The Forgotten Man

"Although he pushed through a watered-down civil-rights bill as Senate Majority Leader in 1957, the civil- rights movement did not consider Johnson—a Southerner, and the protégé of Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, an unreconstructed racist—its friend. But after he became President, Johnson risked everything, including his own office and the Democratic Party’s electoral future, to pass the landmark bills for civil rights in 1964 and voting rights in 1965. He achieved greater things in domestic legislation than any President other than F.D.R. He achieved far more than the man he succeeded, John F. Kennedy."

George Packer at The New Yorker says that the Democrats should hail Lyndon Johnson at their convention, which coincides with the one-hundredth anniversary of the former President's birth.