Why Barack Obama Will Not Be Another LBJ

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The change.gov link at the top of this page signifies better than anything the competent preparation of the Obama movement. Or the Obama Presidency to be. The job of a good leader is to be a few steps ahead. And the site's presence is a rousing confirmation that we are in good hands. Reciprocal, yes. But competent and ahead-of-the-curve, double yes.

List of Barack's economic transition team SOURCE

Boren mentioned as a Cabinet possibility. SOURCE

If the no-drama mantra is operative, Rahm will be a more controlled operative than noted in the RS article below and Larry Summers, who has been revealed to me to be more than simply a loose cannon, call his behavior erratic and you get the idea, will not become Treasury chief (the no-retread rule would also apply). There are better choices for Treasury and the no-drama rule needs to survive a few tests to establish Barack's administrative creds from the gitgo. End of pontification.

McCain's K St. greed mongers SOURCE

4 Senate Cliffhangers SOURCE + Oregon called for Merkley SOURCE

Basic Rahm ht Andrew Sullivan, etc. SOURCE

Transition setup day 2 SOURCE + SOURCE + Chicago-DC twists & turns SOURCE + A Google entry SOURCE

Palin denouement VIDEO & text SOURCE

Why Will Not Be Another LBJ

Oddly, no one has thought to compare the situations of and LBJ, but there are similarities. And, happily, redemptive differences.

If Barack succeeds, as I believe he will, it will be because he was NOT a replica of LBJ.

Simply stated, Barack will have the same capacity as Lyndon Johnson to achieve a major domestic legislative agenda, but only if he eschews the hubristic and unnecessary need to prove himself on an impossible battlefield. Only if Afghanistan does not become our new Vietnam.

During the LBJ era, I ranked Johnson very low, despite his legislative achievements. Time has chastened me. Passage of the voting and civil rights acts was monumental,

But LBJ was destroyed due to his nefarious LIE to the American people -- his "no wider war" lie. I voted for him. He exploded the war. And as RFK understood, Vietnam became an albatross, threatening a real war on poverty.

Vietnam poisoned the political atmosphere for decades to come.

Johnson did not need to turn Vietnam into an earthly hell. He wrongly believed he needed a Vietnam escalation to beat Goldwater. So with consummate hypocrisy he played the peacemaker while turbo-charging the actual war. To the loss of 50,000 military and uncounted civilians and opposition soldiers.

His Gulf of Tonkin lies were monumental.

Why then might I wish to name him next to Barack?

Because the wild card in Barack's deck is the T card. The terrorism card. Which translates into the Afghanistan card. Which translates into the Great Game card. Which is eerily like the Vietnam Card LBJ played so unnecessarily and fatefully.

Reading about the Great Game, the 19th century effort to dominate the space between Russia and India, is highly entertaining. If you have a taste for the denouement of colonial ambitions. If you like to see serial repetition of humiliations similar to the defeat Lytton Strachey deliciously described in his essay on the besting of General Gordon by the Mahdi in Khartoum.

Despite the passage of years, the conditions that made Afghanistan impossible to dominate in the 19th century have not changed. One reason Switzerland is neutral is because fighting a real war there is fatuous. It's the geography, stupid.

In Afghanistan, there is also the resilience of a proud people who have no desire to be ruled by armies bearing British, Russian, US or NATO insignias.

Afghanistan and the war on terror is the albatross that threatens to stoop the Obama shoulders and create a wedge between him and his pacific constituency.

The retort to this line of thinking is that Obama is smart, too smart to be hoodwinked, to coin a phrase.

Ah, but the machinery of temptation and doom is in place. That apple on that tree of knowledge of good and evil.

We are stumbling toward a continuation of the Great Game. The rag tag, ambient operations that we have mounted so far are about to be replaced by a more concerted effort, undertaken by a government -- that would be us -- that has none of the prosperity of the 1960s, that is in fact reeling from the weight of debt that could very well push us off the list of reliable borrowers.

But Barack can escape the fate of LBJ.

We the people will save him. Check the polls. Check the election just completed.

We know that Afghanistan is a sinkhole in terms of any military commitment. We will not hold a saving caution against Obama.

We will forgive most happily if the war on terror is translated from a military trap into a POLICE ACTION, which is what many sane observers believe it should have been from the start.

In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, we the people say, Mr. Obama, don't climb that wall. Don't get on the idiot testosterone track that brought LBJ down.

Mr Obama, your achilles heel has names like Taliban, Bin Laden and Afghanistan. Give these a wider berth than you have done to date. Practice the same patience that has served the enemy so well. See if they do not die on the vine.

Military NO Police YES.

Big apple, big trouble.

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