Reply #61: LBJ

[Nicholas_J]

carried Texas and just enough states to end up with a brokered convention if he didnt get something he wanted. Johnson couldnt win, but he didnt want to give up without a fight...

Robert Kennedy viewed LBJ as a conniving politician who hypocritically accepted the second-place position on the Democratic ticket after secretly trying to wrest the first-place nomination from John Kennedy despite a public announcement that he did not intend to run for the presidency.


http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2082/is_1_62/ai_57874187

IN the first and only ballot at the 1960 convention, Johnson recieved the support of only 409 delegates, but was commited to wage a war against a Kennedy nomination and try to prevent Kennedy from winning, even though Johnson had already decided that he had no intention of running at that point.

Kennedy received 806 votes, so one can see that Johnson stood a fair chance of being able to wrangle enough support from the many political allies he had in order to make it difficult, or even impossible for Kennedy to win the nomination. Kennedy, astute politician that he was, selected Johnson as his running mate in order to put the issue to rest.

Johnson and Kennedy were frequently on opposing sides of many issues, and on a personal level Johnson viewed the Kennedies as spoiled rich kids, and the Kennedies viewed Johnson as an uncouth redneck clod.

Johnson was the typical Southern Democrat. A rather conservative Democrat who did not approve of the Liberal Democratic ideas of the Eastern Liberal Kennedies.

But Johnson was a power broker, one of the most powerful men in Congress, with a rather good deal of support gained during his terms in Congress.

This is not too unlike Gephardts position, though he is of a differnt nature than Johnson. There isnt one Democrat in COngress who has anything bad to say about Gephardt, and rather than having the kind of enemies that Johnson had, Gephardt is rather well liked, which is why is was fairly easy for Nancy Pelosi to get a good number of Congressmen to endorse Gephardt in a very short period of time.

Gephardt began 2004 with more endorsements than any of his opponents, ans as a VP running mate, would have still have significant support from many memeber of the House, most of who can use their poliical influence to canvas for a Kerry/Gephardt ticket in their districts.