Following President Barack Obama’s speech on healthcare last week, several pundits said it was a performance worthy of Harry “Give ’em Hell” Truman. After his election, he was likened to Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But for the coming battle over healthcare reform, Mr Obama needs to step into the shoes of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Especially when it comes to lining up votes from recalcitrant members of his own party, LBJ’s brawling, southern style of trench politics is the one best suited for the current challenge.

LBJ has been one of America’s most underrated presidents. He held the office for most of the 1960s, a tumultuous decade when the nation was torn by race riots and the struggle for civil rights. Despite the obstacles of backward attitudes and stubbornly discriminatory institutions, the hardnosed southerner was able to deliver more on the civil rights agenda than his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, ever could have done.