[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 26 (Thursday, February 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S2427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 RECALLING A MAN WHO STAYED THE COURSE

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the gems in our society today 
is Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America 
and former assistant to Lyndon Johnson.
  Recently, I saw his op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times on the 30th 
anniversary of the inauguration of Lyndon Johnson as president.
  His article reminded me what I heard on the radio recently that our 
statistics on the children who live in households below the poverty 
level has risen to 26 percent. I did not hear the source for that, I do 
not know if it is accurate. The traditional measurement we have been 
using is 23 percent. And what a tradegy that is. No other Western 
industrialized democracy comes anywhere near a figure like that, a 
figure that is totally and completely preventable.
  While the Vietnam war marred the record of Lyndon Johnson, what he 
accomplished in the domestic field--in helping people who desperately 
need help--should jog our conscience today. There is so much mean-
spiritedness and lack of concern for the poor. It appalls me.
  All Americans need hope and instead of giving many of them hope, we 
are giving them jail cells or desperate poverty.
  I ask that the Jack Valenti item be printed in the Record.
  The editorial follows:

                 Recalling a Man Who Stayed the Course

                           (By Jack Valenti)

       On this day 30 years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated 
     in his own right as the 36th President of the United States. 
     He has been elected President the previous November in a 
     landslide of public favor, with the largest percentage of 
     votes in this century, matched by no other victorious 
     President in the ensuing years. This day plus two is also the 
     22nd anniversary of his death.
       Is it odd or is it merely the lament of one who served him 
     as best I could that his presidency and his passing find only 
     casual regard on this day?
       He was the greatest parliamentary commander of his era. he 
     came to the presidency with a fixed compass course about 
     where he wanted to take the nation, and unshakable 
     convictions about what he wanted to do to lift the quality of 
     life. Against opposing forces in and outside his own party, 
     in conflict with those who thought he had no right to be 
     President, contradicting conventional wisdom and political 
     polls, he never hesitated, never flagged, never changed 
     course. He was a professional who knew every nook and cranny 
     of the arena, and when he was in full throttle, he was 
     virtually unstoppable.
       He defined swiftly who he was and what he was about. He 
     said that he was going to pass a civil-rights bill and a 
     voting rights bill because, as he declared, ``every citizen 
     ought to have the right to live his own life without fear, 
     and every citizen ought to have the right to vote and when 
     you got the vote, you have political power, and when you have 
     political power, folks listen to you.'' He promptly told his 
     longtime Southern congressional friends that though he loved 
     them, they had best get out of his way or he would run them 
     down. He was going to pass those civil-rights bills. And he 
     did.
       He made it clear that he was no longer going to tolerate 
     ``a little old lady being turned away from a hospital because 
     she had no money to pay the bill. By God, that's never going 
     to happen again.'' He determined to pass what he called 
     ``Harry Truman's medical-insurance bill.'' And he did. It was 
     called Medicare.
       He railed against the absence of education in too many of 
     America's young. He stood on public rostrums and shouted, 
     ``We're going to make it possible for every boy and girl in 
     America, no matter how poor, no matter their race or 
     religion, no matter what remote corner of the country they 
     live in, to get all the education they can take, by federal 
     loan, scholarship or grant.'' And he passed the Elementary 
     and Secondary Education Act.
       He was in a raging passion to destroy poverty in the land. 
     He waged his own ``War on Poverty,'' giving birth to Head 
     Start and a legion of other programs to stir the poor, to 
     ignite their hopes and raise their sights. Some of the 
     programs worked. Some didn't. But he said over and over 
     again, ``If you don't risk, you never rise.''
       He often said that no President can lay claim to greatness 
     unless he presides over a robust economy. And so he courted, 
     shamelessly, the business, banking and industrial proconsuls 
     of the nation and made them believe what he said. And the 
     economy prospered.
       On the first night of his presidency, he ruminated about 
     the awesome task ahead. But there was on the horizon that 
     night only a thin smudge of a line that was Vietnam. In time, 
     like a relentless cancer curling about the soul of a nation, 
     Vietnam infected his presidency.
       If there had not been 16,000 American soldiers in Vietnam 
     when he took office, would he have sent troops there? I don't 
     believe he would have. But who really knows? What I do know 
     is that he grieved, a deep-down sorrow, that he could not 
     find ``an honorable way out'' other than ``hauling ass out of 
     there.''
       I think that grieving cut his life short. Every President 
     will testify that when he has to send young men into battle 
     and the casualties begin to mount, it's like drinking 
     carbolic acid every morning.
       But it was all a long time ago. To many young people not 
     born when L.B.J. died, he is a remote, distant figure coated 
     with the fungus of Vietnam. They view him, if at all, 
     dispiritedly.
       But to others, to paraphrase Ralph Ellison, because of 
     Vietnam, L.B.J. will just have to settle for being the 
     greatest American President for the undereducated young, the 
     poor and the old, the sick and the black. But perhaps that's 
     not too bad an epitaph on this day so far away from where he 
     lived.


     

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