(LBJ in 1965 - Great plans, great ideas - eclipsed by Vietnam)

(Until we get back to normal, Newstalgia is reposting a series of articles on the Health Care issue, in case you missed them the first time around.)

When Lyndon Johnson gave his first State Of The Nation address on January 4, 1965 after winning the 1964 election, it was filled with hope and optimism. Every good idea and plan for the American people was on the boards and ready to go. Many of the programs were implemented - Medicare, The Civil Rights Bill, the War on Poverty - a lot of programs still in effect today.

LBJ: “We must open opportunity to all our people. Most Americans enjoy a good life. But far too many are still trapped in poverty and idleness and fear. Let a just nation throw open to them the city of promise. To the elderly, by providing hospital care under Social Security and by raising benefit payments to those struggling to maintain the dignity of their later years.”

But there was that one element which would eventually turn the focus from all the good programs to what had become one very bad idea: Vietnam.

By the end of 1965 our involvement went from "training and advisers for the South Vietnamese Army" to increased draft calls and escalating weekly casualty figures of our own. We were in it and we were stuck in it. And by the end of 1965 there looked like no turning back.

The domestic programs were great. The Great Society was a wonderful idea. It's often been said that, had there been no Vietnam, LBJ would have gone down in history as a truly progressive President. Vietnam would become the thorn in his side and his eventual downfall.

It's one of those quirks of history - the ones that often repeat.

(Billy Carter - the thorny bumpkin in Jimmy's side)

August 19, 1980 - dog days of summer and all. Still, there were the Senate Hearings on Billy Carter's relationship with the Libyans, the strikes that started in the Gdasnk Shipyards in Poland were spreading all over the country and everyone was being cautious. The 1980 Presidential Election season was going full-blast and third Party Candidate Rep. John Anderson was busy taking pot-shots at Reagan and Carter.

Rep. John Anderson: “I have suggested, and I am trying to be as frank and honest with you this morning, that I clearly believe that the nominee of the one so-called Major Party, the Republican Party, could take us in the wrong direction. But let me be impartial in my criticism and say that I think the man who was just re-nominated by the Democratic Party, President Carter has simply taken us in circles.”

And the most high-tech thing being pushed in the marketplace was Smith-Corona.

All on this particular day via The World Tonight.

Feel better now?

(Daniel Elssberg - the shadow of Nixon was everywhere)

With today's revelations over the Wikileaked "Afghanistan Papers", it brings to mind another famous set of papers that proved an embarrassment to U.S. Foreign Policy. The infamous Pentagon Papers and the subsequent trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo. The Pentagon Papers were a huge thorn in the side of the Nixon White House, made worse by illegal wiretaps and break-ins having to do with Ellsberg, all leading to the bigger picture which was Watergate.

Some say the disclosure of those papers, which outlined details of our failed excursion in Vietnam may have brought the war to a conclusion quicker. And had there not been the Pentagon Papers would there have been break ins and wiretaps of Daniel Ellsberg and others leading to the Watergate break in. It's a thought.

In any event, Ellsberg and Russo were jubilant as they held a press conference shortly after the acquittal was announced on May 12, 1973.

Daniel Ellsberg: “It’s a dramatic confirmation of the kinds of lessons that we read and that I first read in the Pentagon papers. And that I wanted to share with the American people lessons that were very painful for me as someone who had worked for the Executive Branch for all my professional life. For fifteen years including the Marine Corps, twelve years at the Department of Defense, White House, others. Those were lessons that the people that I had worked for had been corrupted by the absolute, enormous, unchallenged power that they’d come to exert in the last generation, the last thirty years or so, as any humans would be. That they were acting arrogantly, and ultimately that meant ignorantly and wrongly. And that the papers, of course, don’t tell the solution to that any more than Watergate tells the solution. I think the people of this country are more prepared to learn those same lessons in the domestic context than they were fully ready to learn about the Pentagon papers when the only victims were foreigners.”

Stop me if you're thinking what I'm thinking - but there's an eerie similarity here. The only difference is - Nixon was still in office when these revelations came to light. Bush isn't.