United States Presidential Candidates 1968

"I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people's right to know is cherished and guarded."

"I am writing to you in the hope that the conflict in Vietnam can be brought to an end. That conflict has already taken a heavy toll-in lives lost, in wounds inflicted, in property destroyed, and in simple human misery. If we fail to find a just and peaceful solution, history will judge us harshly."

"Therefore, I believe that we both have a heavy obligation to seek earnestly the path to peace. It is in response to that obligation that I am writing directly to you."

"We have tried over the past several years, in a variety of ways and through a number of channels, to convey to you and your colleagues our desire to achieve a peaceful settlement. For whatever reasons, these efforts have not achieved any results. . . ."

"In the past two weeks, I have noted public statements by representatives of your government suggesting that you would be prepared to enter into direct bilateral talks with representatives of the U.S. Government, provided that we ceased "unconditionally" and permanently our bombing operations against your country and all military actions against it. In the last day, serious and responsible parties have assured us indirectly that this is in fact your proposal."

"Let me frankly state that I see two great difficulties with this proposal. In view of your public position, such action on our part would inevitably produce worldwide speculation that discussions were under way and would impair the privacy and secrecy of those discussions. Secondly, there would inevitably be grave concern on our part whether your government would make use of such action by us to improve its military position."

"With these problems in mind, I am prepared to move even further towards an ending of hostilities than your Government has proposed in either public statements or through private diplomatic channels. I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of U.S. forces in South Viet-Nam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Viet-Nam by land and by sea has stopped. These acts of restraint on both sides would, I believe, make it possible for us to conduct serious and private discussions leading toward an early peace."

"I make this proposal to you now with a specific sense of urgency arising from the imminent New Year holidays in Viet-Nam. If you are able to accept this proposal I see no reason why it could not take effect at the end of the New Year, or Tet, holidays. The proposal I have made would be greatly strengthened if your military authorities and those of the Government of South Viet-Nam could promptly negotiate an extension of the Tet truce."

"As to the site of the bilateral discussions I propose, there are several possibilities. We could, for example, have our representatives meet in Moscow where contacts have already occurred. They could meet in some other country such as Burma. You may have other arrangements or sites in mind, and I would try to meet your suggestions."

"The important thing is to end a conflict that has brought burdens to both our peoples, and above all to the people of South Viet-Nam. If you have any thoughts about the actions I propose , it would be most important that I receive them as soon as possible."

"I think, I hope, I believe I know what the farmer wants--and I want the farmer to have it. I think that all of you want a fair price for your products--and if I have the power, you will have it. I think that all of you want assurance that rising costs will not wipe out a lifetime investment--and I pledge you that if I can help you, every resource of mine you will have, including assurances that we will do everything that we can to control rising costs. You want parity--you want a fair deal-you want an even chance to share in the rich and good life of this Nation--and I want you to have it. You want the justice, the decency, and the opportunity that every American has the right to claim as his native right--and you will have them. And so long as I am your President, you will always have my understanding, my admiration, and my wholehearted support in fighting with you to try to reach these goals. And we know that it will be a fight."

"There are some people in this country who have forgotten that without farms there would be no factories. There are some people who must know that without our people, there would be no cities. There are those who no longer believe, it seems, in the partnership between the farmer and the Government--who tell us, on the airwaves from time to time, that we should "Get the Government out of agriculture." There are those who fail to realize that many of the problems of urban America are a reflection of the failures in rural America. And when you get the Government out of agriculture, you sometimes get the farmer off the farm. You know--as I know--that the farmer's problems are the problems of all America, and not any one group. And you know that the solutions to those problems are going to require the sympathy, the understanding, and the help of each good American in this country. So I did my spring planting a little early this year. Three weeks ago, the President sent to the Congress a message on the farmer and rural America. Just as I asked the mayors and the businessmen and other good Americans to read the report made by the national disorder commission on the problems in the cities, I ask each of you and all of you to get a copy of that message, and read the farm program outlined in that message. Try to help us preserve this freedom for the farmer and a reasonable amount of prosperity for his family. Now, when you read that message, or when you see that message, much of it is going to sound familiar to the Farmers Union, because you and your leaders designed much of it, recommended much of it, and supported all of it."

