BHO and LBJ

Posted on December 2, 2008 in Childhood

Obama was greeted by a crazy mass of children at a Quaker school in Philadelphia. They shouted “Obama! Obama!” when they saw him. According to The Huffington Post: “When he came out of the hotel Obama crossed the street wearing a big grin. He shook hands and chatted with the kids for about a minute, smiling the whole time.”

I remember when I was young, my mother took me to see LBJ. Johnson was campaigning against Goldwater. He stopped in San Bernardino because he had history there: when he was a teenager, he ran away from home and ended up working as an elevator operator for a couple of weeks.

There were bright lights and flashes as he got out of his limousine and headed over to the Platt Building (now gone) where he had run people up and down the cables. Afterwards, he came out to press the flesh. He went down the line of people crowded on the sidewalk next to the California Theater, grabbing the hand of every voter he could seize.

My mother reported to my father “I shook his hand and Joel had his out, too, but he ignored him. That bastard only cared about the adults.”

I guess Johnson knew that by the time I would be old enough to cast a ballot, he’d be dead ((Even with the 18-year-old vote, I wasn’t eligible until 1976)) . Obama’s a young man and these young people may well vote for his successor in 2016. In any case, taking time with the kids shows that he respects their parents’ dreams and ambitions for them. I don’t think LBJ understood education beyond handing out Great Society pork.