Lyndon B. Johnson

Source

• Born: 27 August 1908
• Birthplace: Near Johnson City, Texas
• Died: 22 January 1973 (heart attack)
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1963-1969

Lyndon Baines Johnson replaced the assassinated John F. Kennedy as United States president and oversaw major social reforms and the expansion of the Vietnam War. Known as a politician's politician, "LBJ" was a senator from Texas who'd been a powerful member of the Democratic party for two decades when he challenged young Senator Kennedy for the presidential nomination in 1960. (Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower was stepping down after eight years.) Kennedy got the nod, then picked Johnson as his running mate. Kennedy beat Republican candidate (and Eisenhower's vice-president) Richard M. Nixon, and Johnson became vice-president in 1961. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on 22 November 1963 and Johnson succeeded to the presidency. Easily re-elected over staunch conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964, LBJ was able to pass sweeping social legislation including the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. His decision to escalate American involvement in Vietnam, however, proved to be extremely unpopular. He chose not to seek another term and retired in 1969; he was succeeded by none other than Richard Nixon.

Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, known as 'Lady Bird,' in 1934; they had two daughters, Lynda Bird (b. 1944) and Luci Baines (b. 1947)... After he became president, Johnson gave up alcohol and drank tea, Tab and Fresca... Like FDR and JFK before him, Johnson was sometimes called by his initials: LBJ... He was the 36th president.

(b. near Stonewall, Texas, 27 Aug. 1908; d. 22 Jan. 1973) US; US Senator 1949 – 61, Vice-President 1961 – 3, President 1963 – 9 Though Lyndon Johnson was born into an established Texas family — his paternal grandfather had given his name to Johnson City — his parents were not especially wealthy, having to make a living from largely unproductive farming land. They were hit by the Depression. After leaving high school, Johnson took a range of largely menial jobs, including working on a road gang. He decided he could do better and, encouraged by his mother, he entered the Southwest Texas State Teachers College and graduated in 1930. During his time at College he led the debating team and, to help finance his studies, he worked as secretary to the College principal. As secretary, he developed skills that he was to use throughout his political career. He recognized that organization was power and the principal came to rely on his highly effective secretary. He then went on to teach at the Sam Houston High School in Texas before campaigning for a Democratic candidate for Congress, Richard Kleberg. Kleberg then hired him as his secretary in Washington. Johnson deployed the same skills as he had when working for the College principal. He led a group of secretaries (known as the Little Congress) and came to the attention of House Speaker Sam Rayburn, who included him in his inner circle. For Johnson, Washington was his natural habitat. He had been born into a world of politics — his father and maternal grandfather had both served in the Texas legislature — and he was to spend the rest of his life in political activity. He was also to do so from a more secure financial base, having married Claudia Alta ("Lady Bird") Taylor, from a well-to-do family, in 1934.

In 1935, Johnson was appointed director of the National Youth Administration in Texas, a post that drew out his administrative talents and brought him to the attention of a wider political community. When a congressional vacancy occurred in 1937 Johnson went after it and, standing as an ardent New Deal Democrat, won election. He was 28 years old. An early meeting with Franklin Roosevelt secured the President's favour and in 1940 Johnson headed the House Democratic Campaign Committee. In 1941 he sought nomination for a Senate seat, again emphasizing his support for Roosevelt. He narrowly lost the nomination to the state Governor. After volunteering for active service during the war — he was awarded the Silver Star Medal for showing remarkable calm while aboard a bomber aircraft that had come under enemy attack — he returned to Washington to chair the Subcommittee on Naval Affairs. He was later appointed to the Postwar Military Policy Committee, opposing the rapid dismantling of the US war machine. In 1948, he again sought to run for a Senate seat, this time emerging successful in the Democratic primary — but only just. He won it in a run-off election by 87 votes and survived a court challenge to the result. He sailed to an easy victory in the general election.

In the Senate, Johnson established himself as a leading member and a consummate politician. He was appointed to the Armed Services Committee and supported a strong military for the USA. On domestic issues, conscious of his home constituency, he adopted a largely conservative stance. In 1953 he was elected Minority Leader. The following year he was re-elected easily to the Senate and, with the Democrats taking control of the chamber, he became majority leader. He was an accommodator rather than an ideologue. He brokered deals and used his persuasive skills to muster majorities for administration measures that he favoured. He helped Eisenhower achieve passage of some measures of social reform. One of the most notable achievements was the passage in 1957 of a Civil Rights Bill — the first in the twentieth century — representing an effective partnership between Johnson and the President.

