Barak Obama, Lyndon Johnson and me

I am afraid that through an oversight I didn't get my invitation to the dinner with Barack Obama. Perhaps this was just as well, because I couldn't have gone anyway, I had the children visiting and I had to mind my charming, brilliant grandson, George, and spoil him for the rest of his life by exposing him to some Mozart. He stood, watched and was transfixed. But although I missed my chance to meet Barack Obama, the occasion made me think of my encounter with Lyndon Johnson on 19 October 1966. Apart from feeding the hungry, that is, the hungry former President and his 1000 best mates in New Zealand, Barack Obama's visit had no special purpose. John Key and Obama can play golf in Hawaii any day of the week. President Johnson on the other hand, the good second-hand car salesman that he was, came here with the purpose of persuading the New Zealand public, as well as the government to go along with a war in Vietnam that nobody really wanted.  He drove down Willis Street, and I, with many others, stood on the balcony of the old Empire Building. He drove past in his large open car and waved to the crowd, and to me personally.  He was a larger than life personality, a huge, tall man with an infectious charm. Nothing wrong with Barack Obama's charm, I have a great respect for him, both as a politician and as an ethical human being, Lyndon Johnson on the other hand, was someone I was suspicious of. I was not prepared to buy the product he was peddling. I had more time for Ho Chi Minh, the son of a Confucian scholar who didn't find it beneath his dignity to work as a cook's aid in France while a student there, and became the revolutionary leader of Viet Nam, or General Giap, who defeated the French colonial forces  in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu with his peasant army. Yet there is a lot to be said for used car salesmen. President Johnson achieved more, and left a more lasting legacy in his one term in office, then President Obama did over two terms. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which he pushed through by wheeling and dealing, against against vigorous entrenched opposition, his War on Poverty, his educational reforms, his Voting Rights Act of 1965, which stopped the exclusion of coloured voters from voting, were all watersheds in shaping the United States of today. It was his inability to extricate the U.S form its involvement in the Vietnam war that defeated him. By comparison, Barack Obama had an easy ride, and is remembered more fondly. I am sorry that he had to eat his dinner without my company, but I relish the memory of my encounter with Lyndon Johnson.