I think so

Incinerating so many people while saying it was done in peace was a major crime against humanity.

I would rank him near the bottom

Reagan-Clinton-Bush41-Bush43-Fordand Truman...

there are a couple of others, but those 4 plus Truman are indeed the bottom of the barrel.

Along with slavery, I think the Japanese are the 2nd most maligned group by some Americans

There should be more done to the kind gentle souls from the East
We owe them big time

And I don't find Harry Truman to have been a hero at all.

Someone who sets off a bomb is a war criminal, not a hero.

I disagree with you. The worst president ever was Lincoln...

No, the worst President is our present one. Or at least in the running.

Other than that James Buchanan is a heavy contender. And he came just before one of our best. (And guess who had more experience!)

You got me!!!

What IS GWs current approval rating? 13%??

Bush41 is worse than Bush43, being that Bush41 and Bush42(Clinton) enabled Bush43 and Bush43 is only continuing 41 and 42's agenda

To blame 43 and not the reason he is in office is foolish.

IMHO Carter was the wimpyist ever....
He is much more effective as a civilian.

Jimmy Carter was one of the best presidents in the ideas he had and in what he achieved
Jimmy Carter was one of the worst politicians in that he did not sell himself out like so many others have and he did not do things to be win reelection (although that's a good thing)

Carter's Merrit continues to be elevated by successive waves of History.

Disagree.
Truman, like Jimmy Carter, was repetitively lied to and put in the position of being America's biggest traitor had he not dropped the bomb.
Graham, I suggest you read his diary and look into the issues he ran for, in detail, and his public papers, without omitting to fill in the blanks, that is, paying close attention to what he doesn't say.


Disagree.
The contempt for Africa and it's instrumentalization is simply monstruous and directly induces the same preconceived ideas leading to racism in the US, as it has for the last 300 hundred years.

The best we can do is simply to avoid blaming them for our self-made misery and let them naturally develop whatever cooperation they need to prevent them from calling China a threat.

We owe a lot of other people more for what we did to them since dropping the bomb.

In 1945, america had all the heroes it wanted/needed with all the vets coming home.
When he became POTUS, Truman was way beyond working for honors. He fought in WW1. It's his deep respect in the US military institution that led him to trust his military advisers, who were actually mouthpieces of US industrialists and financers who saw in the state of war the best opportunities to make big money off the back of the US taxpayer, the same industrialists and financers Eisenhower came to discover with disgust when himself became president, the same who hijacked US foreign policy to steer events to their likening.

If you blame Truman for signing the order to drop the bomb, you'd have to praise him for firing MacArthur, which cost him most if not all of his national popularity, to re-establish total control over US nuclear bombing policy, to not let himself being dragged in the same situation as in 1945, precisely to NOT have to drop an A-bomb again under the threat of having the US public believing that there isn't any choice, it had to be done. Had Truman not regained control of US nuclear bombing policy, and left it in the hands of MacArthur, this is what the world would have had to face:

...
On 9 July 1950 -- just two weeks into the war, it is worth remembering -- MacArthur sent Ridgway a hot message that prompted the joint chiefs of staff (JCS) "to consider whether or not A-bombs should be made available to MacArthur." The chief of operations, General Charles Bolte, was asked to talk to MacArthur about using atomic bombs "in direct support [of] ground combat." Bolte thought 10-20 such bombs could be spared for Korea without unduly jeopardising US global war capabilities.

Boite received from MacArthur an early suggestion for the tactical use of atomic weapons and an indication of MacArthur's extraordinary ambitions for the war, which included occupying the North and handling potential Chinese -- or Soviet -- intervention: "I would cut them off in North Korea . . . I visualise a cul-de-sac. The only passages leading from Manchuria and Vladivostok have many tunnels and bridges. I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb -- to strike a blocking blow -- which would require a six months' repair job. Sweeten up my B-29 force."

At this point, however, the JCS rejected use of the bomb because targets large enough to require atomic weapons were lacking; because of concerns about world opinion five years after Hiroshima; and because the JCS expected the tide of battle to be reversed by conventional military means. But that calculation changed when large numbers of Chinese troops entered the war in October and November 1950.

At a famous news conference on 30 November President Harry Truman threatened use of the atomic bomb, saying the US might use any weapon in its arsenal. (10) The threat was not the faux pas many assumed it to be, but was based on contingency planning to use the bomb. On that same day, Air Force General George Stratemeyer sent an order to General Hoyt Vandenberg that the Strategic Air Command should be put on warning, "to be prepared to dispatch without delay medium bomb groups to the Far East . . . this augmentation should include atomic capabilities."

General Curtis LeMay remembered correctly that the JCS had earlier concluded that atomic weapons would probably not be useful in Korea, except as part of "an overall atomic campaign against Red China." But, if these orders were now being changed because of the entry of Chinese forces into the war, LeMay wanted the job; he told Stratemeyer that only his headquarters had the experience, technical training, and "intimate knowledge" of delivery methods. The man who had directed the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 was again ready to proceed to the Far East to direct the attacks. (11) Washington was not worried that the Russians would respond with atomic weapons because the US possessed at least 450 bombs and the Soviets only 25.

On 9 December MacArthur said that he wanted commander's discretion to use atomic weapons in the Korean theatre. On 24 December he submitted "a list of retardation targets" for which he required 26 atomic bombs. He also wanted four to drop on the "invasion forces" and four more for "critical concentrations of enemy air power."

