BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

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The start of Season 3, begins on the Tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base on November 22, 1963. A new President addresses reporters and the American people after the assassination of a young and vigorous President. The New President was an old hand in Washington, with a larger than life persona and an ego as large as the State he had represented in the United States Senate, the state of Texas. 

This show will introduce you to the man , Lyndon Johnson. He would preside over one of the most divisive eras in our history, and yet, he would pass a monumental amount of legislation that would change our country, and he would escalate a war he inherited into a full scale land war in Asia. This season we will be examining how he did it, and how the events unleashed in this period would overwhelm his Presidency. 

But for this first hour we will just take a look at him, the man, Lyndon Johnson, warts and all, with the bark off. 

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While we were in production for season 3 we lost a very special and important part of our production team, my dog  Cooper. He was 11 years old and was a special member of my family. The two of us have weathered some very significant storms together and it warranted a special send off. Cooper's cancer diagnosis came as a surprise and he lived a brief four weeks after the major surgery to remove his spleen and two tumors, which were all together as big as a softball. 

If greatness is measured in impact on the lives you touch, then this dog was a great dog.  The impact he had on this one small South Carolina family was enormous,  as we dealt with the loss of each member one by one. By the time of Cooper's death he had been my brother's dog, his girlfriend's dog, my Dad's dog, and then when he came to live with me he helped take care of my Mother through her long battle with dementia an Alzheimer's Disease, and then kept me company and sane through writing a book,  the Covid 19 Virus isolation, and the first 2 1/2 seasons of this broadcast "Bridging the Political Gap".  Cooper came to live with me one week after I left public office and I have often joked that he was here to share my adventures in the political wilderness. 

 It has been a sad month here in Myrtle Beach where we put these shows together and I will miss working on them with Cooper at my feet, panting often noticeably while we were recording the show. 

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Senator John Warner, the second longest serving Senator from Virginia ,  was one of the last World War 2 and Korean War Veterans serving in the Congress when he retired in 2009. He passed away on May 25, 2021 at the age of 94. He was a class act and a man who knew how to get things done. He knew how to work with people and how to reach across the aisle and find bi-partisan solutions to issues. He was also not afraid to buck his own party which he did on several occasions. Several of those instances were over issues I disagreed with him on. However, I always respected him and trusted his overall judgement. 

Warner served as President Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Navy and eventually as either Chairman or Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. He was a champion of our nations military and they recently named a submarine after him. An honor usually reserved for people after they have passed, Warner had the opportunity to walk around on it. 

Senator John Warner was also famous for something totally unrelated to his public service career. He was actress Elizabeth Taylor's 6th husband and they remained lifelong friends until she passed away. Here we will look back at Warner's remarkable life and career, one of the last of a generation that help build the American Century. This show also includes a eulogy from President Joe Biden who served with Warner for three decades in the United States Senate. 

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Season 3 of  "Bridging the Political Gap " takes us through the most controversial period in our history other than the Civil War. 

In this season we will cover one of the most controversial an arguably most consequential Presidencies in the entire history of our nation. The Administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. 

Here is a preview of what promises to be a long, hot, summer....

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November 1963, was a month that changed the trajectory of American History.  During the summer of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy Administration grew increasingly frustrated with the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his increasingly dictatorial ways in running the government. When Ambassador , and Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge pushed Diem to remove his brother General Ngo from command of the Army, and Diem refused, a coup by the other Generals in South Vietnam was given a tacit go ahead. That led to the assassination of Diem and the overthrow of his government. After a decade of stability the South Vietnamese government fell into a state of constant chaos.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who had met with and supported Diem, knew almost nothing about the permission given for the coup. He only discovered it as it happened. Johnson had been a masterful politician as a member  of the United States Senate. He was a man who dreamed big dreams for his country in domestic policy, but he had not been an expert in foreign policy. As Vice President he had been relegated to the role of a ceremonial representative for the Kennedy administration. The Kennedy's distrusted and disliked him, going so far at one point to have an ambitious  Robert Kennedy send an un-coded message to a foreign government that Johnson in no way spoke for the Kennedy Administration. Johnson even feared he may be dumped from the ticket in the coming 1964 campaign.

On November 22, 1963, just 20 days after the assassination of Diem, everything changed.  A horrific moment in American History unfolded in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and Lyndon Johnson was catapulted into the White House, having been intentionally kept in the dark, with little working knowledge of what the long term strategy was in South Vietnam. He decided to keep the Kennedy Cabinet in place and listening to their advice he wrestled with what to do in Vietnam. 

Here is the story of this faithful month , November 1963, and how it made an indigenous, civil war in Vietnam,  OUR WAR,  and led to the loss of 50,000 American soldiers, as we struggled to fight back the high tide of communism in South East Asia. 

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In this special edition of "Bridging the Political Gap" , our host Randal Wallace sat down earlier in the month (June 2021)  with This week with Tim McGinnis, a current South Carolina State House Member and former television anchorman for WPDE TV-15, the local ABC affiliate here in Myrtle Beach. Tim McGinnis is also the owner of "The Famous Toastery" in Carolina Forrest. 