Johnson suffered a serious heart attack in 1955 but made a full recovery within a matter of months. That was the only setback he faced during the decade. He was emerging as a major figure, vital to the passage of important measures. His reputation grew as he achieved mastery of the Senate and was increasingly viewed as one of the most effective majority leaders in its history. Though he had ambitions beyond the Senate, he was clearly at home on Capitol Hill. However, in 1960, he was offered the vice-presidential nomination by John Kennedy. Although Johnson was a good choice in terms of ensuring a balanced ticket — an established Texan Democrat who could help deliver the South — the choice was problematic. The Kennedys had a low opinion of Johnson and there was little obvious reason why Johnson should give up a position of real power for a largely ceremonial post in which he would have little scope to exercise his particular skills. Johnson accepted the nomination, apparently believing that he could mould the office and, as his biographer Doris Kearns has noted, recognizing that the position of majority leader would be less powerful under an activist Democratic President. In the event, Johnson helped deliver the election to Kennedy, the votes of Texas and Illinois proving crucial in giving Kennedy a narrow majority. Not for the first time in his career, Johnson was to be associated with allegations of Texas vote rigging.

As Vice-President, Johnson was appointed to head various commissions and councils, including the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and sent on various overseas missions. Although he proved loyal to the President — never voicing disagreement with his policies — he came to hate the position. "I detested every minute of it", he later told Kearns. A proud man, he detested the patronizing attitude taken toward him by the Harvard-educated Eastern sophisticates in the Kennedy circle and was frustrated by his inability to transform the position into one of power. He appeared disillusioned and increasingly disinterested.

The assassination of Kennedy on 22 November 1963 propelled Johnson from the political periphery to the ultimate position of power. He was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One and five days later addressed a joint session of Congress. He immediately adopted an activist stance. He pushed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill that Kennedy had introduced. He used his State of the Union message to press for passage. He reverted to the skills he had honed in the Senate to get that and a whole raft of other measures passed. He met members of Congress, phoned them, and cajoled them; if they needed to feel important, he made them feel important; if they wanted favours, he offered them favours. He masterminded the passage of an anti-poverty programme, he achieved passage of a tax cut, he persuaded Congress to vote funds for mass transit facilities. By the time of the 1964 presidential election he already had a record to run on. Aided by his achievements, by the Kennedy legacy, and by the Republicans nominating Senator Barry Goldwater, a candidate portrayed by opponents as an extremist and warmonger, Johnson sailed to an overwhelming victory. He won 43 million votes to 27 million for Goldwater, the largest winning margin achieved in US history. Equally importantly, he had a coat-tails effect, ushering in a Congress dominated by liberal Democrats.

The period from 1965 to 1967 saw Johnson at his peak. He achieved passage of a programme of social reform, dubbed the Great Society programme. Medicare was introduced, providing medical assistance to the elderly through the Social Security system. Extensive new programmes of federal aid to education, housing, and deprived areas were approved. The Voting Rights Act, providing for federal intervention to ensure black voting rights were enforced, was enacted in 1965. However, what looked like being one of the most successful and reforming presidencies of the twentieth century was soon in trouble. There are three reasons for the presidency turning from success to failure. One was Johnson's techniques. He put pressure on members of Congress to pass his measures. The pressure could be intimidating and unrelenting. Johnson was not averse to using physical intimidation if he felt it necessary. After a time, the president's techniques lost their appeal and members of Congress were less amenable to presidential persuasion. The second reason was that the measures were hastily constructed. Johnson was more concerned with passage than implementation, and some did not work out as intended. The measures also appeared to contribute to growing expectations on the part of the black community that the administration could not meet. The summer of 1965 saw riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles and subsequent summers saw violent disturbances in many of the nation's leading cities, including Washington, DC. The third and most important reason was the Vietnam War.

