Leadership Quote by Lyndon B. Johnson

A politician admitting, almost with a shrug, that the cheapest exit ramp is moral evasion is not a confession so much as a warning label. Johnson’s line works because it doesn’t pretend the public square is a seminar on ethics. It’s a marketplace of consequences, and “deny your responsibility” is pitched as the bargain-bin product everyone keeps reaching for.

The specific intent is diagnostic: he’s describing the standard operating procedure of power under pressure. “Plenty of recommendations” implies an ecosystem of advisers, fixers, and friendly voices whose job is to make trouble disappear, not to make accountability happen. The phrasing “cheaply and fast” is doing political psychology: speed and thrift are the seductions that beat out truth when reputations and careers are on the line. Johnson frames denial as a technique, not a sin, which makes it more chilling; it suggests denial isn’t an aberration but a baseline competency.

The subtext is equally Johnsonian: he’s both condemning and admiring the effectiveness. That ambiguity mirrors his own legend as a master mechanic of Washington who understood institutions as levers and people as pressure points. Coming from a president whose tenure encompassed Vietnam escalation and an expanding “credibility gap,” the line lands as a bleak thumbnail of the era’s governing crisis: when reality becomes politically expensive, leaders are tempted to litigate blame instead of solve problems.

It’s a quote that anticipates modern damage control culture, where denial isn’t merely self-protection; it’s a strategy to stall, confuse, and outlast the news cycle.