Tim McGinnis now hosts a weekly radio broadcast on WTKM 94.5 Radio  in Myrtle Beach - Murrells Inlet S.C. , that airs at 10 am on Saturday mornings.  

This interview is the first that Host Randal Wallace has done in over a year due to the restrictions of Covid 19. In it he discusses his book "Always Vote Your Conscious" and he mentions our show "Bridging the Political Gap". The two men also discuss the new things happening in Myrtle Beach S.C. , where Mr. Wallace served as a City Councilman for 16 years. 

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In Part 3 of the celebration of the life of George Shultz, we look back at one of the singular, major events of the Cold War in which George Shultz was a major participant.  

For a couple of days in October of 1986, four men met and changed the direction of the world. The two leaders President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and their two chief diplomatic aids Eduard Shevardnadze and George Shultz met to have discussion about Arms Control. It was hastily called and had no real big agenda in place. 

It turned out to have a really big agenda.

It saw the two leaders of the two Nuclear Super Powers start negotiating way out in front of where the career diplomats actually were and it was then and there that Gorbachev offered up the biggest most sweeping arms control proposal ever offered up in the history of negotiations. But Ronald Reagan turned it down to protect his Strategic Defense Initiative, basically a missile defense shield from outer space, often derided as a "Star Wars" pipe dream. 

Reykjavik was widely criticized and seen as a failure at the time, but it was where the groundwork was laid for the end of the Cold War and all the breakthroughs to come. Eventually the Soviet Union would be dissolved, the Berlin Wall would fall and the last act of Mikhail Gorbachev as the Premier of the Soviet Union, on Christmas Eve 1991, would be to call President Ronald Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush to tell him of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And it all began at the Höfôi House in Reykjavik , Iceland. 

We relive that summit here in Part 3 of the look back at the remarkable life of George Shultz. 

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In this second part in our celebration of the life of George Shultz,  we look at his many wise thoughts on the problems our country and world face today, and how he felt they needed to be addressed. He tells stories from his time in public office as both a cabinet member,  an education leader, and his career in the private sector. 

There is a lot to learn and a lot we can all be thankful he shared with us through his writings and interviews.  This is George Shultz unfiltered, with little commentary, in his own words. 

It was a remarkable , long  life, extraordinarily well lived. 

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"He was a gentleman of honor and ideas, dedicated to public service and respectful debate, even into his 100th year on Earth. That’s why multiple presidents, of both political parties, sought his counsel. I regret that, as president, I will not be able to benefit from his wisdom, as have so many of my predecessors." - President Joe Biden

George Shultz died on February 6, 2021 at the age of 100. He lived an extraordinary life, advising many Presidents and political figures and serving in four cabinet positions, something only one other person in history has done. Over the next 3 episodes, we look at this remarkable man who is one of my  political heroes. 

Here in part one, we look at his service to two of America's greatest chief executives ; Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.  As Nixon's Secretary of Labor, Office of Management and Budget and Treasury, He helped guide Nixon's work dealing with labor  and civil rights issues. He played a strong hand in developing the Philadelphia Plan and in desegregating the southern Public School System, a challenge Nixon undertook two decades after the Brown vs the Board of Education Supreme Court Decision had actually been made.

 It was Richard Nixon not Dwight Eisenhower, nor John F. Kennedy, nor Lyndon B. Johnson who actually made sure it became a reality, and it was George Shultz who made it happen. He tells that story here. This episode also goes through many of the major events of the Reagan years where as Reagan's chief diplomat, George Shultz helped shepherd the end of the Cold War. 

We have two more parts to the George Shultz remembrance scheduled they are :

Part 2 "The Wisdom of the man"
&
Part 3 " Reagan at Reykjavik" 

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"Madison did not design government to be easy, he designed it to be difficult, for unrelenting process and debate" - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan D- New York

There is no more important tool in the arsenal of the minority party when it comes to maintaining some sway with legislation in the United States Senate than the legislative Filibuster. It is a tool with a very interesting history. That history is often used whenever the majority is trying to figure out a way to take it away from the minority party too. There is no better way to defang your minority party than to fix it where they have no way to stop your agenda at all. 

But is that fair?

 I would say not. 

Here we will discuss the history of the Filibuster and even look at its most famous use, by Senator Strom Thurmond for 24 hours and 18 minutes,  to stop civil rights legislation in the 1950's and the filibuster was used again in 1960's until LBJ figured out a way to break it. 

 Just remember for those advocating taking it away,  that whatever you do today you will have live with tomorrow. Taking away the filibuster will effectively change the way our United States Senate works and turn us into a system where the radical agendas of either party can be implemented without compromise and repealed the exact same way. Is that really the type of country you want to live in?

 Is that even an effective way to govern?

I don't think so and neither will you, if and when, the shoe is on the other foot, one way or the other. 

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