It's clear to me that the first African-American POTUS is a catalytic president.

[MFrohike]

28. I read it

It was a confused mishmash that lumped all Obama critics together, regardless of the reasons for their criticism, and presented a boring, wishful thinking picture of JFK that is not true. You don't have to like LBJ, but it's ridiculous to undermine what he did in an effort to lionize Kennedy. You can talk second terms all you want, but I have a question on that very topic. Who was the last president to push forth a major initiative in his second term? I won't hold my breath for the answer (Hint: you won't find one in the 20th century).

I personally enjoy arguing over the relative merits of JFK vs. LBJ because so few have actually done their homework on the subject. I would prefer if people would learn a bit more about LBJ, rather than get hung up on the prejudices of a generation of historians who were intellectually lazy. He was corrupt as hell, he used the fortunes of reactionary Texas oilmen as his personal political piggybank, he spent his time in Congress defending segregation, he was personally vicious and manipulative, and he had no problems with humiliating those who defied him (Paul Douglas is a great example of this). He also pushed through the most liberal agenda in American history. He personally directed the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the creation of Medicare, the Great Society, and a host of other things. He's the guy who put Reynaldo Garza on the federal bench and Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. I'm not really sure how the man who pushed far more than anyone in the mainstream could have imagined can be described as just covering for his "crimes."

As for the Cold War aspect of your post, it's laughable. I do love how Johnson has been portrayed as the bloodthirsty assassin for decades when his contemporaries, like Goldwater, viewed him as too weak to do what was "necessary" in Vietnam. The conspiracy aspect of the assassination regarding LBJ is wishful thinking at best. Honestly, unless you confine the knowledge to an extremely small group of people, somebody talks. Mark Felt, a Republican, had no compunction about telling Nixon's misdeeds. Nixon asked the CIA to get the FBI to lay off an investigation. If that is all it took for Nixon to get sold out, why is it believable that killing a president would somehow be different?

Honestly, too many people blame Vietnam on LBJ while absolving Kennedy of all sin in the matter. It didn't start with Oliver Stone, but he was one of the worst for popularizing this lie. Vietnam was not LBJ's war, it was not Kennedy's war, it was our war. It was our war from the moment it was clear that Stalin was using the German collapse to remake Eastern Europe. You can blame Johnson for escalating all you want, but, rest assured, Kennedy would have done the same. The assassination of Diem was the key event in the destabilization of South Vietnam. After that, the US had a choice: escalate or give up the area to Lenin's heirs. Kennedy would have escalated because no Democrat wanted to relive the "who lost China" debate. It was a no-win situation.

As for the ACA, we'll see. There's a lot of talking making rich people pay and helping poor people, but no talk of what happens to those in the middle. The middle are the people who make too much to qualify for the subsidies, but not enough to regard the cost as an annoyance rather than a serious burden (think of singles in the 50k range). If a person making 50k has student loans to repay, the added tax of the ACA will wipe out any chance that person has to save money and get ahead. I have to wonder if this is good public policy. The ability to save is one of the methods people use to get ahead. If that ability is taken away or if the only way to do it is to live like a pauper for years on end, I have to wonder how much support this program will ultimately get. You may not like these concerns and you might seek to disparage them, but the reality of politics is that if you don't get the support of the middle, your programs won't last 10 years.