In interviews published posthumously, MacArthur said he had a plan that would have won the war in 10 days: "I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria." Then he would have introduced half a million Chinese Nationalist troops at the Yalu and then "spread behind us -- from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea -- a belt of radioactive cobalt . . . it has an active life of between 60 and 120 years. For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North." He was certain that the Russians would have done nothing about this extreme strategy: "My plan was a cinch." (12)

A second request

Cobalt 60 has 320 times the radioactivity of radium. One 400-ton cobalt H-bomb, historian Carroll Quigley has written, could wipe out all animal life on earth. MacArthur sounds like a warmongering lunatic, but he was not alone. Before the Sino-Korean offensive, a committee of the JCS had said that atomic bombs might be the decisive factor in cutting off a Chinese advance into Korea; initially they could be useful in "a cordon sanitaire [that] might be established by the UN in a strip in Manchuria immediately north of the Korean border." A few months later Congressman Albert Gore, Sr. (Father of former VP and 2000 Democratic candidate Al Gore, Jr., and subsequently a strong opponent of the Vietnam war) complained that "Korea has become a meat grinder of American manhood" and suggested "something cataclysmic" to end the war: a radiation belt dividing the Korean peninsula permanently into two.

Although Ridgway said nothing about a cobalt bomb, in May 1951, after replacing MacArthur as US commander in Korea, he renewed MacArthur's request of 24 December, this time for 38 atomic bombs. (13) The request was not approved.

The US came closest to using atomic weapons in April 1951, when Truman removed MacArthur. Although much related to this episode is still classified, it is now clear that Truman did not remove MacArthur simply because of his repeated insubordination, but because he wanted a reliable commander on the scene should Washington decide to use nuclear weapons; Truman traded MacArthur for his atomic policies. On 10 March 1951 MacArthur asked for a "D-Day atomic capability" to retain air superiority in the Korean theatre, after the Chinese massed huge new forces near the Korean border and after the Russians put 200 bombers into airbases in Manchuria (from which they could strike not just Korea but also US bases in Japan). (14) On 14 March General Vandenberg wrote: "Finletter and Lovett alerted on atomic discussions. Believe everything is set."

At the end of March Stratemeyer reported that atomic bomb loading pits at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa were again operational; the bombs were carried there unassembled, and put together at the base, lacking only the essential nuclear cores. On 5 April the JCS ordered immediate atomic retaliation against Manchurian bases if large numbers of new troops came into the fighting, or, it appears, if bombers were launched from there against US assets. On that day the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, began arrangements for transferring nine Mark IV nuclear capsules to the Air Force's 9th Bomb Group, the designated carrier for atomic weapons.

The JCS again considered the use of nuclear weapons in June 1951, this time in tactical battlefield circumstances (15) and there were many more such suggestions as the war continued to 1953. Robert Oppenheimer, former director of the Manhattan Project, was involved in Project Vista, designed to gauge the feasibility of the tactical use of atomic weapons. In 1951 young Samuel Cohen, on a secret assignment for the US Defence Department, observed the battles for the second recapture of Seoul and thought there should be a way to destroy the enemy without destroying the city. He became the father of the neutron bomb. (16)

The most terrifying nuclear project in Korea, however, was Operation Hudson Harbour. It appears to have been part of a larger project involving "overt exploitation in Korea by the Department of Defence and covert exploitation by the Central Intelligence Agency of the possible use of novel weapons" -- a euphemism for what are now called weapons of mass destruction.
...

"North Korea: Another Country", Bruce Cumings (2003)

In 1945, Truman, who always maintained that he had not wanted the job of vice president (wiki) was rushed in office, and lied by the Joint Chiefs of Staff into, not only to drop the bomb, but also being rushed into issueing the order. In 1951, he made sure he wouldn't be led into having to drop the bomb again.

IMHO, Truman earned himself a place among the top 4 best POTUS.
For many reasons, as showed recently with Iraq, US public opinion is neither fair, nor very knowledgeable. I remember VERY well the very little media and public attention given to Truman's death in 1972.
History will just record the public's lack of gratitude for a man who took on him to give to the US a future of negotiations instead of a solo nuclear demonstration of arrogance and simply the extinction of all life as we know it.

Well, since Truman had to make a decision which ended up saving a minimum of 100,000 American kid's lives I'd put Truman in the top five presidents. One thing you don't think about G4A is if that father or grandfather had been killed storming the Japanese mainland is a great number of Americans simply would not exist today. Next time you go into a crowd imagine 4 or 5 people out of every 100 just disappearing because if Truman had not made the decision to use the A-Bomb there daddy or grand-daddy would a not been there to procreate.

And the situation in Japan woud a been even worst. At least a million Japanese would have died trying to drive the invasion back into the sea and the Soviets would have entered the war and occupied the northern end of Japan. Along with a North and a South Korea we'd a had a North and South Japan too.

Truman one of the worst? Not hardly.

Actually I think its back up to 30%....but it fluctuates between mid 20s and low 30s...

Absolutely.

Graham's post here resembles those of Mac2 like when he posted Good News About the Economy as we were slipping into the recession...or Iraq Getting Quieter and the surge is working when Iraq by quieter meant 2005 levels where more than 100 iraqis and 20 US service people were still dying a month --- al Qaeda was still loose --- the Green Zone was still the safest place in non Kurdish Iraq --- Baghdad was still insecure and no progress has been made on poltical reforms...

The thread title is more a joke than anything...

Harry S. Truman's policy of containment was more responsible for anything...for the collapse of the Soviet Union and relative peace between the nations...

His post-war rebuilding of Europe and Marshall Plan is responsible for the strong alliance we have with Germany and Japan and Italy...

And his issuance of an executive order establishing the national security council was responsible for creating a mechanism which safeguarded the homeland domestically until George W. BUsh appointed an incompetent to the position in January 2001...

I don't know if Truman had to drop the bomb, at least where he did, but I cannot honestly find the arguments against him doing so compelling.

Marine shows that he can make a logical case when he puts his mind to it. As horrific as A-bomb was, the alternative was arguably more horrific. Arguably a lot of things more horrific had already been done by then, and I don't just mean by the Axis powers (or just they and the Soviets, for that matter).

Who were our greatest presidents?

Lincoln
FDR
Washington
Truman
Jefferson
Wilson
Roosevelt
Madison
Adams
Monroe
Kennedy
Johnson

Who were our worst?

Bush II
Buchanan

Agreed.

And he not only saved our troops, but he also helped provide for the security of the South Pacific for the other nations in the region.

AS Arne suggests...did the bomb have to be dropped?