Johnson inherited his predecessor's commitment to South Vietnam and gradually increased the number of US troops sent to the country to assist the South Vietnamese government against North Vietnam and Vietcong insurgents. By 1967 nearly half-a-million troops had been sent. Johnson authorized bombing raids on targets in North Vietnam. There was little military success. By the summer of 1967 almost 80,000 Americans had been killed or wounded in Vietnam. Though initially supportive of US involvement, the American public turned against the war. Johnson faced a rising tide of hostility. Black riots in the inner cities were superseded by white anti-war riots on college campuses. Johnson's public appearances were increasingly concentrated on US military bases. Congress grew restive, some leading figures coming out in opposition to Johnson's policy. Their number included Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. It was proving impossible to fund the Great Society programme and the war effort and funding for many domestic programmes was scaled down.

In November 1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war ticket. In January 1968, the Tet offensive in Vietnam — a major assault by the Vietcong — appeared to confirm that the war was unwinnable. In the New Hampshire primary in March, McCarthy — with 42 per cent of the vote — came a close second to Johnson and was able to claim a moral victory. Robert Kennedy announced that he would also seek the Democratic nomination. On 31 March, a haggard-looking Johnson made a television broadcast. He announced a bombing pause in Vietnam and then declared that he would not seek, or accept, his party's nomination that year. His announcement caught the political community unawares. Rather than stand, he chose instead to engineer the nomination of his Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles and the Democratic nomination in Chicago was a shambles, the police dealing violently with anti-war protesters in the streets. In the election, Humphrey went down to defeat. Johnson retired to the LBJ ranch in Texas to work on his memoirs. He died four years later, on 22 January 1973, after being struck down by another heart attack. He was aged 64.

Johnson was a man who became President but never managed to become presidential. He retained a manner that was vulgar and abrasive. He swore, pushed people around, and held meetings with journalists and others regardless of circumstance. He continued conversations with visitors while in the toilet; he once spoke to journalists while being given an enema. His political techniques were carried over from the Senate. Though his political instincts were liberal, he was an authoritarian in approach. He expected complete loyalty from aides. He was possessive. He spoke of government in the first person. A proud man, insecure as a child and keen to please his mother, he could not tolerate failure. He worked hard but never seemed to achieve personal satisfaction from his efforts — he was always wanting to press on to achieve something more. When the political climate turned against him, he did not know how to respond. He aged in office. Though only 59 when he made his televised withdrawal from the presidential race, he looked closer to 69.

Johnson nonetheless achieved some success in the domestic arena. A former segregationist, he achieved far more than his predecessor in the field of civil rights and showed courage in his pursuit of equality. Though associated primarily with the Vietnam War, historians have not been that unkind to him. In the 1982 Murray poll he was ranked as the tenth best President. By the time of the 1995 Chicago Sun-Times poll of presidential historians he had slipped, but was still in the top half, ranking 15th, three places ahead of his immediate predecessor. He was an average President but a first-rate majority leader. His problem was that he could not differentiate between the two.

Johnson was born on 27 August 1908 in the Hill Country of central Texas. His father was a Democratic politician from whom Lyndon inherited his lifelong passion for politics. He was educated in nearby schools and Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. He then taught in Cotulla and Houston.

In the thirties, Johnson went to Washington and became an ardent admirer of FDR and his New Deal. In 1938, he captured his first elective office for the Tenth Congressional District, including the Hill Country and Austin, and was reelected several times. In 1948, he “won” an extremely close and tainted election to the Senate. He became minority leader of the Senate (1953), where he was a master congressional politician and emerged as a candidate for president.

The 1960 election was Johnson's big chance. But he believed it hopeless because he came from the South and the convention would be dominated by northern Democrats. He entered no primaries and made virtually no campaign, thereby ceding the nomination to John F. Kennedy on the first ballot. But Kennedy, concerned that his Catholicism would bring defeat in the South, offered Johnson the second place, and he accepted. Johnson's powerful campaign in the South made victory possible by a thin margin. Thus, for almost three years he served in the meaningless job of vice president, loyal, to be sure, but bored and frustrated. On 22 November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet catapulted him into the presidency.

Johnson, with his exceptional intelligence, his feel for the legislative process, and his experience on Capitol Hill, was superbly qualified in domestic policy; he was less experienced in international affairs. Among the most aggressive cold warriors, Johnson determined to halt Soviet and Chinese expansion. His key advisers, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, both holdovers from the Kennedy administration, shared these views.

