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.

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

— Robert Dallek

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

— Salman Rushdie

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.

— Robert Caro

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

— Jack Valenti

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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.

— Robert Dallek

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