"I asked Congress to extend the supply management programs of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, and I asked them to extend it this year. Chairman Poage tells me that his committee will give consideration to these recommendations shortly. We hope that with his assistance, and with Walter Mondale's assistance, with the help of all the Minnesota delegation, we can get permanent authority. The farmer should not be asked to grow more than the market can take at a fair price. I have asked the Congress to continue the direct payment programs of the 1965 act-they are the difference between profit and loss for many farmers each year. I have asked the Congress to extend the Food for Freedom Act for an additional 3 years--because it is right for this Nation, whose sons came from many nations, to try to help hungry people eat when we have an abundance--and because I think it is good business for our farmers to help build new markets for our products in other lands around the world. I have asked the Congress to authorize a National Food Bank--a security reserve for wheat, feed grains, soybeans--which would give the farmer higher prices, protect the consumer from food scarcities and shortages, and provide the Government with an emergency food "cushion" in reaching supply-management decisions so we would not get caught short when we had a bad estimate. I have asked the Congress to find the ways to give the farmer more bargaining power in the marketplace. Our working people and our good laboring friends in this country have not met all their needs or their desires. They still have many objectives and goals that we want to help them reach. But the reason the farmer's income does not compare favorably with a laboring man's income is one reason, primarily, in my judgment: Labor has bargaining power; the farmer has none. If you are to continue to pay the prices that industry charges and sets, if you are to continue to pay the wages that American workers are entitled to get, you are going to have to be put on an equal basis with industry and labor in bargaining power. As you have so many times in the past, the Farmers Union has joined with us to help us to work, strive, and fight in order to get bargaining power for the American farmer. Finally, I have asked the Congress for the programs to bring parity of opportunity to the rural children in America; to give them better elementary education; to give them better library facilities; to give them better transportation; to give us better farm credit; to give us more rural jobs; to give us decent housing; to give us adequate diets, with adequate consumer protection for the housewives; to give us the chance to lead a full and productive life."

"The average farm family doesn't ask for much: the right to earn enough to clothe the bodies of their children, and to fill the stomachs of their hungry; to provide a roof over their house where they live; to have a school that their children can attend and a church where they can worship according to the dictates of their own conscience; and occasional recreation--to ride a boat, to see a movie, or some little something once in a while. That is not asking much. It is not too much. But until we get it, we are not going to be satisfied--and we are going to fight together--until we reach those goals, until we reach those objectives. During the months to come, you are going to hear these programs cussed--you may hear something cussed besides programs, too--and you are going to hear them discussed. I tell you now, it is not going to be easy to pass them. It is going to be harder this session than it would be in a normal session, because some of you may remember that there is something coming up down the road in November. Some voices today express doubt that the American farm and the American farmer can survive. They say that we must sacrifice that priceless heritage--that American dream--on the altar of progress. I say that they are just as wrong as they can possibly be. If the farmers of America will only wake up and speak up courageously and forcefully in their own behalf--if we and you together have the patience and the determination, and the good, common horse sense to preserve, improve, and build upon the progress we have made in our agricultural programs-if we trust our hopes instead of relying on our fears and the demagogues who would mislead us, American agriculture can grow and prosper as it has never grown before. I believe--and I have been in most of the 50 States of this Union, and I am just a few hours away from rural America at this moment--that rural America stands for the very best in all America."