The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations were baffled by the problem of Communist‐Nationalist influence in Vietnam. Kennedy had increased the number of U.S. advisers and introduced “Green Beret” counterinsurgency combat advisers. He had supported Ngo No Dingh Diem in South Vietnam. But Diem and his family were brutal and corrupt; the Viet Cong controlled much of the country; there was bitter Catholic‐Buddhist conflict; the Soviets and the Chinese supplied Ho Chi Minh in the North. The assassination of Diem and his brother with U.S. assent was followed by a revolving door of “governments” that quickly collapsed. There seemed no way to save South Vietnam from the Communists. A military venture appeared reckless, but the United States refused to accept Communist control of the South. The result was a limited commitment: financial support; U.S. military supplies and covert operations; and training the Vietnamese forces. This was the situation Johnson inherited.

As an accidental president obligated to complete Kennedy's legacy, he was not ready for war in 1964. He needed to legitimize his own presidency, which he achieved in November with his landslide electoral victory against Barry Goldwater.

Johnson's primary advisers concluded that South Vietnam was the linchpin of the Cold War. If it fell, the Communists would take over Southeast Asia, perhaps followed by South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Iran. This was Eisenhower's “domino theory” writ large. South Vietnam was so weak that the United States had no bargaining power with the North. To achieve peace, therefore, the United States must smash North Vietnam by bombing. The advisers did not mention a land war, but that was the only alternative if bombing failed.

This made no sense. The Communist world was divided and South Vietnam was in reality no linchpin at all. Air bombardment was little threat to an agricultural nation supplied by the Soviets. If the United States moved to a land war, Ho Chi Minh held the winning cards because it would mean guerrilla warfare. Dissenters, Undersecretary of State George Ball, Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, as well as French president Charles de Gaulle, all made these arguments, but Johnson would not heed them.

Early in 1965, Johnson started air attacks with Operation Flaming Dart, which soon widened into Rolling Thunder. In March, the Marines splashed ashore to establish a base at Danang. On 6 April, Johnson signed National Security Action Memorandum No. 328, which authorized the use of American combat troops.

Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, made enormous demands for troops; the president gave him part of what he asked. By mid‐1966, Westmoreland had 600,000 American troops with immense firepower, a huge air force, and a giant infrastructure. Johnson controlled their use, particularly the air war. The bombing had little military effect. Westmoreland waited for major battles where his firepower would prevail, but they seldom took place. Meantime the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong imposed a heavy toll in U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties.

Support for the war at home, strong at the outset, eroded steadily. Mounting casualties, lack of victory, and increasingly skeptical television coverage fed opposition. Opponents of the war staged massive demonstrations, and the Johnson administration started to crack internally.

The Tet Offensive, launched by the Viet Cong at the end of January 1968, caught Westmoreland by surprise. There were attacks on cities and towns throughout the country with many initial successes. Though American forces recaptured these places, it was at heavy cost to both sides.

Tet convinced the American people that the war could go on for years and might never be won. The Johnson administration was shredded, the peace and antiwar movements grew dramatically, conservatives in Congress ran roughshod over the Great Society, and the Democratic Party split. Johnson withdrew from the presidential race in 1968; Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated; and there were riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Richard M. Nixon prevailed over Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, in the 1968 election, with a promise to end the war with honor.

In 1969, Lyndon Johnson returned to his ranch to spend his few remaining years with his memories. He had been a bold president on domestic issues and a misguided one on the Vietnam War.

[See also Bombing, Ethics of; Bombing of Civilians; Vietnam Antiwar Movement; Vietnam War: Causes; Vietnam War: Military and Diplomatic Course; Vietnam War: Domestic Course.]

