Where is LBJ?

Given Sen. Schumer's gift for gab and outsized persona, I had pegged him as someone who could be an LBJ-like leader in the Senate, getting wary colleagues to come along through a combination of threats, compliments, back-scratching, and profanity.  For various, that hasn't happened, and as such, articles such as this one accurately detailing the uncanny ability Senate Democrats have shown in derailing presidents from their own party appear.  You might think that Democratic Senators would hitch their fortunes to the most popular politician in the country at this point--particularly when he's a Democrat, too!--but The New Republic piece gives some of the backstory explaining the curious case of Senatorial egos/motives.  

To Fulfill These Rights

This week's topic in Legal Justice Seminar is Critical Race Theory, a fascinating field that I feel like I brushed up against during my work at Georgetown, but never quite got there.

Anyway, during my reflection and discussion of the readings, I thought of Lyndon Johnson's quote about affirmative action: 

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Then, I remembered that it was part of a larger speech about equal opportunity and racial equality given at the Howard University Class of 1965's commencement.  Check out Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge for a great treatment of the machinations that led to the speech, but definitely check out the full text of the LBJ speech, titled "To Fulfill These Rights," here.

Always an important topic to consider, but particularly timely, given the premature talk of "post-racialism" after Obama's election.  Just how far have we come since 1965? Looking at some of the statistics LBJ cites, it appears that progress has been uneven.

By no means is that meant to diminish Obama's accomplishments; rather, understanding the continued struggle for equal opportunity and equal access among people of color today gives it a much more meaningful context than the initial, utopian treatment many media outlets have tended toward.

The work continues.

The Daisy Ad

"These are the stakes...We must either love each other, or we must die."

-Lyndon Johnson, 1964

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyVn9k6d1og

Everyone always talks about the imagery of the Daisy Ad, and rightfully so. It's not a stretch to say that it helped change the course of political advertising.  I got to thinking about it this week after the bizarre conversations about McCain's latent, pro-sexual assault stances (or, Obama supporting a bill that taught stranger danger to kindergardeners...) and the McCain campaign's lack of grasp of common idioms (or, Obama saying "lipstick on a pig,"): how great would it be if Obama could drop an ad like this that (pardon the expression) vaporized his opponent? 

Obviously, the media environment today is completely different, not to mention 10,000 other factors, but when I went back to watch the ad, what struck me was the amazing juxtaposition between the apocalyptic visuals and the utopian spoken text from LBJ.  "These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."  The alternative LBJ proposed was horrifying, yes, but the course of action he proposed--"we must love each other"--seems radical by today's standards.  

Then again, maybe you can only get away with that when everyone's too busy hiding under the table out of fear of nuclear winter.