverty, but Tonkin and further escalating the war in Vietnam. LBJ's not on the shortlist for Mt Rushmore.
I saw this on Broadway, and I liked that version better. Cranston is really good in both.
Don't get misty eyed over this guy, he was not worth it.
Don't get misty eyed over this guy, he was not worth it.
You should study your history. Reagan was the right president at the right time. You are here breathing air because of the choices he made.
Quote:
like the rest of them, he had plenty of warts.
Don't get misty eyed over this guy, he was not worth it.
You should study your history. Reagan was the right president at the right time. You are here breathing air because of the choices he made.
Agreed for a man that was a former actor, he did a great job as President!!!
Or maybe we should just talk about the movie. I thought the Daisy ad was too central, even if it was brilliant and a pivotal piece of the '64 campaign. Felt like TV people focusing on TV - i.e. a little narcissistic. Cranston was fine. He's a star. His involvement probably helped get the film made.
Or maybe we should just talk about the movie. I thought the Daisy ad was too central, even if it was brilliant and a pivotal piece of the '64 campaign. Felt like TV people focusing on TV - i.e. a little narcissistic. Cranston was fine. He's a star. His involvement probably helped get the film made.
This is History not Politics. Who Cares what party they followed.
It's certainly an interesting riposte to "Selma," which seemed to paint LBJ as an obstruction to the Civil Rights Act. It paints him as a deal-maker who always had one eye on the next election, but also as someone who truly wanted to end Jim Crow, for the sake of all southerners, black and white.
Its portrayal of LBJ's thinking on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the start of the Vietnam war is very interesting -- a major long-term blunder made for what seemed to him to be good reasons.
Cranston's performance is arguably a little broad for the camera. He won a Tony playing the part on Broadway and a little of that stagy-ness creeps in. Melissa Leo is superb as Lady Bird, however. Lots of good supporting performances, but Anthony Mackie seems miscast as Martin Luther King Jr. Not bad, exactly, but he just doesn't seem to inhabit the role, and he certainly doesn't evoke Dr. King himself.
Robert Schenkkan's script is also a little stagy -- not surprising since his greatest fame is as a playwright. It's a story about politics, so it's bound to be talky, but it never entirely takes flight as a movie script.
The overall tone (especially the score) has the slightly old-fashioned, reverent tone we have come to expect from Steven Spielberg projects. He didn't direct (Jay Roach did) but he was a producer and his touch is unmistakable.
A lot of the above is pretty critical. Yet I'm glad I saw it. But I'm kind of a politics and history nut.
Vietnam obviously killed his reputation. He only cared about foreign affairs as far as they impacted domestic politics. And politics dictated that a Democratic president couldn't let Vietnam go red because the Republicans would have had a field day like they did when Truman "lost" China. So he went in full blast and nearly tore the country apart and did tear his beloved party apart.
The impact of the Reagan administration's efforts at rollback have been debated pretty extensively. It's a rabbit hole. Let's just leave it.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
Truman rates very highly with historians and his reputation seems to keep going up and up. Both conservatives and liberals think highly of him today. Conservatives mostly for his anti-communist foreign policy, liberals because he was a New Dealer and desegregated the military.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
As a Russian Historian You understand that in the fall of 1983 the world biggest death toll would have been reached and life as we know it today would be completely different for those that survived.
Reagan and his Advisers quick thinking and helping to overthrow a Leader(Andropov) and his hardliners, old men who didn't care if the World was here or not and wanted to First Strike and Strike hard at this Country and others.Were in motion to do just this. This would have set off a huge retaliation and other Countries would have been destroyed too. If He had stayed the course of the Cold War he would have destroyed us. The Fact he reversed course and allowed the "Russian Internal channels'" to handle it was the biggest bet in Cold War.All the time with the Most of World Oblivious to the whole situtation.
Which makes him One of the best Commander and Chiefs this country has ever had. Those who say he Played President had no idea how clever the man was and a good strategist. He knew when to listen to his insiders and when not to.
lol...
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
Where would you rank Teddy? Curious who the rest of your top five would be.
Quote:
I think you have two really great presidents Lincoln and FDR and maybe Washington for different reasons and really bad presidents like Buchanan. Somewhere between those poles you differing degrees of success and failure. As someone who leans center-left I would agree that Reagan was the right man at the right time to pull the US out of its post-Vietnam post-Watergate malaise, but I would not agree that his accomplishments were in the realm of greatness. Also as a Trained Russian historian it seems to me that there is a great deal of arrogance embedded in the idea that Reagan or even the US itself was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end the USSR collapsed under its own internal contradictions some of which were enduring factors in Russian not just Soviet history. In the end the spark that led to the collapse was the kremlin's inability to manage its restive nationalities which prompted the 1991 putsch.
I always admire the little guy and think Truman gets a bum rap. He was the architect of US Cold War policy. NATO, Marshall Plan, NSC 68, Korean War, they all happen under his watch.
As a Russian Historian You understand that in the fall of 1983 the world biggest death toll would have been reached and life as we know it today would be completely different for those that survived.
Reagan and his Advisers quick thinking and helping to overthrow a Leader(Andropov) and his hardliners, old men who didn't care if the World was here or not and wanted to First Strike and Strike hard at this Country and others.Were in motion to do just this. This would have set off a huge retaliation and other Countries would have been destroyed too. If He had stayed the course of the Cold War he would have destroyed us. The Fact he reversed course and allowed the "Russian Internal channels'" to handle it was the biggest bet in Cold War.All the time with the Most of World Oblivious to the whole situtation.
Which makes him One of the best Commander and Chiefs this country has ever had. Those who say he Played President had no idea how clever the man was and a good strategist. He knew when to listen to his insiders and when not to.
As for the 1983 war scare I am quite familiar with it. I use it as a case study in a class I teach. You have a much different version from reality. You ar entitled to your opinion about Reagan. I have no axe to grind but the facts are much different than you think they are.
FDR
Washington
Truman
Jefferson
Eisenhower I think looks better and better in retrospect. I think Jackson has an arguable legacy.
Sometimes History paints events with luck and sometimes its made luck.
I wish you a good nite detente like I said would love to take your class.
Warscare - ( New Window )
Warsare - ( New Window )
Of Course you are using Company Literature in your classes?
George Santayana comes to mind.