The Shadows Stretch to the Present Day

For Monday, read Edwards ch. 3.

Questions on the paper?

For your writeup, take another look at Ike's Farewell Address.  In 1961, he foresaw problems that would beset his successors and the country as a whole. Other than "the military-industrial complex," briefly discuss one of those problems.

Why did Kennedy go by his initials?

Why did Kennedy conceal his health problems?

Then came Dallas

Kennedy:

LBJ 

With FDR and TX Governor James Allred, 1937

Early Senate campaign button:

LBJ's program was The Great Society.  Medicare was its key achievement.  Signing the Medicare bill, LBJ said:

In 1935 when the man that both of us loved so much, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed the Social Security Act, he said it was, and I quote him, "a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but it is by no means complete."

Well, perhaps no single act in the entire administration of the beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt really did more to win him the illustrious place in history that he has as did the laying of that cornerstone. And I am so happy that his oldest son Jimmy could be here to share with us the joy that is ours today. And those who share this day will also be remembered for making the most important addition to that structure, and you are making it in this bill, the most important addition that has been made in three decades.

Nixon:

Schoen: How could a political moderate be so polarizing? 

Impact on the presidency

• OMB and WH staff
• Communications

Nixon and his successors

Ford:  the veep

Carter: the anti-Nixon

Reagan: the frenemy

Bush:  the appointee

Clinton: Kennedy fanboy and Nixon doppelganger

Roger Stone:

"So what did you think of him?" I asked Richard Nixon after his first meeting with Bill Clinton.

"You know," Mr. Nixon replied, "he came from dirt and I came from dirt. He lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the Presidency, and I lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the Presidency. He overcame a scandal in his first campaign for national office and I overcame a scandal in my first national campaign. We both just gutted it out. He was an outsider from the South and I was an outsider from the West."

Bush 43, then Obama

Franklin Delano Obama?

Similarities between 2008 and 1932?

Differences in the political and institutional setting?