Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.

Julian E. Zelizer says so far the Obama presidency resembles that of Lyndon B. Johnson.

PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- While pundits have compared President Obama to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, less attention has been paid to another, perhaps more apt parallel -- Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Sometimes the similarities are striking. Both aimed high, seeking major legislation to reshape America -- Johnson with civil rights and Medicare, Obama with health care and energy legislation. Both Johnson and Obama understood that Congress was a credit-claiming institution whose members did not like to have proposals rammed down their throats.

Johnson's style of political leadership was famous. A creature of the Senate, Johnson loved to lean on legislators and intimidate them into supporting his agenda.

As Senate majority leader from 1955 to 1961, Johnson had been famous for subjecting colleagues to the "Treatment" whereby the hulking Texan cornered a legislator in the hallway, stood eye to eye and made his arguments about a bill until he received assurances of support for particular legislation. Although Johnson slightly changed his posture once he was president, he still relied on this kind of interaction to build support.

As president from November 1963 until January 1969, Johnson worked closely with the Southern committee chairmen and ranking Republicans who dominated the House and Senate. Johnson sought to achieve a delicate mix of maintaining control over deliberations -- thinking of ways to obtain what he wanted without giving the appearance of it being a presidential-led idea -- all while responding to the concerns of the chairmen.

The back-and-forth deliberations with House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills over the creation of Medicare in 1965 have become the classic example of how a president can work the chamber while allowing a congressional leader into the room to shape a bill in ways with which he'll be comfortable. Johnson agreed to redesign the particulars of the legislation so that the final program would protect the fiscal integrity of Social Security (under which it was included) and contain long-run costs.

Thus far, Obama has taken a similar approach with the economic stimulus and, more recently, with his budget proposal. The president outlined to Congress the basic ideas he wanted in the final product but then left to lawmakers the work of designing the details.

While the downside has been that Obama relinquished control over the structure of the legislation, House and Senate Democrats have felt invested and empowered to produce what Obama's team viewed as successful results.

The second similarity is that Johnson, like Obama, distanced himself from the arguments of liberals who said that conservatives did not need to be feared. Johnson was consumed by his fears of a right-wing resurgence, even after trouncing Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election.

Johnson constantly warned advisers that the most dangerous political force in the country as far as he was concerned was not the left on college campuses but what he called the "reactionary element" within the GOP, and he took this into consideration when shaping legislative proposals.

With domestic policy, Johnson avoided programs that could be tagged as "socialistic," and on foreign policy he worked hard to demonstrate a tough stance against communism. Recently released telephone conversations have revealed that Johnson was obsessed with the 1966 midterm elections after the 1964 election was over, realizing that historically those results were not likely to be good for the White House.

Obama has been reluctant to embrace liberal arguments about an end to the Age of Reagan, courting conservative journalists such as David Brooks instead of liberal pundits such as Paul Krugman. He accepted compromises on legislation in response to moderates in both parties and agreed to a financial bailout that pleased Wall Street, not Main Street. And his administration has steered clear of explicitly nationalizing banks, a step that could be called socialist
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