Flawed Giant Quotes

“He had no stomach for it,” Mrs. Johnson told me, “no heart for it; it wasn’t the war he wanted. The one he wanted was on poverty and ignorance and disease and that was worth putting your life into.”
(Page 249)”
― Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973

“His presidency was a story of great achievement and terrible failure, of lasting gains and unforgettable losses. Whatever impulse future historians may have to pigeonholed Johnson as a near great, average, or failed President, I am confident that a close review of his time in office will leave them reluctant to put any single stamp on his term. Some people loved the man and some dispised him. Some remember him for great works and others for a legacy of excessive governance at home and defeat abroad. In a not so distant future, when coming generations have no direct experience of the man and the passions of the sixties are muted, Johnson will probably be remembered as a President who faithfully reflected the country’s greatness and limitations—a man notable for his successes and failures, for his triumphs and tragedy.

Only one thing seems certain: Lyndon Johnson will not join the many obscure—almost nameless, faceless—Presidents whose terms of office register on most Americans as blanks slates. He will not be forgotten.
(Robert Dallek in the Afterword to Flawed Giant . Page 628)”
― Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973