A few weeks back, I mentioned how Hillary Clinton's quip that LBJ was the prime mover behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn't only be viewed as paternalistic toward blacks but also as elitist to progressives in general.
Thankfully, Nicolaus Mills expresses this same angst in Dissent, a great lefty journal for those unfamiliar with it, and throws Obama in for good measure.
Instead of providing voters with a thoughtful view of the recent past, Clinton and Obama combined to offer a crude, "great man" theory of history in which King's vision and Johnson's pragmatism were portrayed as antithetical forces.
The debate has quieted down. But it should not be allowed to fade from the headlines without a reminder of the lesson this controversy threatened to obscure--blacks and whites across America relied on one another to make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a reality.
Right on.