Bibliography

• Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point, 1971.
• The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel, ed., 4 vols., 1971.
• Stanley Karnow, Vietnam, A History, 1983.
• Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President, 1991.
• Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect, 1995.
• Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 1996

Johnson, Lyndon Baines (1908-73) 36th president of the United States (1963-69), born near Stonewall, Texas. Johnson's long political career began in 1932, when, after a brief stint as a secondary school teacher, he joined the Washington staff of a Texas congressman. In 1938 he was elected to the House of Representatives, where the political skills honed earlier were quickly recognized. He remained in the House until 1949, except for a brief tour of active duty in the navy during World War II. During his single combat experience (1942), the mission came under heavy fire and he was awarded a Silver Star. In 1948 Johnson was elected to the Senate, becoming minority leader in 1953 and majority leader in 1955. His greatest achievement was getting the support of Southern Democrats for passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. After Sputnik brought concerns about national security and military readiness to the fore, Johnson chaired a special Senate Preparedness Subcommittee whose hearings gave him further national exposure. Chosen John F. Kennedy's running mate in 1960, Johnson found himself excluded from policy deliberations and decision-making during his years as vice president (1961-63). Assuming office after Kennedy's assassination (1963), Johnson returned to his role as master mover and doer. Declaring a war on poverty and outlining his vision of a Great Society, he backed an unprecedented series of bills extending the federal government's assistance to the poor. He won the 1964 election with more than 61 percent of the popular vote. He created the Office of Economic Opportunity to coordinate the many federal assistance programs, which varied in their success. Among the most successful were the Headstart programs for preschool children and the Medicare and Medicaid programs for the elderly. Johnson oversaw passage of civil rights legislation that had been stalled in the Congress during the Kennedy administration, but the Vietnam War was his downfall. The bombing campaign and massive buildup of troops in 1965 that followed the Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964) marked a major escalation of the conflict and a change in the nature of the war. The Tet Offensive early in 1968, an election year, further aggravated the protracted conflict. Two months later Johnson announced, in the same address, cessation of the bombing and his decision not to seek another term. Despite his achievements on the domestic front, he left office in disrepute, defeated by what had come to be called “Mr. Johnson's War.”

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

As the thirty-sixth president of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) created new programs in health, education, human rights, and conservation and attacked the crushing 20th-century problems of urban blight and poverty with what he called the "War on Poverty."

Most commentators account Lyndon Johnson as one of America's most experienced and politically skilled presidents. He sponsored a flood of new legislation designed to better the quality of life among the disadvantaged and the dispossessed of the nation. In foreign policy he set about to strengthen regional arrangements of power so that new and small nations might develop their own form of political society without fear of intrusion from their more powerful neighbors. He inherited an American commitment in South Vietnam, and his determination to preserve the independence of that beleaguered country led to virulent attacks and, finally, his momentous decision not to seek reelection.

Lyndon Johnson was born on Aug. 27, 1908, near Johnson City, Texas, the small community founded by his forebears. Life was hard and plain in the Texas hill country at this time. Johnson's father struggled to raise his two sons and three daughters. His mother was a gentle woman, who encouraged her children to love books and gave them a sense of duty and responsibility. Johnson graduated from Southwest State Teachers College in San Marcos, Tex., with a bachelor of science degree, having combined his studies with a job teaching Mexican-American children.

Johnson's early teaching assignments were at Pearsall, Tex., and in the Houston high schools. In 1931, politics beckoned. He went to Washington, D.C., as secretary to Texas congressman Richard Kleberg. Almost immediately Johnson's talent for attracting affection and respect became visible. He was elected Speaker of the "Little Congress," an assembly of congressional secretaries on Capitol Hill.

On Nov. 17, 1934, an event occurred which Johnson always described as the most notable triumph of his life: he married Claudia (Lady Bird) Taylor of Karnak, Texas. She became his partner, confidant, and counselor, and from her, Johnson drew strength and love and reserves of support that never faltered.

Johnson's ultimate destiny was beginning to take shape. At age 27, he was already exhibiting his characteristic traits of energy, intellect, and tenacity when he resigned as a congressional secretary in 1935 to become the Texas director of the National Youth Administration. The origins of the later Johnson can be located in his conduct of this office; he surrounded himself with bright, young men and invested his duties with a 24-hour torrent of activity.

Rising through Congress

In 1937, the congressman from Texas's Tenth District died suddenly. When a special election was called to select a successor, Johnson hesitated only slightly. His wife provided campaign funds from her inheritance, and Johnson leaped into a race crowded with eight opponents. The only candidate to support President Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing plan, he did so with such vigor that the eyes of the nation were drawn to the outcome, and none watched it with more intensity than Roosevelt himself. To the amazement of political veterans, the 28-year-old Johnson won the race.

