The Johnson radio talks?

Keenir

Banned
What if President Johnson had taken a page from Churchill's and FDR's playbooks, and gave a 10-minute-long talk over the radios or on tvs, to tell how things were going, and what we were doing (in fighting, in reconstruction, in the Great Society, etc) ?

Would that have helped?



(at least a few men who were Johnson's aides at the time, think it would have)
 
LBJ did give some truly stirring speechs. He turned the 'war on poverty' into a major policy initiative through the force of his personality & his ability to appeal to the better angels, etc.

He really was, briefly, the voice of an American liberal consensus; more people attended his inuagural than any other POTUS' until Obama was elected.

The backlash that started by the end of '65 was bigger than any White House could manage with PR--JFK or Rockefeller would have faced the same problems if either of them had held the presidency in those circumstances. Americans were convinced things were becoming worse under his watch, which puts him in the same category as Carter, or the Bushs, not FDR.
 
Some of his aides thought of doing that, but the problem was that while he could deliver a rousing stump speech, other times he would launch on a Nixonian rant that would scare the hell out of voters.
 
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