"For many years we have been engaged in a struggle in Southeast Asia to stop the onrushing tide of Communist aggression. We faced it when the Greek Communists were a few miles out of Athens a few years ago. We faced it when we had to fly zero weather into Berlin to feed the people when that city was beleaguered and cut off. We faced it on the Pusan Peninsula when our men were fighting for the hills of Korea and everybody said, "They are not worth it." We fight Communist aggression the same today in Southeast Asia. This tide threatens to engulf that part of the world, and to affect the safety of every American home. It threatens our own security and it threatens the security of every nation allied with us. The blood of our young men this hour is being shed on that soil. They know why they are there. I read 100 letters from them every week. They do not have the doubts that some at home preach. They have seen the enemy's determination. They have felt his thrust trying to conquer those who want to be left alone to determine their government for themselves, but whom the aggressor has marched over to try to envelop. Our fighting men know, from the evidence in their eyes, that we face a ruthless enemy. You make a serious mistake if you underestimate that enemy, his cause, and the effect of his conquest. They know from the carnage of the enemy's treacherous assaults that he has no feelings about deliberate murder of innocent women and children in the villages and the cities of South Vietnam. They are not misled by propaganda or by the effort to gloss over the actions of an enemy who, I remind each of you, has broken every truce, and who makes no secret whatever of his intention and his determination to conquer by force and by aggression his neighbors to the south. At the same time, during these past 4 years, we have made remarkable strides here at home. We have opened the doors of freedom, full citizenship, and opportunity, to 30 million minority people, and we have sustained the highest level of prosperity for the longest period of time ever known. But the time has come this morning when your President has come here to ask you people, and all the other people of this Nation, to join us in a total national effort to win the war, to win the peace, and to complete the job that must be done here at home. I ask all of you to join in a program of national austerity to insure that our economy will prosper and that our fiscal position will be sound."

"I am consulting with the Congress now on proposals for savings in our national budget--in nondefense, non-Vietnam, in other items all across the board. If I can get the help of the Congress--and it is their will---we shall make reductions in that budget. They will postpone many needed actions that all of us would like to see taken in another time. All travel outside the Western Hemisphere by Government officials and by all private citizens which is not absolutely essential to you should, in the interest of your country, be postponed. I have already called for savings and cuts in expenditures and investments abroad by private corporations. We are going to intensify this program. We have spent the weekend in an attempt to deal with the very troublesome gold problem. We have said that we are no longer going to be a party to encouraging the gold gambler or the gold speculator. Most of all, I ask your help, and I come here to plead for your patriotic support, for our men, our sons, who are bearing the terrible burden of battle in Vietnam. We seek not the victory of conquest, but we do seek the triumph of justice--the right of neighbors to be left alone; the right to determine for themselves what kind of a government to have. We seek that right and we will--make no mistake about it--win. I am deeply aware of the yearning throughout this country, in every home of this land and throughout the Western world, for peace in the world. I believe all peoples want peace. I know that our peoples want peace, because we are a peace-loving nation. There is none among you who desires peace more than your own President and your own Vice President. We hope to achieve an honorable peace and a just peace at the negotiating table. But wanting peace, praying for peace, and desiring peace, as Chamberlain found out, doesn't always give you peace. If the enemy continues to insist, as he does now--when he refuses to sit down and accept the fair proposition we made, that we would stop our bombing if he would sit down and talk promptly and productively-if he continues to insist, as he does now, that the outcome must be determined on the battlefield, then we will win peace on the battlefield by supporting our men who are doing that job there now. We have a constitutional system. A majority of Americans have the right to select the leaders of their own choosing. That is all we are asking for in South Vietnam."

"Your President welcomes suggestions from committees, from commissions, from Congress, from private individuals, from clubs, from anyone who has a plan or program that can stand inspection and can offer us any hope of successfully reaching our goal, which is peace in the world. We consider them all, long and late. We work every day of every week trying to find the answer. But when aggressors in the world are on the march, as they were in World War I and II, as they were in Korea, as they were in Berlin, and as they were in other places in our national history, then we must unite until we convince them that they know they cannot win the battle in South Vietnam from our boys, as they are trying to win the battle from our leaders here in Washington in this country. That is very dangerous for them, to think for a moment that they can attack the moral fiber of our own country to the point where our people will not support the policy of their own Government, of their own men whom they have committed to battle. You may not have a boy in that battle that is going on now---or you may. But whether you do or you don't, our policy ought to be the same. We ought not let them win something in Washington that they can't win in Hue, in the I Corps, or in Khe Sanh. And we are not going to."