Probably not.

But what was the alternative?

Even with the Japanese surrender, the war went on for years afterwards by Japanese on out islands --- one can only imagine if the US had to invade Japan the amount of human sacrifice that would need to be endured on both sides...

No it is not a joke.

I am not a Truman fan.

Give me LBJ any day.

LBJ escalated the Vietnam War -- if it was not for Kennedy laying out his domestic policy for him which became the Great Society he would have went down as a mediocre president...or worse...

I think that is unfair to LBJ. I think that he was the prime impetus behind his domestic programs, including civil rights, even if Kennedy paved some of the way. He did fail very badly with Vietnam, no question.

BTW Graham, I think that Truman was a man whom LBJ looked up to.

the war, the war, the war

big freakin' deal...it's just a strawman here.

Let's move on from that topic

Eisenhower started the action
kennedy escalated it
Nixon got us out

To blame LBJ is an atrocity worthy of hyperbole on an nth degree

Blame McNamara and his band of enemies

But that distracts from Truman obliterating those he did

Well, I had a conversation with Ted Sorenson recently and he would beg to differ, but JOhnson was able to get them through which actually was only possible because Kennedy had been shot. Without Kennedy's death it is unlikely any of the bills would have seen the light of day.

There were many alternatives that weren't as horrific or even close to such a description.

The fact is, during WW2, there was a bloody rivalry between the different services among the US armed forces, as well as in Great-Britain, in which the newest branch, the Air Force claimed to be capable of ending the war alone, following the "Strategic Bombing" doctrine of General Giulio Douhet, additionally to offering the populace and it's demagogic leaders a little relief in letting them release some of their lowest human instincts by enjoying the suffering of others that they like blaming for their own misery, as in those primitive times before the emergence of religion.



(wiki)
Strategic bombing of civilian targets from the air was a first proposed by the Italian theorist General Giulio Douhet. In his book The Command of the Air (1921), Douhet argued future military leaders could avoid falling into bloody World War I-style trench stalemates by using aviation to strike past the enemy's forces directly at their vulnerable civilian populations. Douhet believed such strikes would cause these populations to force their governments to surrender[59][60][61].

Get real.
The total US armed forces casualties in the Pacific between 1941 and 1945 amounted to:

Army & Marines -55,060- + Navy -36,950- = -92,010-

The number of US civilians killed throughout the whole of WW2, all theaters included:
* Britannica: 6,000
* U.S. Merchant Marine: 8,300 mariners killed at sea, at least 1,100 died from wounds. Total killed estimated 9,300. [http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html]


Decision to Use the A-Bomb
Imperial Imperatives: Truman's "Hammer" and the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Dr. Joseph Gerson
Vancouver World Peace Forum
June, 2006

http://www.afsc.org/newengland/pesp/DecisionToUseABomb.htm

...

Four primary calculations drove Truman's and his closest advisers to use the new weapon. First, they were profoundly concerned that President Roosevelt had conceded too much to Stalin at Yalta. By ending the war before the Soviet Union "joined the kill" of Japan, they hope to limit Soviet post-war influence in northern China, Manchuria, Korea, and possibly Japan. They also hoped to change the rules of the game for the Cold War that had already begun

Second, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed to ensure that "the Soviets would be more accommodating to the American point of view" in the Cold War era.7 Truman expected that by demonstrating the apocalyptic power of nuclear weapons and the U.S. will to use them - even against civilians - he would have "a hammer over" Stalin. The message was clear: We have the ability and the will to do this to human beings. Beware and behave.

There were also secondary political and personal motives. Truman and his political mentor, Secretary of State Byrnes, worried that if the U.S. electorate learned that $2 billion (a staggering sum in those days) had been spent to build a super bomb that had not been used, Truman would be voted out of office in the 1948 presidential election. There was also simple vengeance fused with racism. As Truman wrote to Samuel McCrea Cavert of the Federal Council of Churches two days after the Nagasaki bombing, "When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast."8

Like the myth that Christopher Columbus discovered America, the fiction that the A-bombs were employed to save U.S. lives has become the government enforced received truth and common wisdom in the United States and much of the world. A 2005 Gallup poll, taken for the sixtieth anniversary of the A-bombings, revealed that 57% of U.S. people believed the A-bombings were necessary and legitimate.9 Yet, forty years earlier, William Appleman Williams, then dean of U.S. historians, concluded that "The United States dropped the bomb to end the war against Japan and thereby to stop the Russians in Asia, and to give them sober pause in eastern Europe."10 In the years that followed, the publication of wartime leaders' diaries and memoirs; the opening of official U.S., Soviet, and Japanese records; and laborious scholarly research have established what J. Samuel Walker, the former official historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, called a "consensus among scholars… that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan....alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it."11
...

Negotiations that did not require "Unconditional surrender".
Especially regarding Japan, as the Soviet Union was NOT at war with japan until august 1945.

NY Times
July 19, 1994
A Plot. A Bomb. A Pariah. A Hero.; The Making of a Tragedy
By THOMAS FLEMING;

Fifty years ago tomorrow, Col. Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg, the chief of staff of the 600,000-man army that guarded Germany's home front, joined Hitler and his military advisers for a conference in the Fuhrer's headquarters, Wolfschanze (Wolf's Lair), in East Prussia.

Count Stauffenberg placed his briefcase beneath the table a few feet from Hitler and left the meeting to take a prearranged telephone call from an aide. Moments later the briefcase exploded, killing two members of Hitler's staff and badly wounding a half dozen others. But Hitler, the seat blown out of his trousers, his coat ripped up the back, both eardrums ruptured, survived the blast. By the end of the day, an impromptu firing squad had executed Count Stauffenberg as Hitler launched a roundup which wiped out virtually every member of a group whose existence the British and Americans had repeatedly ignored, dismissed or denied.