President Roosevelt, in Texas on a fishing trip, was so elated that he invited Johnson to accompany him back to Washington, D.C. Thus, Johnson became his personal protégé. With the aid of the powerful House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas and the continuing support of the President, Johnson was brought into the councils of ruling establishmentarians of the House of Representatives.

In 1941, Johnson entered another special election, this time for a Senate seat made vacant by a death. Texans were surprised by the campaign he launched by helicopter. Nearly every community watched the tall, smiling Johnson alight from his helicopter. In a bitter campaign Johnson lost by 1,311 votes to that bizarre political phenomenon Governor W. Lee ("Pass the Biscuits Pappy") O'Daniel.

There was little time for Johnson to lick his wounds. That December he became the first member of Congress to enter active military duty. He joined the Navy and in 1942 received the Silver Star for gallantry in a bombing mission over New Guinea. When President Roosevelt ordered all congressmen back to the capital in 1942, Johnson reentered the House.

In 1948, Johnson's restless quest for higher office was finally successful. In a savagely fought senatorial campaign, he defeated a former governor of Texas by a celebrated margin of 87 votes. The elders of the Senate soon recognized that Johnson was no ordinary rookie senator. He did his homework, was knowledgable on every item that confronted the Senate, and was in instant command of all the nuances and subtleties of every important piece of legislation.

In January 1951, just 3 years into his first term, Johnson was elevated to Democratic "whip" (assistant minority leader). Regarding his age and tenure, no similar selection had ever been made in the history of the Senate. In 1953, when the post of minority leader in the Senate opened up Democratic senators without hesitation chose Johnson to take charge. With the congressional elections of 1954, the Democrats took command of both houses. And with this new alignment, Johnson again set a record as the youngest man ever to become majority leader.

The Johnson legend of leadership now became visible to the nation. Not since the early days of the republic had one man assumed such clear direction over the course and affairs of the Senate. Operating his office around the clock, intimately aware of all that transpired, and firmly fixed in his intent and design, Johnson was the "complete Senate leader." Now one voice spoke for the Democrats, as Johnson became the "second most powerful man in Washington, D.C."

The habits of work and discipline that would later confound the nation when Johnson became president were now on display in the Senate chamber. He handled the Senate with confidence and skill. The Republican opposition found it impossible to outflank this majority leader; legislation opposed by Johnson rarely found acceptance by the Senate. He encouraged new, young senators and found coveted spots for them on important committees.

Johnson led the first civil rights bill in 82 years through the Senate. He guided to final victory the first space legislation in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. In 1958, designated by President Dwight Eisenhower to represent the United States at the United Nations, he presented the resolution calling for the peaceful exploration of outer space. He exposed wastes in defense procurement during the Korean War and conducted defense hearings that were a model of accuracy and dispassionate scrutiny.

In 1960, Johnson briefly opposed John F. Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination; then Kennedy electrified the country by choosing Johnson as his vice-presidential running mate. While some Kennedy supporters grumbled, experts later agreed that Johnson's relentless campaigning in Texas and throughout the South had provided Kennedy with his winning margin.

Serving as Vice President

As vice-president, Johnson had important assignments. One of his principal tasks was the burgeoning space program, which was overshadowed by Russian triumphs with Sputnik and subsequent innovations that put the United States in an inferior role. Regarding civil rights, as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity forces, Johnson surprised many critics by putting uncompromising pressure on American industry. At the President's request, he made fact-finding trips to Berlin and to the Far East.

On Nov. 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Aboard the plane Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Johnson took the presidential oath of office on November 23. Giving orders to take off seconds later, the new president flew back to Washington to take command of the government, while the nation grieved for its fallen leader.

Filling the Presidency

Five days after taking office, President Johnson appeared before a joint session of the Congress. Speaking with firmness and controlled passion, he pledged "we shall continue." Important legislation submitted by President Kennedy to the Congress, currently bottled up and seemingly stymied in various committees of both houses, was met by Johnson's deliberate and concentrated action. The new president - meeting round the clock with staff, Cabinet, and congressmen - unbuckled key legislation, so that within a few short months the tax cut and the civil rights bills were passed by Congress and signed by the President.

