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You just reminded me.
I can't stop myself from going back and forth over Obama. Will he or won't he...? I know all the stuff from Reed and Ford. But my irrational side... I mean O has one of the most perfect moments in US history to become a giant (beyond the symbolic) and get up there with Lincoln, FDR and Johnson in the concrete. They were all really a mixed bag, if I look too close. FDR did invent mass firestorm bombing of German and Japanese civilians, and there was the Mahattan Project. Lincoln sure gave Sherman a free hand. Was Emanicipation just a political ploy. Maybe it doesn't matter. All these guys were attracted to the problems of war, much more than the problems of peace. (I put Lincoln in there because Obama put him in play, by opening and closing in Springfield.)
Yes I remember very well what Johnson seemed like. That was my very first election, I being free, white and twenty-one ... as we used to joke. And I am beginning to remember that same feeling of dread Goldwater evoked. That war mongering anti-commie bigot was going to get all of us cooked in the great afterglow.
Which reminds me, I actually saw the famous campaign ad with the little girl picking daises as the big one went off. I was laying on the living room floor of my second parent's house in front of the Zenith. I was in awe of the genius who made that one. Here's a link, in case somebody hasn't seen it before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er5h_TXun6o&feature=related
In the original, when it first came on, during Gunsmoke or something, I though, what's this somebody's home movie? So when the count down off camera started as an echo voice over, what? Four, Three, Two, One. Then the big one. Wow. Knock out. Then Johnson's homely voice. (The livingroom with my sister, step mother and `real' father was stone silent.)
At first I thought, hmm, that line about all god's children, reminded me of the jazz tune, All God's Chillun Got Shoes---a wild slap stick riff from Dizzie Gillispie or somebody else big. Back then, I didn't see the now much more obvious message that stands out, echoing black southern preacher style, that All of God's Children... I just viewed the ad a few minutes ago. Johnson never could deliver a line with physical sincerity. Maybe he really did believe in All of God's Children, but he couldn't bring his cagey ass to show it. Memory lane is a wild ride.
Then there's the other Johnson and Vietnam comes screaming back. Damn you, damn you. How could you be so stupid? (I've been yelling at the news for forty-five years.) That damned war changed my life in some other direction and I never got it back. Yes, some good, some bad. Back and forth, back and forth.
Dialectics of the mind, dialectics of the soul, dialectics of history, much better than straight line morality and rationalism. Pessism of the mind, optimism of the will .... I forget how it goes.
CG