It has now become apparent that the fate of the German resistance was a tragedy not only for Germany but for Europe and America as well. A negotiated peace with anti-Nazi Germans in early or even mid-1944 probably would have saved the lives of two million soldiers -- and three million Jews. East Germany and perhaps much of Eastern Europe would have been spared 50 years of incarceration in the twilight world of Soviet Communism.

The resistance included leading politicians and diplomats. They were protected, nurtured and in some ways led by Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the military intelligence branch of the high command of the German armed forces. For three years, they sent agent after agent to various points on the borders of Hitler's Reich -- Istanbul, Stockholm, Bern, Madrid -- vainly seeking negotiations with the U.S. and Britain.

As early as 1940, an aide of Canaris's leaked the plans of Hitler's invasion of the Lowlands and France to the Dutch, who passed it to the English, who dismissed it as a ruse until they realized, too late, that it was authentic. Thereafter, Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, head of British intelligence, remained in shadowy contact with Canaris. But Menzies' ability to negotiate was crippled by the British Foreign Office, influenced by the passionate anti-Germanism of Robert Vansittart, for many years the permanent under secretary and later chief diplomatic adviser.

Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of a policy of unconditional surrender at Casablanca in January 1943. Whatever the tactical considerations, such as allaying Stalin's suspicions that his Western partners would make a separate peace with Hitler, unconditional surrender was a propaganda windfall for the Nazis. It played directly to the Goebbels line that Germany's back was to the wall and that defeat would mean Germany's total destruction.

Among those who at various times questioned the wisdom of unconditional surrender were Gen. George Marshall and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of State, and Winston Churchill.

At Casablanca, Roosevelt disingenuously claimed the phrase unconditional surrender had just "popped into my head." On the contrary, we now know it was recommended by a State Department policy committee that Roosevelt had appointed in the spring of 1942, whose chairman was one of his closest friends. Robert Sherwood, a confidant of F.D.R.'s top aide, Harry Hopkins, concluded the idea was "very deeply deliberated . . . a true statement of Roosevelt's policy."

Roosevelt was motivated, it seems, by his experience in World War I, in which Woodrow Wilson had offered the Germans terms that they accepted as a basis for a negotiated peace. Wilson's chief critic, Theodore Roosevelt, insisted that unconditional surrender was a better policy. The revived German war machine that emerged in the 1930's, claiming that the army had not been defeated but had been "stabbed in the back" by German civilians, seemed to prove to F.D.R. that Cousin Theodore had been right.

But F.D.R. was wrong in trying to apply the lessons of history, always a perilous business. It would have been far harder for any German to talk about a stab in the back after the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad and the successful Allied landings at Normandy. By July 1944, it was apparent that Hitler had lost the war. And above all, there was the Allied air war, which had leveled two-thirds of Germany's cities.

There was another, more morally regrettable element in Roosevelt's motivation. He simply did not believe there was such a thing as a good German. His conversations as recorded in the diaries of his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, and his responses to Eisenhower's and Marshall's pleas to repeal or soften unconditional surrender are studded with expressions of sweeping condemnation of an entire people.

In light of the available evidence, it is reasonable to suppose that if Roosevelt and Churchill had made even a gesture of moderation or support for the resistance after the July 20 bomb blast, the generals in command of the German armies in France would have agreed to a unilateral surrender, in spite of Hitler's survival.

But Roosevelt said nothing and Churchill dismissed the bomb as "a disturbance in the German war machine." Ironically, the only people who uttered a word on the plotters' behalf were the Russians. "Generals, officers, soldiers!" said Radio Moscow. "Cease fire at once and turn your arms against Hitler. Do not fail these courageous men!"

When an Associated Press correspondent, Louis Lochner, attempted to file a story on the resistance from Paris -- he had known many of the members when he was stationed in Berlin before the war -- Army censors told him the subject had been barred "by specific order of the President."

After July 20, Winston Churchill grew more and more dubious about unconditional surrender. In a 1947 speech in Parliament, Churchill went even further. He described Canaris, Count Staffenberg and their fellow conspirators as men who "belonged to the noblest and greatest [ of resistance movements ] that have ever arisen in the history of all peoples." What a difference it could have made if he had said just that in July 1944.

Thomas Fleming is author, most recently, of "Loyalties," a novel about an American officer who becomes involved with the German resistance.



When he took office, Truman had no choice but follow FDR's doctrine until the end of the war that happened only a few weeks later in Europe, and only a few months in the Pacific.

It is my belief that, Truman elected president even as late as nov 1944, neither the US firebombing campaign in both Europe and the Pacific, nor Operation "Iceberg" the invasion of Okinawa, neither dropping the a-bomb would have occured, as Yalta would surely have had a totally different outcome.

A few remarks about the article I posted above but which contain, IMHO, a few fallacies I would like to outline and bury.


$2 billion on a total WW2 cost for the US of $288 billion, both figures in 1945 dollar value.
Less than 1%.
Additionally, there was no guarantee either of both bombs worked.


When he received the news of the test explosion in New Mexico, Truman wrote in his diary "the most terrible thing ever discovered".
At which point, in what he believed was his role in carrying FDRs war policies to meet their short reach, final objectives, he turned to his advisers to decide what to do with the bomb.

In his first months of office Truman was truely dedicated to FDR, his policies, and to serve FDR's staff, to the point where on many occasions he took on him the criticism that were directed against FDRs policies or his staff which he, or rather FDR delegated to.

LBJ was part of the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned the US about in his farewell speech.


The Candidate From Brown and Root
Bush Doesn't Know Dick

By Robert Bryce

AUGUST 28, 2000: Herman Brown's huge bet on the Mansfield Dam just keeps paying off. It made Brown a rich man. It secured the future of his company. And it led to other big projects that provided the funds to elect Lyndon Johnson to the U.S. Senate in 1948 and the White House years later. Today, 63 years after Johnson helped secure federal funding for the dam, it appears that the modern descendent of George Brown's Brown & Root may once again be propelling a Texas politico toward the White House. Call it fate, dumb luck, or clever politics. Whatever it is, Brown & Root, arguably the most famous construction company in Texas, is once again near the center of a presidential race. And the company's political connections are once again paying big dividends.

