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The Nutty Lives of these American Leaders Were Anything But Ordinary

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2022 38 min

17. LBJ’s Funny Side

President Lyndon Johnson signs the civil rights bill July 2nd, 1964, in the East Room of the White House. Associated Press

America’s 36^th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908 – 1973), might have gone down in history as one of the country’s greatest chief executives if it had not been for the Vietnam War. LBJ had spent decades in Congress, both in the House and Senate, whose Majority Leader he became in the 1950s. When fate elevated him from vice president to president after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson entered the Oval Office with an unequaled mastery of the legislative process.

He put that expertise to good use, and pushed through landmark legislative accomplishments such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both Medicare and Medicaid also began during his administration. Had Vietnam not derailed his ambitious “Great Society” program, LBJ would probably rank alongside Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of America’s most transformative presidents. The disastrous war in Southeast Asia and the great legislative accomplishments loom large in the public’s perceptions of LBJ. They obscure, as seen below, the lesser known nutty – and sometimes seedy – side of the man.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.