"Now, this one final word: We ask every Senator, every Congressman, every farmer, and every businessman to join with us in our program of trying to unite this Nation, and trying to support our commitments and our own security. We thought in the early years of World War I, before the Lusitania was sunk, that we had no concern with what happened across the waters. But we soon found out that we couldn't stand on that position. We thought in World War II that we had no concern with what Hitler was doing in other parts of the world, and he wasn't very dangerous anyway, and we could sit this one out. But we soon found that we lived in a very small world. Even though we hadn't gone beyond our shores, they sank our fleet at Pearl Harbor. We soon learned that we must never permit an aggressor's appetite to go uncontrolled because the person he eats up today may make him more hungry for you tomorrow. We want peace and we are ready to meet now, this minute. But you may want peace with your neighbor, too, and you may be willing to go across the road and into his yard to try to talk him into it. But if he keeps his door barred and every time you call him the call goes unanswered, and he refuses to meet you halfway, your wanting peace with him won't get it for you. So as long as he feels that he can win something by propaganda in the country--that he can undermine the leadership-that he can bring down the government--that he can get something in the capital that he can't get from our men out there--he is going to keep on trying."

"There are good, sincere, genuine people who believe that there are plans that could bring us to peace soon. Some think that we ought to get it over with, with a much wider war. We have looked at those plans, and looked at them carefully. We have looked at the possible danger of involving another million men. We have tried to evaluate how you could get it over with, with less cost than we are now paying. We do not seek a wider war. We do not think that is a wise course. There is another extreme that thinks that you can just have peace by talking for it, by wishing for it, by saying you want it, and all you need to do is to pull back to the cities. We had that plan tested in the Tet offensive. They killed thousands and thousands in the cities. Those of you who think that you can save lives by moving the battlefield in from the mountains to the cities where the people live have another think coming. If you think you can stop aggression by getting out of its way and letting them take over, roll over you, you have another think coming, too. Most of these people don't say, "Cut and run." They don't say, "Pull out." They don't want a wider war. They don't want to do more than we are doing. They say that they want to do less than we are doing. But we are not doing enough to win it the way we are doing it now, and we are constantly trying to find additional things that it is reasonable, and prudent, and safe to do. So you have one extreme that says, "Let's go in with flags flying and get it over with quickly, regardless of the dangers involved." You have another group that says, "We are doing too much. Let's pull out. Let's be quiet. We want peace." Then you have a third group that says, "We don't want to conquer you. We don't want to destroy your nation. We don't want to divide you. We just want to say to you that we have an obligation. We have signed 42 alliances with people of the world. We have said that when an aggressor comes across this line to try to dominate other people, and they call on us to help, we are going to come and help, until you decide to leave your neighbors alone.""

"We think that we are making progress on getting them to decide. They think they are making progress on getting us to decide to give up and pull out. But I think they will find out in the days ahead that we are reasonable people, that we are fair people, that we are not folks who want to conquer the world. We don't seek one acre of anybody else's soil. We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing more than surrender and cowardice. We don't ask anybody else to surrender. We just ask them to sit down and talk, meet at a family table and try to work out our differences. But we don't plan to surrender, either; we don't plan to pull out, either; we don't plan to let people influence us, pressure us, and force us to divide our Nation in a time of national peril. The hour is here. This Government has the best diplomats. This Government has the best generals. This Government has the best admirals. This Government has the best resources in every corner of the globe. Although I have had more Secretaries of State than any President in modern times, or more would-be Secretaries of State, I still think this Government has one of the most able and patriotic men I have ever known sitting in that chair, and I think his policy is sound. So as we go back to our homes, let's go back dedicated to achieving peace in the world, trying to get a fair balance here at home, trying to make things easier and better for our children than we had them, but, above all, trying to preserve this American system, which is first in the world today. I want it to stay first, but it cannot be first if we pull out and tuck our tail and violate our commitments."

"Of those to whom much is given, much is asked. I cannot say and no man could say that no more will be asked of us."

"I believe that we must always be mindful of this one thing, whatever the trials and the tests ahead. The ultimate strength of our country and our cause will lie not in powerful weapons or infinite resources or boundless wealth, but will lie in the unity of our people."

"Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only. For 37 years in the service of our Nation, first as a Congressman, as a Senator, and as Vice President, and now as your President, I have put the unity of the people first. I have put it ahead of any divisive partisanship. And in these times as in times before, it is true that a house divided against itself by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion, of race, is a house that cannot stand."

"What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people. Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

"In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we affirmed through law that men equal under God are also equal when they seek a job, when they go to get a meal in a restaurant, or when they seek lodging for the night in any State in the Union."