Brown & Root is a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services conglomerate that until July 25 employed Dick Cheney as chairman of its executive board and CEO. Like LBJ before him, Cheney has used his association with Halliburton and Brown & Root to enrich himself and gain political power. Last week, Halliburton announced that it was giving Cheney a retirement package worth more than $33.7 million. That comes on top of more than $10 million Cheney has earned in salary, bonuses, and stock options at Halliburton since 1995. In return for his pay, Cheney has helped the company attract government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Johnson had it a little easier, as his symbiotic relationship with Brown & Root occurred before campaign finance laws required candidates to reveal the sources of their funding. Indeed, by Johnson's own admission, according to his biographer Ronnie Dugger, much of the money he got from Brown & Root came in cash. In return, Johnson steered lucrative federal contracts to the company. Those contracts helped Brown & Root become a global construction powerhouse that today employs 20,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries.

"It was a totally corrupt relationship and it benefited both of them enormously," says Dugger, the author of The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson. "Brown & Root got rich, and Johnson got power and riches." Without Brown & Root's money, Johnson wouldn't have won (or rather, been able to steal) the 1948 race for U.S. Senate. "That was the turning point. He wouldn't have been in the running without Brown & Root's money and airplanes. And the 1948 election allowed Lyndon to become president," said Dugger, who is currently running for the Green Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York.

Cheney's business dealings on behalf of Halliburton and Brown & Root have largely occurred in the public eye and have been scrutinized by the media. But Cheney's dealings are just as questionable as those undertaken by LBJ. Indeed, in order to increase revenues for the company, Cheney has lobbied against sanctions that are considered part of America's strategic interests. For instance, the man who is now the Republican candidate for the vice presidency has lobbied against sanctions against Iran -- which could keep Halliburton from selling more products and services to that country. Meanwhile, Brown & Root has performed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work for Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, long suspected of sponsoring terrorism directed at the United States.


Dam in Limbo
But before discussing that, a bit of history on Brown & Root's dam work.

It was 1937, and the Mansfield Dam project (then called the Marshall Ford dam) was in limbo. Brown & Root, which had been a small Belton-based road-building company, was working on the dam even though Congress had not approved the $10 million project. Even worse, the project was illegal because the Bureau of Reclamation, which was overseeing the project, didn't own the land on which the dam was being built -- a minor fact that under federal law should have prevented the project from getting under way. But Herman Brown pressed on. He had received $5 million and was betting that he could get the federal approval and funding needed to finish the project. But he needed Johnson -- then a newly elected Congressman -- to get it. Johnson delivered. In July of 1937, with the backing of President Franklin Roosevelt, who made it clear he was doing it for "Congressman Johnson," the authorization and funding was approved.

That funding was the key to Brown & Root's future. In his book on LBJ, Path to Power, Johnson biographer Robert Caro reports that Herman Brown and his brother George made "an overall profit on the dam of $1.5 million, an amount double all the profit they had made in twenty previous years in the construction business."

But Herman Brown wasn't finished. He wanted another $17 million to make the dam higher by another 78 feet to make it function better for flood control. The Lower Colorado River Authority, which was to operate the dam, didn't have the money. So once again, Johnson went to work. Of course, he got the money, a move that resulted in even more profit for the Browns. "Out of the subsequent contracts for the dam," writes Caro, "they piled, upon that first million, million upon million more. The base for a huge financial empire was being created in that deserted Texas gorge."

(In retrospect, building the dam higher was a wise choice. During the floods of 1991, Lake Travis crested at 710 feet, just four feet below the level of the spillway. Without the extra height demanded by the Browns, or another dam, parts of Austin would likely have been inundated.)

The Mansfield project led to dozens of others. It also made the Browns believe in Johnson. "Herman Brown let Johnson know that he would not have to worry about finances in this campaign -- that the money would be there, as much as was needed, when it was needed," writes Caro.


Going Global
Johnson then steered all kinds of federal projects to Brown & Root -- including airports, pipelines, and military bases. During the Vietnam War, the company built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the Demilitarized Zone to the Mekong Delta. But the company's relationship with the government would continue long after LBJ was laid to rest along the banks of the Pedernales.

And Brown & Root enjoyed especially great success attracting military contracts during Cheney's tenures, first as Secretary of Defense, then at Halliburton.

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Brown & Root $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the firm an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, the company won a five-year logistics contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia. According to data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, between 1992 and 1999 the Pentagon paid Brown & Root over $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million. On top of that, the company was recently hired by the State Dept. to do a $100 million security upgrade on American embassies and consulates around the world.

When Cheney arrived at Halliburton, the company was doing less than $300 million per year in business with the Defense Department. By last year, according to the Baltimore Sun, that figure had grown to more than $650 million. During that same time period, the amount of money the company spent on lobbying soared. In 1996, Halliburton was spending less than $300,000 per year on lobbyists. Last year it spent $600,000.

Cheney also helped the company obtain federally subsidized loans, loan guarantees, and insurance. In the five years prior to Cheney's arrival, Brown & Root garnered about $100 million in loans and guarantees from the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, two government agencies that sponsor overseas development by American companies. Since 1995, the company has received $1.5 billion worth of assistance from those same two entities. Whether those loans would have come to Halliburton without Cheney's presence is impossible to say. But some critics believe Cheney's trips through the revolving door between government and business are improper.

"It's always of concern to us when we see people in public service who catapult into positions of wealth and influence in the private sector because they can convert their contacts into wealth in the private sector," says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that has issued a report on Cheney's deals (www.public-i.org). "Securing government guaranteed loans for Halliburton is troubling enough," says Eisner. "But now we find out that the same defense secretary will go through the revolving doors once more and be potentially the second most powerful person in the United States."

Before joining Halliburton, Cheney had no experience in the oil business. But that didn't appear to be a handicap. "What Dick brought was obviously a wealth of contacts," new Halliburton CEO (and former president of the Brown & Root subsidiary) David J. Lesar, recently told the Baltimore Sun. "You don't spend 20-some years in Washington without building a fairly extensive Rolodex."


