I think that LBJ is a great comparison. Remember that LBJ won by painting Goldwater as an unhinged warmonger. similarly, the Obama of 2006 talked again and again about protecting civil liberties and limiting executive power.
And he's trying to do just that. He's tried to push through a great many domestic programs, he's asking congress to close up the post 9/11 authorizations he uses to justify the drone strikes, he's tried to get out of afghanistan and iraq...
But then he doubles down on Bush's immigration policy, surveillance, tightens up on whistleblowers... And it's blowing up in his face and I don't know that history will be any kinder to Obama than it was to Nixon or LBJ, with the way this story is playing out.