"In the Civil Rights Act of 1965, we affirmed through law for every citizen in this land the most basic right of democracy—the right of a citizen to vote in an election in his country. In the five States where the Act had its greater impact, Negro voter registration has already more than doubled."

"We all know that the roots of injustice run deep. But violence cannot redress a solitary wrong, or remedy a single unfairness. Of course, all America is outraged at the assassination of an outstanding Negro leader who was at that meeting that afternoon in the White House in 1966. And America is also outraged at the looting and the burning that defiles our democracy. We just must put our shoulders together and put a stop to both. The time is here. Action must be now. So, I would appeal to my fellow Americans by saying, the only real road to progress for free people is through the process of law and that is the road that America will travel."

"It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

"I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

"As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name! So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it! Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture!"

"I'm going to have to bring up the nigger bill again."

"Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass."

"Sam, why don't you all let this nigger bill pass?"

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

"Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger."

"I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years."

"We have just lost the South for a generation. or, sometimes quoted as:"

"When anyone says he’s a country boy, put your hand on your wallet."

"I actually have spent the most time reading Robert Caro’s compendium on Lyndon B. Johnson. I think President Johnson was an extraordinary leader and a deeply flawed man who made terrible mistakes and did extraordinary things. The Years of Lyndon Johnson [taught me] the best way to be a leader — whether it’s in politics, or in business, or in life — is to recognize that very few people are one dimensional. We are often comprised of tremendous capacity and terrible fears and failures. I’ve used his journey to really help remind me of how to be a better person, but also, what are the stakes and how far can we reach?"

"Seeking to capture the essence of Johnson and his presidency, Obama revealed something about his own. Johnson was a larger-than-life figure when he was president. In memory, he has sometimes become an even larger presence, one that has been a source of both inspiration and exasperation to those around Obama. The question they hear so often is: Why can’t this president be more like LBJ? Commentators on cable television talk about it all the time. They say Johnson possessed legendary powers of persuasion and a mastery of the legislative process, and they contrast LBJ’s successes in Congress with those of a president whose legislative agenda has repeatedly stalled and whose relationships on Capitol Hill are notably lacking."

"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."

"Johnson’s presidency will always be shadowed by the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the domestic civil unrest it triggered. But his domestic achievements now compete for attention in the shaping of his legacy, though as Obama noted, the Great Society remains a source of debate and disagreement 50 years on. The record of Obama’s presidency is still incomplete. How much more will his remaining days in office answer the question Johnson posed with such passion half a century ago?"

"This year, while House Speaker Paul D. Ryan helped to shape the Trump proposal, the president did not show deep knowledge of the bill and relied largely on congressional Republicans to manage its progress. By contrast, Mr. Johnson mastered the details of his own legislation, and through inspiration, arm twisting and other maneuvering, pushed it through the House and Senate despite powerful opponents like the American Medical Association. Whereas Mr. Trump tried to ram his bill quickly through the House, Mr. Johnson patiently orchestrated a six-month effort to circumvent the reefs and shoals of the legislative process. And unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson would never have dreamed of sending a White House aide to harangue his party caucus to support his bill. Mr. Trump did little to suggest that he had an emotional commitment to transform health care in the United States. Mr. Johnson’s passion came naturally. He had suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1955, and his life was saved by the excellent doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He was keenly aware that had he not been a United States senator or otherwise well-to-do, he might well have died at age 46. By fighting for Medicare, Mr. Johnson was building on the efforts of earlier presidents of his own party. Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy had both tried to persuade Congress to approve government-backed health insurance."

"In pushing his health care bill, Mr. Trump had the superficial advantage of controlling both houses of Congress. But he lost the popular vote in the 2016 election and his electoral-college plurality was more modest than many of those won by earlier presidents. By contrast, Mr. Johnson was elected in 1964 with a 61.1 percent landslide, which he cited as a mandate to make fundamental changes under the umbrella of his Great Society programs. And in early 1965, Democrats commanded the Senate by an overwhelming 64 to 34 (there were two vacancies) and the House by 258 to 176 (with one vacancy)."

