"During the 2012 campaign, Obama’s advisers heard the same thing in focus groups with sympathetic voters. These voters had no truck with the Republican tactics of obstruction, but they wondered why Obama lacked whatever LBJ had. Why couldn’t Obama make the machinery work better? Why couldn’t he cajole and threaten and sweet talk and bully the Congress into action the way Johnson had? Obama is a far different person than Johnson. He is cool, cerebral and detached. Johnson was the earthy, insecure political seducer. Still, it is questionable whether even LBJ could be LBJ in today’s polarized political climate. Could he really have found a way to bring tea party Republicans to the bargaining table with any more success than has Obama? Even some who have studied Johnson’s presidency wonder."
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Presidents of the United StatesPoliticians from TexasMembers of the United States SenateUnited States presidential candidates, 1968United States presidential candidates, 1964
Original Language: English
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Sources
Dan Balz in Obama and LBJ: Measuring the current president against the past one’s legacy (12 April 2014)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson
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