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what's the current state of analysis on whether the civil rights act of 1957 was actually net positive or negative for civil rights in hindsight? there are two possible stories one can tell, and at the time people were arguing about which is correct:
passing even a useless civil rights bill is a lot better than nothing because it sets a precedent that getting civil rights bills through the Senate is possible / makes the southern coalition no longer look invincible. this serves a useful coordination mechanism because people only want to support things that they think other people will support.
passing a useless civil rights bill is worse than no bill because it creates a false sense of progress and makes it feel like something was done even when nothing was. to the extent that the bill signals to people that getting civil rights bills through the Senate is possible, this is a false impression because the only reason the bill could get through was that it was watered down to uselessness.
this feels directly analogous to the question of whether we should accept very weak AI safety regulations today.
so it sounds like there's basically no way anyone could have known that johnson would actually be a pro civil-rights president, and that all the civil rights people who were opposed to the 1957 bill at the time were basically opposed for the right reasons? like basically everything we know about johnson as of 1960 suggests that he is telling everyone what they want to hear and it's unclear whether he has any convictions of his own except for his strong track record of defending the interests of the south.
2Garrett Baker
Basically yes. His staff likely coulda predicted this (eg there were a few circumstances where out of anger he did some small civil rights stuff, then backed off when he cooled down & looked at the political repercussions), and possibly Lady Bird, but no other senator or member of the public had any reliable way to predict this for the reasons you state.
I mean, even in the Felix Longoria Arlington case, which is what I assume you're referring to, it seems really hard for his staff members to have known, without the benefit of hindsight, that this was any significant window into his true beliefs? I mean, johnson is famously good at working himself up into appearing to genuinely believe whatever is politically convenient at the moment, and he briefly miscalculated the costs of supporting civil rights in this case. his apparent genuineness in this case doesn't seem like strong evidence.