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• Tuesday, January 13, 2009 10:44 AM

  In 1965, L.B.J. told M.L.K. to "make me do it."

  An anecdote from a former member of the LBJ administration.

  ROGER WILKINS, April 28, 2008:

  http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/6671%20-%20042808_commonwealth_past_transcript.pdf

  Now, let me just make two observations about presidents and getting things done. There is an old story that maybe some of you have heard. Sidney Hillman was a big labor leader. He had helped Roosevelt when Roosevelt was the governor and he helped him in the '32 campaign. So he went to the White House and he was welcomed as he should have been. He said, here is what you have to do Mr. President, da, da, da, da, da, da. And the story goes that President Roosevelt said, Sidney I agree with everything in your proposal, it is all exactly right, now you just go back home and make me do it.

  And the same thing happened with Lyndon Johnson and the Voting Rights Act. He wanted to do the Voting Rights Act, he had used up a lot of chits on the Civil Rights Act and he just engaged in a very long romancing of Martin Luther King, Jr., to make sure that King put his people on the streets and kept the people's feet to the fire and move along and move along and he essentially said to King - - make me do it.

  And King put the people on the street, and then there was pressure from inside the government on the president - - with which I was associated - - and it happened.

  - - Roger Wilkins

  —sysprog Read sysprog's other letters
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