Dick and Moammar
Cheney's Rolodex was particularly important to Halliburton in its efforts to work against the sanctions devised by Cheney's Republican role model, former president Ronald Reagan. In 1986, Reagan said that the regime of Gadhafi represents a "unique threat to free peoples," and he described it as a "rogue regime that advances its goals through the murder and maiming of innocent civilians." The Reagan Administration pushed for -- and got -- economic sanctions against Libya after the country was implicated in numerous terrorist actions, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1989.

But when Cheney became the CEO at Halliburton, his allegiance quickly shifted from geopolitical Reaganomics to economics. What was good for America was not good for Halliburton. In a 1998 speech, Cheney said the U.S. has "become sanctions-happy," and that it is "very hard to find specific examples where they [sanctions] actually achieve a policy objective." That same year, Cheney personally lobbied U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm in an effort to get a waiver from the Iran Libya Sanctions Act, a federal law passed overwhelmingly by Congress in 1996, which prohibits American interests from doing major business deals in those countries.

Cheney sought a way around the sanctions so that Halliburton could provide oil-field goods and services to Iran's oil industry. He tried to craft innovative approaches for Brown & Root to operate more openly in Libya. Since the mid-1980s, Gadhafi's "rogue regime" has paid Brown & Root more than $100 million to oversee engineering work on the Great Man-Made River Project, a massive, $20 billion pipeline project that will provide water for Tripoli and other Libyan cities. To get around the U.S. sanctions, Halliburton transferred the engineering work to Brown & Root's overseas offices. But it still hasn't escaped American law enforcement. In 1995, according to the Baltimore Sun, Brown & Root was fined $3.8 million for re-exporting U.S. goods through a foreign subsidiary to Libya -- in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Given the U.S. stand on Libya, does Brown & Root's work there subvert American foreign policy objectives? Dirk Vande Beek, Cheney's spokesman, refused to comment and referred the issue to Halliburton's press office. And what about Cheney's stand on economic sanctions, which conflicts with Bush's belief in their effectiveness? Cheney "is going to support what Gov. Bush has been saying about them," says Vande Beek.

For Cheney, his latest role is just another in a series of political makeovers: from staunch Reaganite, where economic sanctions were a primary weapon, to chief of the U.S. military under George Bush, where he was an enforcer of economic and military sanctions against America's enemies, to Halliburton, where sanctions were unprofitable, to vice presidential nominee, where sanctions are once again a-okay.

It's the kind of flexibility that a businessman like Herman Brown would have appreciated.

You have one source....

Below there are several...

I think Marine is closer to the true costs in lives for a Japanese invasion than your source...

ESpecially since your numbers seem skewed suggesting we lost only 95,000 total in the Pacific...

In reality we lost of 72,000 at Olinawa alone...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

[edit] Estimated casualties
Because the U.S. military planners assumed "that operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population",[7] high casualties were thought to be inevitable, but nobody knew with certainty how high. Several people made estimates, but they varied widely in numbers, assumptions, and purposes — which included advocating for and against the invasion — afterwards, they were reused to debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Casualty estimates were based on the experience of the preceding campaigns, drawing different lessons:

In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, the figures of 7.45 casualties/1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities/1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities.[36]

A study done by Adm. Nimitz's staff in May estimated 49,000 casualties in the first 30 days, including 5,000 at sea.[37] A study done by General MacArthur's staff in June estimated 23,000 in the first 30 days and 125,000 after 120 days.[38] When these figures were questioned by General Marshall, MacArthur submitted a revised estimate of 105,000, in part by deducting wounded men able to return to duty.[39]

In a conference with President Truman on June 18, Marshall, taking the Battle of Luzon as the best model for Olympic, thought the Americans would suffer 31,000 casualties in the first 30 days (and ultimately 20% of Japanese casualties, which implied a total of 70,000 casualties).[40] Adm. Leahy, more impressed by the Battle of Okinawa, thought the American forces would suffer a 35% casualty rate (implying an ultimate toll of 268,000).[41] Admiral King thought that casualties in the first 30 days would fall between Luzon and Okinawa, i.e., between 31,000 and 41,000.[42]

Of these estimates, only Nimitz's included losses of the forces at sea, though kamikazes had inflicted 1.78 fatalities per kamikaze pilot in the Battle of Okinawa,[43] and troop transports off Kyūshū would have been much more exposed.

A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.[1]

Outside the government, well-informed civilians were also making guesses. Kyle Palmer, war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, said half a million to a million Americans would die by the end of the war. Herbert Hoover, in memorandums submitted to Truman and Stimson, also estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 fatalities, and were believed to be conservative estimates; but it is not known if Hoover discussed these specific figures in his meetings with Truman. The chief of the Army Operations division thought them "entirely too high" under "our present plan of campaign."[44]

For context, the Battle of Normandy had cost 63,000 casualties in the first 48 days; and the Battle of Okinawa ran up 72,000 casualties over about 82 days, of whom 18,900 were killed or missing. Several thousand soldiers who died indirectly whether from wounds or other causes at a later date are not included. The entire war cost the United States a total of just over a million casualties, with 400,000 fatalities.

Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[45] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.[45]

Here is Okinawa info...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

Casualties

The last picture of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.U.S. losses were over 212,536 casualties, of whom 125,513 were killed or missing—over twice the number of casualties as at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal combined. Several thousand servicemen who died indirectly (from wounds and other causes) at a later date are not included in the total. One of the most famous U.S. casualties was the war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on Ie Shima.[6] U.S. forces suffered their highest ever casualty rate for combat stress reaction during the entire battle, at 48% (compared to 30% in the Korean War).

