By David Stanczak
Only a meathead would try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s (or boar’s) ear. But one did. The boar was Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the meathead was Meathead Rob Reiner, as director of ‘LBJ,” now playing in Bloomington. He almost succeeded in the transformation, and if you didn’t live through the events depicted and viewed the film uncritically, he probably pulled it off.
“LBJ” candidly depicts the former president as the rude, crude and lewd man he was, although not so much at the end, when, seized with a passion for equal treatment for black Americans brought on by his concern for his devoted black cook of many years, he steamrolled Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson was an egomaniac (all four members of his immediate family having the same initials: Lyndon, Lady Bird, Lynda Bird, and Luci Baines) whose desire to be liked was only slightly less than his lust for power. In some respects, Lyndon Johnson was what a pre-Twitter Donald Trump would look like.
The film didn’t purport to be a history of the Johnson presidency, so I can’t fault it for reducing to a cinematic footnote at the end of the movie his escalation of and botching of the Vietnam War (which the Meathead deplored) resulting in 58,318 American casualties and the shameful treatment of many veterans of that war upon their return. Nor did it even mention the longest war in American history that he started, and which continues: The War on Poverty, which to date has cost $27 trillion. Not only has no progress been made in that war, its most notable effects have been a swelling of the federal bureaucracy and the devastation of black families. From the perspective of the entire Johnson presidency, the movie plays like a post-assassination review of the play Lincoln was attending at the Ford Theater.
But the Civil Rights Act’s passage is “LBJ”‘s focus, and its perspective is Reiner’s. Given short, or no, shrift was the role of Minority Leader Senator Everett Dirksen, whose delivery of every Republican vote in the Senate broke the southern Democratic opposition to the measure and assured its passage.
Johnson’s motivation in the movie for passage (loyalty to his devoted black cook) may be doubted. After all, LBJ is the guy who bragged that with passage of the CRA of 1964, “I’ll have those (N-words) voting Democrat for 200 years.” And with its passage came an opportunity to undo his inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Kennedy’s. He was obsessed that he never had and never would have their elegance, class and likeability. The prospect of getting the CRA passed and succeeding where Kennedy had failed, and being loved for it, must have been irresistible. After watching LBJ use and abuse underlings and others through most of the movie, the likelihood that his passion for the CRA was sparked by warm and fuzzies for the cook may be doubted.
In the end, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election in 1968 to the delight of most of the country. In effect, it was a you-can’t-fire-me, I-quit decision of an unlikeable man. He did one thing right as president, and Reiner reminded us of it.
David Stanczak, a WJBC commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
The opinions expressed within WJBC’s Voices are solely those of the Voices’ author, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media, Inc.
