Presidential Libraries/Museums: Lyndon B. Johnson

The LBJ Presidential Library is the only free Presidential Museum, because Johnson wanted it to be available to everyone, especially children. It's open every day, except Christmas, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. If you only visit one $300 million propaganda shrine, I recommend visiting this one in Austin, Texas. I visited the LBJ Library this past December with my family. Before our visit I made the mistake of referring to LBJ as our 37th President. It was not my finest hour.



The current temporary exhibit at the LBJ Library is To the Moon: The American Space Program in the 1960s. NASA has a similar exhibit in College Station, TX at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library. Both exhibits are great, but only the LBJ Library features an impossible to beat flight simulator game. The flight simulator game at the Bush Library, after you defeat it once (after months of trying), is moderately easy. I think it goes without saying that all presidential libraries should have flight simulator games. The Reagan Library has Air Force One and Nixon Library has Marine One, and don't let anyone stop you from pretending you're flying them. Without a doubt however, the best part of the LBJ Library, and something I would suggest including in both the GWB and BHO libraries is the Animatronic LBJ.

Animatronic LBJ at LBJ museum

He tells three or four stories, mostly humorous remarks. It is awesome to watch, like a mini trip to Disney World’s Hall of Presidents. This is the complete anecdote:

“We had a little boy down in our country that ran out one day and said, “Mama,come here quick! I saw a big old lion in our back yard!” And mother went out there and there was the old family dog Rover standing there. She said, “That’s
not a lion, that’s Rover. Now, you told a story. You go up there in that room,
stay an hour…and beg to the Lord to forgive you for telling a story.”…In an
hour, she came back, and she said, “Did you say your prayers?” “Yes.” “Did you
ask the Lord to forgive you?” “Yes.” She said, “What did the Lord say?” He said,
“Mama, the Lord said he thought it was a lion too.”

After telling this story to members of Congress, the non animatronic LBJ (as I occasionally refer to him) would then add:

“Now I don’t know whether you see all these problems that face America, the
priorities, the tinderboxes, the poverty and the filth and the [lack of]
education and the disease, and the isolationism and the narrow nationalism and
the protectionalism. I don’t know whether you see these lions or not. But I hope
you do. And I hope the Lord thinks they’re lions too.”