At sea three hundred and sixty-eight ships were damaged while another thirty-six, including fifteen amphibious ships and twelve destroyers were sunk during the Okinawa campaign.[7] While still another one hundred and twelve amphibious craft were damaged. In the end more than four thousand nine hundred officers and men of the Navy lost their lives, largely as a result of Japanese kamikazes.[7]

General Buckner's decision to attack the Japanese defenses head-on, although proving to be extremely costly in U.S. lives, was ultimately successful. Just four days from the closing of the campaign, General Buckner was killed by Japanese artillery fire while inspecting his troops at the front line. He was the highest-ranking U.S. officer to be killed by enemy fire during the war.


A group of Japanese prisoners who preferred surrender to suicide wait to be questioned.There were about 66,000 Japanese combatants killed and 7,400 captured. Some of the soldiers committed seppuku or simply blew themselves up with hand grenades. Many of the Japanese prisoners were native Okinawans who had been impressed into the Army shortly before the battle and were less imbued with the Japanese Army's no-surrender doctrine.[8] This was also the only battle in the war in which surrendering Japanese were made into POWs by the thousands.[citation needed] When the American forces occupied the island, the Japanese took Okinawan clothing to avoid capture and the Okinawans came to the Americans' aid by offering a simple way to detect Japanese in hiding. Okinawan language differs greatly from Japanese; with Americans at their sides, Okinawans would give directions to people in the local language, and those who did not understand were considered Japanese in hiding who were then captured.

"Operation ICEBERG"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Iceberg

If you look carefully though, casualties are cited in 2 different places in the wiki entry and don't match.

Killed or missing.

On the same page it says:

Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed [including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead] and 36,000 wounded.

And what about the predictions for an invasion of Japan?

Why invade ?

Because the Japanese were unlikely to surrender...under any terms...

There was even talk after two atomic bombs had been dropped about Japan not surrendering...

So, you can imagine anything short of the atomic bombs being dropped would have done little to weaken the resolve of the Japanese.

Fear, like Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Yes, but that is why we are supposed to have objective experts to make predictions --- the only problem is they are not so objective as they pretend to be...

LBJ modeled his political life after FDR; FDR knowing he was a dying man choose Harry Truman to be his successor. Attacking any one of them is attacking all three. All three of them were New Dealers.

All three of them are what I'd call real democrats, America was first in their hearts and America was right in what she did.

There isn't a democrat in politics today who could so much as measure up to a pimple on any one of the three's butt.

To lump FDR in the same class as Truman or LBJ is a terrible injustice to FDR and in my opinion doesn't reflect an accurate reading of political History.

How about a blockade ?

Remember why Japan went to war against the US in the first place ?

Truman achieved everything FDR envisionned and for which he made the effort of putting in writing. He even took responsibility for the political backdrafts that came along with FDR's policies, as to prevent any tainting of FDR's legacy.

FDR was tricky though, made Churchill and Great-Britain pay the highest price for victory, nothing less than the British Empire.

Both Truman and LBJ were FDR understudies and both adhered to the principles of the New Deal. Kennedy wasn't and didn't and no democratic president since has. I never said they were equals; I said attacking any one of them on they basic philosophies is the same as attacking all of them.

About 90% of what's wrong with the democratic party today is because democrats don't know what the New Deal was and certainly don't think like a New Dealer. John Kennedy had to receive the blessing of Eleanor Roosevelt for any chance of succeeding in his bid for the presidency and is also one big reasons why LBJ occupiied the number 2 spot on the ticket. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and have seen this party change and I mean it changed for the worst.

FDR=Obama

2 visionaries

both with many disciples

However, LBJ far outshines Truman

FDR=LBJ=OBAMA

and I just wish FDR had the guts to keep Wallace

Do your homework Graham --- LBJs Great Society had its genesis in the Kennedy Administration...

and Vietnam did too, odds are great JFK would have become and done what LBJ had happened to him with
vietnam.

But when did JFK become part of the discussion?

And Graham how do you reconcile these great Truman achievements if he was such a bad leader...

Answer - you cannot.

turn that around

why don't people remember what good Nixon did?

Or others forget LBJ did the voting/civil rights acts NOT JFK and its doubtful JFK would have used his capital to do it

Not according to recent historians...

Vietnam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

In South East Asia, Kennedy followed Eisenhower's lead by using limited military action to fight the Communist forces ostensibly led by Ho Chi Minh. Proclaiming a fight against the spread of Communism, Kennedy enacted policies providing political, economic, and military support for the unstable French-installed South Vietnamese government, which included sending 16,000 military advisors and U.S. Special Forces to the area. Kennedy also agreed to the use of free-fire zones, napalm, defoliants and jet planes. U.S. involvement in the area continually escalated until regular U.S. forces were directly fighting the Vietnam War in the next administration. The Kennedy Administration increased military support, but the South Vietnamese military was unable to make headway against the pro-independence Viet-Minh and Viet Cong forces. By July 1963, Kennedy faced a crisis in Vietnam. The Administration's response was to assist in the coup d'état of the Catholic President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem.[22] In 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government, arresting Diem and later killing him (though the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear)[23] Kennedy sanctioned Diem's overthrow. One reason for the support was a fear that Diem might negotiate a neutralist coalition government which included Communists, as had occurred in Laos in 1962. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, remarked "This kind of neutralism…is tantamount to surrender."

Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military in Vietnam from 800 to 16,300. It remains a point of controversy among historians whether or not Vietnam would have escalated to the point it did had Kennedy served out his full term and possibly been re-elected in 1964.[24] Fueling this speculation are statements made by Kennedy's and Johnson's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. In the film "The Fog of War", not only does McNamara say this, but a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson confirms that Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, a position Johnson states he disapproved of.[25] Additional evidence is Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on October 11, 1963 that gave the order for withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. Nevertheless, given the stated reason for the overthrow of the Diem government, such action would have been a dramatic policy reversal, but Kennedy was generally moving in a less hawkish direction in the Cold War since his acclaimed speech about World Peace at American University the previous June 10, 1963.

After Kennedy's assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM #273 on November 26, 1963.

I spoke earlier this year with Ted Sorensen and he mentioned that both had their genesis in the Kennedy Admiinistration. Would Kennedy have used his capital to get them through Congress --- I do not know. I actually do not believe that it would have been possible without his death to soften opposition against the proposals...