"We know that Mr. Trump dismissed the counsel of some advisers not to risk his entire legislative program by asking Congress for a controversial bill so early. Mr. Johnson was advised to sequence his demands for federal aid to education, his War on Poverty and other issues so that the House and Senate would not be bombarded by them all at once. But Mr. Johnson insisted on striking on all of them while the iron was hot. He warned aides that despite his electoral landslide and congressional majorities, lawmakers would soon resent him for compelling them to cast votes that might infuriate the voters back home. He predicted that by the time they came back from their August recess, they would be in a rebellious mood. Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson knew many of the members well, and understood instinctively, without coaching, how to appeal, behind closed doors, to both their aspirations and their fears in order to persuade them not to obstruct his Medicare plan, phoning them in their beds long before dawn."

"At his best, Lyndon Johnson was one of the greatest of all American presidents. He did more for racial justice than any president since Abraham Lincoln. He built more social protections than anyone since Franklin Roosevelt. He was probably the greatest legislative politician in American history, but he was also one of the most ambitious idealists. He had the rare ability to understand his own flaws and limitations, and he worked hard to overcome them. During the battle over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a reporter asked him why he was fighting so strenuously for a cause to which he had previously demonstrated only a faint commitment. Johnson replied, “Some people get a chance late in life to correct the sins of their youth, and very few get a chance as big as the White House.” Johnson sought power not just to have it, but to use it to accomplish great things — and for a while he was spectacularly successful. But Johnson was not always at his best. He could be crude, overbearing, arrogant and often cruel. He harbored deep resentments that frequently undermined his own stature. He had terrible relations with the press. He was personally (and sexually) reckless in ways that make Bill Clinton seem a model of rectitude. He pushed his staff and his congressional colleagues so relentlessly that his legislative achievements were often rushed and deeply flawed. And, of course, he was largely responsible for one of the greatest disasters in American history: a war in Vietnam that he inherited, escalated, fiercely defended and failed to examine with the same courage and clarity of mind that he brought to so many other issues. He was, paradoxically, at once one of America’s most successful presidents and one of its most conspicuous failures."

"Among Woods’s many achievements in this fine biography is to allow us to see not only the enormous, tragic flaws in this extraordinary man, but also the greatness."

"When Lyndon Johnson -- President Johnson -- spoke here in 1964, he addressed issues that remain with us. He proposed revitalizing cities, rejuvenating schools, trampling down the hoary harvest of racism, and protecting our environment -- back in 1964. He applied the wisdom of his time to these challenges. He believed that cadres of experts really could care for the millions. And they would calculate ideal tax rates, ideal rates of expenditures on social programs, ideal distributions of wealth and privilege. And in many ways, theirs was an America by the numbers: If the numbers were right, America was right. And gradually, we got to the point of equating dollars with commitment. And when programs failed to produce progress, we demanded more money. And in time, this crusade backfired. Programs designed to ensure racial harmony generated animosity. Programs intended to help people out of poverty invited dependency. We should have learned that while the ideals behind the Great Society were noble -- and indeed they were -- the programs weren't always up to the task. We need to rethink our approach. Let's tell our people: We don't want an America by the numbers. We don't want a land of loopholes. We want a community of commitment and trust."

"Chris Cillizza: If there is a list of the 15 greatest senators ever, is McCain on it? Why or why not? Ross Baker: He’s not up there with [[Henry Clay|[Henry] Clay]], [[Daniel Webster|[Daniel] Webster]], [[John C. Calhoun|[John] Calhoun]], [[Charles Sumner|[Charles] Sumner]] and LBJ, but he’s a lot closer than Ted Cruz will ever be. Few senators in recent years, however, have had such a stupendous sendoff. He always had the media eating out of his hand. That’s no minor accomplishment."

"During the sixties and seventies we did really learn that change was possible. Not, ultimately, the kind of change we really wanted. I shouldn't put it that way. I should say not enough change because change did occur within the sphere of the law, which was extremely important. But we did not experience the economic change and other modes of structural change that we will need in order to begin to root out racism. That's the thing. How can movements pressure even the most reluctant politicians? Well, Lyndon B. Johnson, who was the president during that era he was a reluctant southern politician who clearly assented to racism. But it was under his administration that important laws were passed. So I think movements can indeed force reluctant politicians to take steps."