Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little.

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.

I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.

It's Kennedy's war, Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson got all the flak, but it's Kennedy's war.