BUt you really need to get your facts straight on this stuff...

Civil rights

Kennedy delivers the 1963 State of the Union Address, January 14The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of Kennedy's era. The United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. However, many schools, especially in southern states, did not obey the Supreme Court's judgment. Segregation on buses, in restaurants, movie theaters, bathrooms, and other public places remained. Kennedy supported racial integration and civil rights, and during the 1960 campaign he telephoned Coretta Scott King, wife of the jailed Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., which perhaps drew some additional black support to his candidacy. John and Robert Kennedy's intervention secured the early release of King from jail.[35]

In 1962, James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, but he was prevented from doing so by white students. Kennedy responded by sending some 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to ensure that Meredith could enroll in his first class. Kennedy also assigned federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders.

As President, Kennedy initially believed the grassroots movement for civil rights would only anger many Southern whites and make it even more difficult to pass civil rights laws through Congress, which was dominated by Southern Democrats, and he distanced himself from it. As a result, many civil rights leaders viewed Kennedy as unsupportive of their efforts.

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling. George Wallace moved aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio.[36] Kennedy proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[37]

The modern feminist movement began [38]when Kennedy signed the Executive Order creating the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. Commission statistics revealed that women were also experiencing discrimination. Their final report doccumenting legal and cultural barriers was issued in October 1963, a month before Kennedy's assassination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

November 21, 2003
What if Kennedy Had Lived?
By SEAN WILENTZ
Some years after John F. Kennedy's assassination 40 years ago tomorrow -- a counter-Camelot myth took hold among historians and journalists. Supposedly, Kennedy was a reckless cold warrior, knee-deep in conspiracies against Fidel Castro. On domestic policy, he was timid and ineffective.

According to the myth, the only good that came from Kennedy's presidency, except for his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, was achieved by Lyndon B. Johnson. Amid a wave of sympathy after Kennedy's death, Johnson used his political savvy to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson, the master politician, really mattered. The feckless Kennedy did not -- except as a romanticized martyr.

Those claims are false, as abundant historical evidence shows. Yet the counter-Camelot myth lives. Its distortions are particularly severe regarding race and civil rights.

By November 1963, Kennedy, displaying genuine political courage, had firmly committed his administration to the civil rights cause. This was a great shift from 1961 and the early months of 1962, when he regarded civil rights protesters with a mixture of skepticism and annoyance. A great deal had happened since then to change Kennedy's mind: the bloody battle over the desegregation of the University of Mississippi; violent official repression by white racists like Bull Connor, the public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Ala.; and the peaceful civil rights march on Washington in August 1963, followed days later by the deadly Ku Klux Klan bombing of a black church in Birmingham.

The president came to grasp the magnitude of the change in the national mood. On June 11, 1963, he delivered on national television a remarkable address that declared civil rights a moral issue ''as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.''

White House tapes from the time -- recently collected in ''Kennedy, Johnson and the Quest for Justice'' by Jonathan Rosenberg and Zachary Karabell -- show that Kennedy backed up his words with action: a civil rights bill more sweeping than any since the era of Reconstruction. Kennedy himself privately described its main provisions, to ensure equal access to public accommodations, as not at all ''tough.'' But he wanted a bill that could pass Congress -- expecting that more would come after he won re-election and Democrats favoring civil rights gained larger Congressional majorities.

''You know this fight is going to go on,'' Kennedy told the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake of the National Council of Churches on Sept. 30, 1963. ''We're going to have, about two years from now, we're going to have another bill.''

Kennedy's civil rights commitments cost him dearly at the time, especially in the white South. Still, at his death his overall approval rating stood at 58 percent, the highest recorded, then or since, by an American president at that point in his term.

There's no question that Johnson was able to carry forward Kennedy's domestic agenda because of the 37 House seats gained by the Democrats in the 1964 elections, a landslide that produced a working majority for progressive legislation for the first time in a quarter century. But Kennedy was a more popular figure than Johnson. Had Kennedy lived to run against Barry Goldwater, the Democrats probably would have picked up 50 more liberal legislators.

Kennedy might even have won passage of his civil rights bill before the 1964 landslide. (Less than a month before he died, the bill was approved by the House Judiciary Committee.) But with a strong personal mandate and an invigorated Democratic Congress, there's little question he would have won it in 1965. In time, he would also have won the Voting Rights Act, which he had envisaged before his death.

As for foreign policy, Kennedy probably would not have Americanized the war in Vietnam, as Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy on reflection have conceded. After the missile crisis, he was embarked on a course to wind down the cold war and stop nuclear testing and proliferation.

If Kennedy had been finishing his second term in 1968, it is difficult to imagine the political resurrection of the two-time loser Richard Nixon. But with Kennedy dead, Nixon won the White House by following a Southern strategy that inflamed the reaction against Johnson's Great Society programs and exploited the national divisions over Vietnam. Without Nixon's Southern strategy, it is in turn difficult to imagine the consolidation of the hard-line Southern Republican conservatism that later proved so essential to the election of Ronald Reagan and, even more, George W. Bush. Kennedy's death changed everything.

Sean Wilentz is professor of history at Princeton.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...agewanted=print

taz- it "could" have happened

But to say get my facts straight, then put up a "what if" thread...

doesn't seem fair

But I didn't include JFK in this thread, because he did not have enough time served to know what would have happened

If you go on a two year scale, then you have to also do a 2 year on Carter, and he had quite a few accomplishments in a two year period too
Same with LBJ, same with Nixon for that matter

About the only ones who didn't do anything good for America in any 2 year period were the Bush's, the Clinton's, Reagan and Ford of the modern
Presidents.(I give Reagan ZERO credit, and Gorby most of the credit, and luck of the times too).

Not really. LBJ was a great student of FDR. The great society was the natural offshoot of the New Deal. Kennedy was no New Dealer, LBJ was.

Nixon?

In foreign policy he was genius, on domestic policy he was an idiot.