Follow up Q: What do you think LBJ did in the years between the presidency and his death?

[Taverner]

1968 He did not run for reelection.

1969 He moved back to the LBJ ranch. He also wrote his memoirs titled "The Vantage Point."

1970 He started growing long hair.

1973 He died.

What happened during these 5 years?

[John Q. Citizen]

1. The war tore him to shreds.

[sendero]

3. It did...

... at least he had a conscience at some point. This current crop of bastards will go to their graves convinced they did the "right thing".

[mike r]

2. He drank and smoked

A lot.

[Hekate]

4. He went back to eating steaks, which his doctors had taken him off of due to heart disease

After he died, Lady Bird said she had always thought that was a fatalistic course of action, one which betokened his discouragement with life in general.

When he left office he was old beyond his years.

I imagine he ate those steaks with friends, however. When he was still in office, one of those friends was run out of DC for the social crime of being teh gay. I can't remember the man's name, so let's just call him Jim. When LBJ was winding down his presidency and some reporter asked about his plans, he said he was very much looking forward to sitting on his porch and sharing a drink with Jim.

Here's to LBJ, a man with a bigger heart than he was credited with in his lifetime. :thumbsup:

Hekate

[nevergiveup]

5. That gay man was Walter Jenkins

He was arrested for having volunteer sex in a public restroom with a retired military veteran. He was a long time Johnson aid and confidant. I remember when the story broke.

[regnaD kciN]

6. The story was pretty much kept quiet (under the "gentleman's agreement" style of the times)...

...after Jenkins quietly resigned from his position.

This was right in the middle of the 1964 election, which looked to be a landslide for LBJ, and Republican strategists were pressuring Goldwater to make the "indecency and immorality" of the Johnson administration and the Democratic Party, as personified in Jenkins, a major campaign point. Goldwater told them to shove it -- he'd never destroy an individual based on his private life in order to win an election.

They don't make conservative Republicans like that anymore, either.

[xchrom]

7. So much of contemporary modernity is broken. Nt

[Hekate]

8. What happened to the OP, who asked the question? Why did the OP want to know?

Did the OP think there was something nefarious going on at the LBJ ranch, or what? It was a real ranch, btw. LBJ loved him some range-fed beef.

Just curious about the impulse for the query.

Hekate