Continuing the LBJ talk, you really shouldn’t separate his domestic policy from his foreign policy like people do. His maneuvers very cleanly followed the logic of the New Deal Dems of the time, or at least the logic FDR sold to them, which was that in order to curtail civil unrest there needed to be sweeping legislation to address the issues that caused it while simultaneously working to undermine the leadership of those movements. LBJ killed, jailed, or alienated every black civil rights leader he knew the name of. He famously invited a civil rights leader he had been attacking to a convention in order to have the optics of addressing civil unrest, then forced them to read a speech that included apologizing to him for lying about the attacks.
He should be remembered as a president who worked his entire presidency to kneecap the civil rights movement. Would Goldwater have been better? Fuck no. Was the next president, Nixon, better? Fuck no. Was Kennedy better? Unlikely. Presidents suck ass.