Posted on August 27, 2017
There are four kinds of elected positions in the federal (national-level) government of the United States:
President
Vice-President
Senator
and Representative
There are, of course, loads and loads of other appointed positions - everything from Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges to cabinet members and Congressional aides and chiefs of staff and communications directors....Well, I could go on and on! There are thousands of different kinds of appointed positions, and millions of folks who work for the federal government.
But just four kinds of elected positions.
How many people, do you think, has held all four elected positions?
I would imagine at least a handful. There have only been 40-something people (all men, so far - sigh!) who have ever been a U.S. president, and a lot of them were governors, not senators or representatives, before assuming the highest office in the land. Of course, some were never in any other elected office before winning the presidency (Eisenhower and Trump come to mind). But, still, a few must have climbed the ranks from Representative to Senator to V.P. to President. Right?
Actually, only one has ever been elected to all four positions!
And that is today's famous birthday, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Born in a farmhouse in Texas on this date in 1908, Johnson was a high school teacher and a Congressional aide before he won his first office, in the House of Representatives, at age 29. He was elected to the Senate a decade after that, and he ran with presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, for the Vice Presidency, in 1960. When Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as president. Johnson won the presidential election of 1964 with a landslide.
Johnson was aggressive, even domineering, as he worked the angles with other lawmakers to get legislation passed. I would dislike that part of Johnson's personality a bit more if it wasn't for the fact that he used his aggressiveness to promote good for the country. He helped to expand civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare and Medicaid, and he waged a War on Poverty. He worked to support education, the arts, and a variety of public services.
Because he was domineering, many marginalized people fared better. Because he pushed and prodded and manipulated, the U.S. became a better place.
Johnson's downfall was his handling of the Vietnam War. That was a problem he inherited - when LBJ became president, there were already 16,000 American military personnel in Vietnam - and LBJ was following the initial desires of the American people and the recommendations of the military chiefs when he expanded war efforts and committed more troops - but let's face it: Johnson was the Commander in Chief. The buck stops with him, and the Vietnam War was a debacle. A lot of people died...a lot of people were badly injured...and for what?
Still, historians rank LBJ in the top 10 to 18 out of 43 presidents. (You may think that there have been 45 presidents, not 45, but Grover Cleveland is counted as President #22 and #24 because he served two non-consecutive terms, but he only gets one ranking as a president; also, even though it is pretty obvious that Trump is going to get low rankings, no president is ranked until after he has left office.)
Soak up some LBJ wisdom:
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