Two Dimensional History Distorts Presidential Reality

I just watched an episode of the 2004 Discovery Channel series, "Decisions that Shook the World," about Lyndon Johnson. It was a great illustration of how people are not all that they appear to be; are not completely good or totally bad.

While remembered for letting the situation in Viet Nam get so terribly out of control, Johnson also did more than any president since Abraham Lincoln to advance the cause of civil rights. These days, when we especially vilify our political opponents by, for example, seriously equating President Obama to Hitler and calling him the worst president in history (move over Andrew Johnson), it is important to see our leaders as complex and not as two-dimensional caricatures. I'm not claiming to be above this tendency. Just ask me what I think of Sarah Palin. I dare you.

President Johnson was a man of the Old South who used the "N" word freely but also pushed through the Civil Rights Act (which Kennedy was unable to do), the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Johnson was, to me, not particularly likable. He was crude and rude, vulgar and macho. Yet he used his old-boy, back-slapping style to get things done in congress, and wasn't above threatening old supporters who opposed his legislation.

On the subject of presidents who are usually seen as either all good or all bad, there's a new movie on HBO about Ronald Reagan. The mere thought of Reagan, actually, literally, has upset my stomach for 35 years. No one except for George W. Bush has had that same effect on me. As early as 1976, I feared Reagan as a war-monger and malevolent disassembler of valuable social programs. In fact, my father lost his job as a county psychiatrist thanks to The Gipper, and millions of mentally ill people were turned out of institutions to become part of the nation’s homeless population.

Reagan getting credit for the fall of the USSR is as bogus as anything I've ever heard. It most certainly would have happened anyway, and certainly not because he told Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Reagan refused to acknowledge AIDS as a problem, and I always found his folksy friendliness as phony as a seven-dollar bill.

It pains me to try to see the good in him, but this HBO movie about Ronnie tries to show him as the complex human being he really was, not the sainted statue, or pariah, that we now make him out to be. Especially when today’s "Tea Partiers" claim him as their patron saint, Director Eugene Jarecki points out that the real President Reagan would not only be too liberal for them, but would probably be embarrassed that they were besmirching his good name.

Clearly, LBJ gets the short shrift in history. I'm willing to give Reagan another look. But don't ask me to reconsider “W” yet. It's too soon.