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doing anything for the last 4 1/2 years. so they were justified in doing it. but i still don't think it was a good idea to do because there are -- first of all, there are a lot of powers left in the minority to the republicans. they can really gum up the works in all kinds of ways if they choose to. and in the long run now that the democrats have set this president -- well, they're not going to be in the majority forever. maybe they'll keep it next year. but at some point, the other party is going to be in the majority again. and they can use this precedent against the democrats to undo the programs that the democrats have been putting in over the last 50 years, the sort of kennedy and johnson legacy can be undone because of the changes the democrats made on thursday. >> we talk about the divisiveness. how can it affect attempts on finding common grounds on issues like immigration reform and the budget? >> the idea was in the senate
sense gave his life for that legislation and other pieces to come. >> that's a good point there. what significant issues did johnson adopt on his own or as his own as well? >> the more i study it, the more i recognize that johnson used the kennedy image, the kennedy name, the fact that he had succeeded the assassinated president to achieve johnson's own goals. were they to a certain degree kennedy's goals? yes. but they were reshaped and generally expanded -- substantially expanded by lyndon johnson. classic example, the war on poverty. right before dallas, john kennedy, president kennedy had approved the idea of doing a couple of demonstration projects across the country to fight poverty. lyndon johnson was informed of this the day after the assassination, told the economic aide who talked to kennedy, no, no, i want to do this nationally immediately. go full tilt, johnson said.
natural colors and flavors and no high fructose corn syrup. thanks, mom. not financially. so we switched to the bargain detergent but i found myself using three times more than they say to and the clothes still weren't as clean as with tide. so we're back to tide. they're cuter in clean clothes. that's my tide. what's yours? 50 years ago today, president lyndon johnson held his first cabinet meeting as the nation and the world mourned president kennedy. in the days that followed, president johnson vowed to continue the politics that jfk began. let's bring in the director of the university of virginia center for politics. he's also the author of the book "the kennedy half century." larry, i want to start with lbj. he appeared before a joint session of congress two days after president kennedy's burial. you write in your book, lbj
this is my kind of program. and that's really how the real war on poverty began. >> the nation continued to mourn for the remainder of 1963. but in 1964, political realities really arose. president johnson would run for election. he had to run on his own agenda at that point. what parts of the kennedy agenda were left behind? >> well, i think absolutely almost all of it was continued by lyndon johnson in one form or another. as i say, he expanded the kennedy legacy. if you're talking about style, clearly lyndon johnson did not have the kennedy style. he didn't have the rhetoricians glamour of kennedy. but if you look at kennedy's agenda, the space program, i
united states should try to prevent south vietnam from falling to the communist but who also avoided deploying american combat troops. lbj had a different take on vietnam and it ultimately became the issue that drove him from the white house. how different was the johnson approach from the kennedy approach on policy, bob? >> well, the kennedy approach was to use special forces to put advisers on the ground. and after president johnson took over, he kept on expanding at the behest of the generals, and then there was the gulf of tonkin resolution which has shown to have been based on some misleading information. and of course as you point out, he was forced out of office because of his role in the vietnam war. >> dana, much of the country has spent the past week really reflecting on the kennedy assassination. but the further removed we are from that actual event, do we run the risk of overromant overromanticizing his
outlined the breathtaking scope he intended for his administration calling for the urgent passage of bills concerning civil rights, education, tax cuts, youth employment and more. he was determined to press hard for everything, labeling it all as a memorial to jfk. did president johnson stick to his promise? >> well, yes, fundamentally he achieved a great deal even in that piece of the term that john kennedy had left him. passing, for example, the civil rights act of 1964 up to that point, the most significant landmark civil rights legislation in the 20th century, and he did it by presenting it as a tribute to a martyred president. it was shrewd, it was clever, it was right. and as a consequence, i think you have to give credit to both president johnson who was superb as a legislative tactician and also president kennedy who in a