LBJ like you've never heard him: 1968

Here are some of the telephone conversations that were released today at the LBJ Library in Austin:

This clip   

   features a conversation between the president and Postmaster General Larry O'Brien, just days before LBJ bows out of politics for good. He sure doesn't sound like he's gonna quit.

This is the one   

   where LBJ tells U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills that the country is basically going to hell and he needs the congressman to get behind his tax-and-budget plan.

Click here   

  to hear the president talking with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley about the need for federal help to quell the riots after the MLK assassination.

-- Jay Root 

Comments

[Al]

What a differrence 40 years make. Love him or not, you can tell that LBJ was in charge and took responsibility for his actions.

[Gary]

Committing troops to keep South Vietnam from going Communist was wrong: that's easy enough to say in retrospect, because (a) we lost after having taken enormous casualties, and (b) it made no difference whatsoever in the long term Cold War (we won anyway, with this theater ultimately irrelevant to the outcome). But six successive presidents, from Truman to Ford, believed (as did most serious political analysts of the day) that confronting Communism in this arena was necessary, in spite of the sacrifice it entailed. One feels for Johnson, a Great President in spite of the decision, who is still hated and denied his proper place in history by many because of Vietnam.

[Byron]

what difference does it make. He has been dead a long time and who cares what he said 40 years ago?????