Leadership Quote by Lyndon B. Johnson

The line lands like a grin in the middle of a knife fight: Lyndon B. Johnson calling his shot, framing basic equality as if it were a controversial plank that needs courage. “I want to make a policy statement” is pure LBJ stagecraft. He’s not confessing a personal belief; he’s laundering it through the language of governance, as if support for women must be stamped, filed, and made official before it counts. That bureaucratic preface also signals what’s at stake: he’s speaking to skeptics inside a political system built to treat women’s demands as special interests rather than civil rights.

“Unabashedly” does the most work. It presumes that bashfulness would be the normal posture for a male president wading into women’s equality. The word winks at backlash while daring it to show itself. Johnson understood power as a contact sport; even when he’s on the side of reform, he telegraphs that reform will be contested. He’s not pleading to be liked. He’s announcing he’s willing to take the heat.

The kicker is “in favor of women,” a phrase so broad it’s almost comically inadequate, and that’s part of the point. It’s a political umbrella big enough to cover concrete fights of the era - equal employment enforcement, appointments, education, the rising pressure of second-wave feminism - without committing to any single flashpoint that could fracture a coalition. Johnson’s subtext is managerial: the state is choosing a side, and he’s positioning himself as the operator who can convert moral sentiment into machinery.