Diatribune

It's obviously in the self-interest of Mr. Obama and his friends to mollify people who supported Hillary Clinton, but a few conciliatory words with the obvious purpose of attracting votes may not be sufficient.

Mr. Obama and his brutal campaign machine vilified Hillary Clinton as a racist again and again and again during the campaign... for example, when she mentioned that Lyndon Johnson deserved some credit for passing the Voting and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

Assigning LBJ a little credit for that monumental legislation is actually a fantastic understatement of the reality of the situation. Johnson was one of the greatest Senate Majority Leaders in the history of the Senate, before he became Vice-President, and without his enormous legislative skill and the commitment behind it, Jim Crow could have easily survived for another generation in the South.

For Obama's friends who may not be familiar with LBJ's Great Society programs and what they accomplished, there's a very good summary by Joseph Califano, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare:

Since 1965 the federal government has provided more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in 86 million college loans to 29 million students, and more than $14 billion in work-study awards to 6 million students. Today nearly 60 percent of full-time undergraduate students receive federal financial aid under Great Society programs and their progeny.

When these programs were enacted, only 41 percent of Americans had completed high school; only 8 percent held college degrees. This past year, more than 81 percent had finished high school and 24 percent had completed college.

Head Start, which has served more than 16 million preschoolers in just about every city and county in the nation and today serves 800,000 children a year, is as American as motherhood and apple pie. Like so many successes, this preschool program has a thousand parents. But how many people remember the battles over Head Start? Conservatives opposed such early childhood education as an attempt by government to interfere with parental control of their children. In the '60s those were code words to conjure up images of Soviet Russia wrenching children from their homes to convert them to atheistic communism. But Lyndon Johnson knew that the rich had kindergartens and nursery schools; and he asked, why not the same benefits for the poor?

In the entire treasury of Great Society measures, the jewel Lyndon Johnson believed would have the greatest value was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law opened the way for black Americans to strengthen their voice at every level of government. In 1964 there were 79 black elected officials in the South and 300 in the entire nation. By 1998, there were some 9,000 elected black officials across the nation, including 6,000 in the South. In 1965 there were five black members of the House; today there are 39.

Great Society contributions to racial equality were not only civic and political. In 1960, black life expectancy was 63.6 years, not even long enough to benefit from the Social Security taxes that black citizens paid during their working lives. By 1997, black life expectancy was 71.2 years, thanks almost entirely to Medicaid, community health centers, job training, food stamps, and other Great Society programs. In 1960, the infant mortality rate for blacks was 44.3 for each 1,000 live births; in 1997, that rate had plummeted by two-thirds, to 14.7. In 1960, only 20 percent of blacks completed high school and only 3 percent finished college; in 1997, 75 percent completed high school and more than 13 percent earned college degrees.

Obama and his surrogates not only completely disrespected one of the best friends that black people and every other disadvantaged minority in the United States ever had... They used Hillary Clinton's acknowledgement of LBJ's role to attack her as a racist.

Empty words won't wash away the Obama campaign's miserable race-baiting, any more than a lukewarm apology can be sufficient compensation for any other form of brutal assault.

If Mr. Obama really wants to unify the party, it's time for him to make a substantial concession to Hillary Clinton and the people who supported her, and I can't imagine what form such a concession could assume except for offering her the Vice-Presidency.

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