Obama is not yet an LBJ

By Ed Mayne

In his post last week, Richard Robinson drew parallels between Barack Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan with Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous decision to do the same in Vietnam four decades ago. The question posed in the article could not be clearer: will Barack Obama become the next Lyndon Johnson?

Taking foreign policy out of the bargain, my response to this question is: I hope so! For even though LBJ conducted a catastrophic war in Vietnam, his achievements on the domestic front are without parallel. Within a year of assuming the Presidency, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, he had launched a series of pioneering social initiatives that changed America beyond recognition.

On 16 March 1964 Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America”. With the passing of the Economic Opportunity Act in the same year, he rolled out numerous social welfare programmes, including Head Start for pre-schoolers (a forerunner of our own Sure Start), Job Corps for 16-21 yr olds seeking vocational training, and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) to undertake community service projects in disadvantaged areas. This was the start of his plan for America which he called “The Great Society”. This would later include the start of Medicare, measures to improve housing and better services for older people.

In June 1964 Johnson took Kennedy’s floundering Civil Rights Bill, breathed new life into it and pushed it through Congress. It banned racial discrimination in public places, employment and unions. The Bill was even amended to outlaw sexual discrimination in employment for the first time. It was the most radical Civil Rights legislation passed up to that point.

In September 1964 Johnson signed the Wilderness Areas Act into law, one of several pieces of environmental legislation passed by his administration. This Bill created the National Wilderness Preservation System, banning development on 9,100,000 acres of land owned by the US Government, including 54 national forests. The “Wilderness Areas” created by this Act now cover 4% of land in the USA.

These are just a few of the initiatives Johnson began in his first year. Compare this with the first year of the Obama administration: a healthcare bill that risks being watered down beyond recognition; an incoherent objective to rid the world of nuclear weapons; a few vague statements on high-speed railways; failure to close down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and a foreign policy outside Afghanistan that has so far included a lukewarm attitude to the two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict and the subtle acceptance of a right-wing coup in Honduras, drawing chilling parallels with US support for coups against democratically elected South American leaders in the 1970s.

To be fair, like Johnson, Obama has inherited the war that may come to define his Presidency. To a certain extent both Johnson and Obama had their hands tied, with their predecessors getting so heavily involved in their respective wars that an immediate end to them was never really possible. But as Richard Robinson pointed out, Johnson escalated involvement in something he could not control. Vietnam became “LBJ’s War” and it still dominates his legacy today, overshadowing his domestic achievements.

The same fate may yet befall Obama. Many commentators remarked last week that the War in Afghanistan has become “Obama’s War”. If it does come to define his legacy it won’t be entirely his own fault. My hope is that, like Johnson, Obama will leave a genuine domestic legacy for America. The signs so far are not encouraging.