Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The 1964 Election
President Johnson is running for re-election this year. The only thing I know about it is that he's running against a senator from Arizona named Barry Goldwater, and that the Democrats have their convention in Atlantic City. My parents watch the convention, and it's on all of the channels, so there's nothing on TV while the convention is going on.
There's a lot of name-calling. People accuse President Johnson of being corrupt, and that he fixed a lot of elections when he was running for office in Texas. Some people are saying that maybe he had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination. A lot of people don't like the fact that he's sending more and more soldiers over to Vietnam, and most white people don't like him because he's getting a lot of civil rights laws passed.
Senator Goldwater is being called a war-monger. He claims there's no shame in using whatever force is necessary in order to defeat the Communists. I don't like the way he looks. He looks spooky to me, and Lyndon Johnson is pretty creepy-looking too.
The election is beyond me. Political things just seem so complicated, you know? Who knows what to believe?
But one night I see this commercial for Lyndon Johnson, and it scares me to death. A lot of people are scared to death.
I have trouble sleeping after seeing that commercial.
Suddenly I hope that Barry Goldwater isn't elected our next president, and President Johnson doesn't seem so spooky at all.
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1 comment:
That was the political message that went with our drills of crawling under our desks or sitting on the floor in the halls with our heads between our knees, scared to death of the things our parents and grandparents had brought into being on the surface of the earth.
Very scary!!
Just one caveat on the post - LBJ was not running for re-election - America had not ever elected him to the presidency before 1964. He had become our president over JFK's dead body.
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