re: #230 ggt

Nixon and Eisenhower were close. Nixon was instrumental in trying to get the Civil Rights Acts passed in the 50’s and early 60’s. A lot of people don’t know that.

LBJ came and stole it out from under him.

That may be so, but I’d have to say that LBJ took the biggest political risk. Nixon was pretty much a liberal Republican, while LBJ was a staunch Southern Democrat, in a time when the Dixiecrats still had the power in the Democratic Party. LBJ was able to sideline. strongarm, or co-opt those Dixiecrats (and other ambivalent or hostile Democrats) until he had the numbers for passage; I don’t think Nixon would have been able to do the same.