Your Gun Control Laws

[GMDino]

http://w-dervish.blogspot.com/2014/10/on-lbj-quote-via-newsmaxs-ronald.html

Quote:The source of this supposed quote journalist/author Ronald Kessler (who currently writes for the Rightwing site, NewsMax), via his book Inside the White House.

When I blogged about this on 1/22/2014 (SWTD #228) I referred to the quote as "highly dubious". This was my conclusion based (in part) on LBJ's White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers reflections on LBJ's thoughts following his signing of the legislation.

Bill Moyers: When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come", he said. (as quoted on page 167 of the 2004 book, Moyers on America).
I said "highly dubious" because these two secondhand quotes obviously don't square with one another. If Civil Rights only amounted to "a little something" but was "not enough to make a difference" then why would LBJ (according to Moyers) worry about delivering the South to the Republicans? And if it was "not enough to make a difference", then what of the claim that LBJ signed the legislation "because he thought it was politically expedient"? [1].

Are we to believe that LBJ signed the legislation because it would cause (or trick) African Americans into voting Democratic (and therefore signing the legislation was "politically expedient") but that he would also worry about "deliver[ing] the South to the Republican party for a long time to come"?

Either LBJ cravenly signed the legislation because he believed it would be advantageous for him to do so (because Blacks would be tricked into "voting Democratic for the next two hundred years") or he signed it for the right reasons KNOWING doing so would "[deliver] the South to the Republican party for a long time to come". Believing both quotes (the one provided by Kessler and the other via Moyers) accurately represent LBJ's reasoning and worries is illogical.

Was It Kessler or Moyers Who Lied?

So LBJ used the N-word a lot and was obviously fairly racist. He was also "a man of his time, and bore those flaws as surely as he sought to lead the country past them"... The point is he championed the bill and he signed it - angering the racist Southern Democrats and losing the Southern vote for the Democrats. So much for "political expediency".

This is why I don't believe the quote from Ronald Kessler's book. Although I do not believe this necessarily means Ronald Kessler lied. Despite working for the far-Right NewsMax and authoring a book titled In The President's Secret Service. A book that some describe as "the juiciest gossip he could get... mixed... with a rambling list of [Secret Service Agent] complaints".

I think he might have lied given that resume. More likely? The quote might be genuine, but the sentiment was not. As the following rated "best" comment from Reddit's "Ask Historians", which "aims to provide serious, academic-level answers to questions about history", explains.

...the quote is attributed to LBJ in Ronald Kessler's book, and was supposedly said to two southern governors. But in the absence of a reliable objective record of that quotation, among the best sources to answer your question are the presidential recordings made during the Johnson administration, which I've listened to at length during my undergrad studies. Several hundred conversations were recorded dealing with issues of racial politics and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Now, a quote like [the one from Kessler's book] is not found in any of these recordings... But they do provide excellent insight into how LBJ talked about these issues in private. For example, it is simply undisputed that LBJ did use the prevailing southern racial slurs of the time... That being said, for a rural-born white Texan in the late 1960s, the collected recordings show that LBJ had some astonishingly progressive views on race in America, but his nomenclature leaves something to be desired.

It is also worth noting that LBJ knew his audience, and would speak differently to a Georgia state legislator than, say, a Connecticut governor. It's very difficult to tell when LBJ is putting on an act for audience or when he's speaking with his "true" voice. Additionally, I tend to detect a bit of self-aware irony in some of LBJ's discussion of these issues. I think that's key to understanding how LBJ could say the most radically progressive statements while simultaneously using a racial slur.

...it seems unlikely that we will ever know if those exact words were uttered... [but] ...It's the kind of thing LBJ might say to a Dixiecrat to convince them not to oppose the CRA. Thus, if anyone got "tricked" over the CRA, it wasn't black America - it was Southern conservative democrats. In other words... while the quote might be genuine, the sentiment was not.

...I am convinced that LBJ is putting on an act to these two southern governors to quiet their rancor over his pursuit of the CRA... that this single quote, robbed of its context, would be used by some to imply that LBJ was a heartless racist manipulator [is a] notion that I think the historical record soundly disproves. (Excerpt from Reddit by x--BANKS--x).
Sure, this reply might be easy to dismiss as "opinion", but I think the argument is solid and I agree with it. Solid because, as the Reddit author points out, the sentiment contained in the quote (from Kessler's book) is inconsistent with past comments... those that were recorded for posterity. LBJ championed and signed the CRA to "to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country [and] to close the springs of racial poison"... as he stated when he spoke to the American people in a televised address after signing the legislation.