Randall Woods: Which of the JFK/LBJ domestic programs do conservatives wish had never seen the light of day?
Source: Special to HNN (2-13-08) [Mr. Woods, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, is the author of LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (paperback, 2007). ] Last week the conservative political cartoonist, Michael Ramirez, ran a two panel caricature of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson respectively. Under the JFK rendering was the inscription Obamas rhetoric and under LBJs Obamas policies. Given Ramirez political leanings, I gather this was meant as an indictment. I wonder which of the Kennedy-Johnson programs conservatives wished had not seen the light of day: Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education, Head Start, public television and radio, the Civil Rights Acts of 1963, 1964, and 1968, the first real clean air and water legislation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Food Stamp Act, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, the Automobile Safety Act, and/or the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities? They probably would have objected to
