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♠
“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved - the Great Society - in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and feed the homeless. All my dreams.”
. . .
“I knew that if we let Communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam there would follow in this country an endless national debate - a mean and destructive debate - that would shatter my Presidency, kill my administration, and damage our democracy. I knew that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness from the day that Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.”
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson
I had left James Patterson's "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974" aside to collect dust on the shelves for a long time, as other books seemed more urgent, or to work in my library seasons. Even now, I have "The Nine" sitting pretty, still in its Amazon box, but the remainder of "Grand Expectations" will serve as a good preliminary backgrounder for that work and the later books to come on the 1988 elections and the Clinton presidency. I have relatively grand expectations of my own for the winter.
xXx
“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved - the Great Society - in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and feed the homeless. All my dreams.”
. . .
“I knew that if we let Communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam there would follow in this country an endless national debate - a mean and destructive debate - that would shatter my Presidency, kill my administration, and damage our democracy. I knew that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness from the day that Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.”
-- President Lyndon B. Johnson
I had left James Patterson's "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974" aside to collect dust on the shelves for a long time, as other books seemed more urgent, or to work in my library seasons. Even now, I have "The Nine" sitting pretty, still in its Amazon box, but the remainder of "Grand Expectations" will serve as a good preliminary backgrounder for that work and the later books to come on the 1988 elections and the Clinton presidency. I have relatively grand expectations of my own for the winter.
