Mitchell B. Lerner

For anyone that wants a revisionist look at Johnson based on the recently released tapes of Johnson's phone recordings, this is a worthy read. Lerner's perspective of U.S. foreign policy during this era is something that I agree with--as do most of the authors of this book. It sees him as accomplishing a lot within the context of the Cold War and that the pretext was set up by Eisenhower and Kennedy long before Johnson committed the numbers of troops that he did (albeit that Eisenhower counselled him to contribute much more than he did).

The domestic analysis of Johnson's programs was, as expected, rather favorable. He made some serious progress on the domestic front that is overshadowed by the situation in Vietnam. In the end, he is one of the most misunderstood of our recent presidents and I look forward to learning more as research continues in his archives. Hopefully, he will get a much fairer treatment over the coming generations.… (lisätietoja)