Getting Things Done

I didn't know anything about Johnson when he was V.P. I mean, who pays any attention to the vice president? I remember that everybody blamed him for the Vietnam War, and I didn't know why because the first U.S. troops were sent there by Eisenhower. Of course those guys were supposed to be just advisors, but they were getting shot at as much as anybody who came later. When Johnson started escalating the U.S. involvement I thought it was a good thing. The South Vietnamese seemed to be ineffective and unreliable, and I figured that the only way to settle this thing once and for all was to go in there with overwhelming force and kick ass. Well, we all know how that turned out.

I still believe that our guys could have won if they had been allowed to by their leadership. Of course I wasn't there, but I have met guys who were there, and I seem to remember that they tended to agree with me. I believed at the time that Johnson and Nixon were both commie lovers who were out to make the U.S. look bad. I mean, how could they lose a war with a little country the size of New Jersey unless they did it on purpose? Looking back on it now, it was probably a lot more complicated than I realized at the time. I still think that color TV had something to do with it though. About the time that everybody got color TV is when this country started going to hell in a hand basket. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I seem to remember that this country was in a lot better shape when we saw everything in black and white.

As far as Johnson getting things done, it was widely believed at the time that he could never have done it if Kennedy hadn't gotten shot. A lot of Kennedy's agenda was unpopular in his lifetime but, after they made a martyr out of him, they passed it all as a tribute to his memory. There are probably still people who believe that's why they shot him, he was worth more to them dead than alive.

I remember you saying that about the first Mayor Daley too, "He got things done". They used to say something like that about Mussolini, you know. They said that "He made the trains run on time." It seems that Italian trains have always had the reputation of not running on time and, last I heard, they still did. The only historical period that the trains in Italy ever ran on time was when Mussolini was in power. The Italians don't seem to mind this, everybody just allows for it when they make travel plans. If a guy ran for election in Italy today on the promise that he would make the trains run on time, I doubt that he would win.

All kidding aside, it's good to have you back Uncle Ken. The internet is a boring place without you on it. I did some searching for new recruits while you were gone, but I didn't find any acceptable candidates. There are probably some out there, but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. There is one guy from the real world who I am interested in, he writes some interesting letters to the editor of our local newspaper. I couldn't find him on the internet, but I looked him up in the phone book. I plan to call him up one of these days, maybe tomorrow.