{"id":4547,"date":"2014-01-25T16:05:12","date_gmt":"2014-01-25T16:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4547"},"modified":"2014-01-25T16:05:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T16:05:12","slug":"lbj-could-play-hardball-with-the-best-of-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4547","title":{"rendered":"LBJ could play hardball with the best of ’em"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ezra Klein is too young to remember President Lyndon Johnson, which doesn’t diminish one bit the young man’s brilliance.<\/p>\n

His recent in Bloomberg View compares LBJ’s legendary bullying with what’s being alleged against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who’s still trying to put the “Bridgegate” hoo-ha behind him. Good luck with that, governor.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-01-22\/pining-for-lbj-we-got-christie.html<\/p>\n

Klein refers to Robert Caro’s biography of the 36th president: <\/p>\n

“In the fourth volume of Caro\u2019s biography, he tells the story of Margaret Mayer, a Dallas Times Herald reporter who was investigating the television station LBJ owned. Johnson had his aides call Mayer\u2019s bosses and let slip that if Mayer kept investigating Johnson\u2019s business, Johnson might sic the Federal Communications Commission on the Dallas Times Herald\u2019s businesses — which included TV and radio stations. Mayer\u2019s bosses got the message. Her investigation was quickly terminated. <\/p>\n

“That, however, was an example of LBJ\u2019s lighter touch. According to another story Caro recounts, Johnson had long been irritated by the coverage of Bascom Timmons, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram\u2019s chief Washington correspondent. So he called the paper\u2019s owner, Amon Carter Jr., and told him that it\u2019d be a shame — just a shame — if the Fort Worth Army Depot ended up getting closed. Even worse, what if the Carswell Air Force Base were shuttered, too? Then there was the Trinity River Navigation Project, which would make the river navigable from its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. All these projects meant jobs, development, and, ultimately, readers and advertisers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.”<\/p>\n

That should remind long-time Amarillo residents of a darker time in the Texas Panhandle, when the Pentagon closed the Amarillo Air Force Base reportedly in retaliation for the political support Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater showed in this part of the state in the 1964 presidential election. Legend has it that LBJ — who allegedly hated the Panhandle — just shut the base down in a fit of pique. His friends here — and he had a few of them — deny any such motivation.<\/p>\n

Whatever the president’s motives, he acted decisively. Amarillo took a huge punch in the gut, but has survived and has flourished in the decades since.<\/p>\n

Old Lyndon, though, knew how to play tough. <\/p>\n\n

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Ezra Klein is too young to remember President Lyndon Johnson, which doesn’t diminish one bit the young man’s brilliance. His recent in Bloomberg View compares LBJ’s legendary bullying with what’s being alleged against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who’s still trying to put the “Bridgegate” hoo-ha behind him. Good luck with that, governor. http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-01-22\/pining-for-lbj-we-got-christie.html Klein … Continue reading LBJ could play hardball with the best of ’em<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,276,278,549,2751,3975,4668],"class_list":["post-4547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1964-election","tag-amarillo","tag-amarillo-air-force-base","tag-barry-goldwater","tag-lbj","tag-robert-caro","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}