Six months after assuming the presidency, Johnson announced his concept of the "Great Society." The areas he considered vital were health and education; the whole complex of the urban society, with its accompanying ills of ghettos, pollution, housing, and transportation; civil rights; and conservation.

Johnson took his innovative domestic programs to the nation in the election of 1964. Meanwhile, the American involvement in Vietnam, sanctioned by three presidents, became an issue. Senator Barry Goldwater chastised Johnson for his liberal approach to domestic problems and suggested a massive step-up in the bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson traversed the nation and convinced it that his leadership was of such caliber that the voters could not afford to drive him from office. He won by a margin of almost 16 million votes, more than 61 percent of the total vote, the widest margin in totals and percentage of any presidential election in American history.

Administration Achievements

Barely pausing, the President, reinforced by this clear mandate, began a legislative program which was rivaled in scope and form only by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal a generation earlier. Between 1965 and 1968 more than 207 landmark bills were passed by the Congress.

In education, Johnson's administration tripled expenditures. By the end of 1968, 1.5 million students were receiving Federal aid to help them gain their college degrees; over 10 million people learned new skills through vocational education; and 19,000 school districts received special help under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. More than 600,000 disabled citizens were trained through vocational rehabilitation programs. Head Start and other pre-school programs brought specific assistance to more than 2 million children.

In the area of health, Johnson's administration increased Federal expenditures from $4 billion to $14 billion in 4 years. More than 20 million Americans were covered by Medicare, and more than 7 million received its benefits. About 31 million children were vaccinated against four severe diseases, reducing by 50 percent the number of children who suffered from these diseases, and more than 3 million children received health care under Medicaid in one year. Some 286 community mental health centers were built. More than 390,000 mothers and 680,000 infants received care through the Maternal and Child Health programs. Some 460,000 handicapped children were treated under the Crippled Children's Program.

Fighting poverty, the Johnson administration lifted more than 6,000,000 Americans out of the poverty depths. Over 100,000 young men and women completed Job Corps training; 2.2 million needy Americans were helped under the Food Stamp Program; school children benefited from the School Milk and School Lunch programs.

In the area of human and civil rights, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, and within 3 years nearly 1 million Negroes registered to vote in the South. More than 98 percent of all the nation's hospitals agreed to provide services without discrimination. More than 28 percent of all Negro families by 1968 earned about $7,000 a year, doubling the 1960 figure. Some 35 percent more Negroes found professional, technical, and managerial jobs between 1964 and 1968.

In housing, in 4 years the Johnson administration generated the construction of 5.5 million new homes. Direct Federal expenditures for housing and community development increased from $635 million to nearly $3 billion. Two million families received Federal Housing Administration improvement loans. Federal assistance provided housing for 215,000 families earning less than $7,000 a year. Nearly $427 million was spent for water and sewage facilities in small towns. More than 3.5 million rural citizens benefited from economic opportunity loans, farm operation and emergency loans, and watershed and rural housing loans.

Most importantly, the Johnson administration presided over the longest upward curve of prosperity in the history of the nation. More than 85 months of unrivaled economic growth marked this as the strongest era of national prosperity. The average weekly wage of factory workers rose 18 percent in 4 years. Over 9 million additional workers were brought under minimum-wage protection. Total employment, increased by 7.5 million workers, added up to 75 million; the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest point in more than a decade.

In foreign affairs, where risk and confrontation stretched a perilous tightrope throughout the Johnson years, the President made significant achievements. In the Western Hemisphere, at Punta del Este, Uruguay, the Latin American nations agreed to a common market for the continent. Normal relations with Panama were restored and a new canal treaty negotiated. In Cyprus, at the brink of war, the President's special emissaries knitted a settlement that staved off conflict. A rebellion in the Congo, which would have had ugly repercussions throughout the continent, was put down with American aid in the form of transport planes. In the Dominican Republic, an incipient Communist threat was challenged by an overwhelming show of American force, with Latin American allies. Amid tangled criticism from sections of the press and some Latin American nations, the President persevered in the Dominican Republic, where democratic government and free elections were restored and U.S. troops promptly withdrawn.

An outer-space treaty was negotiated with the Soviet Union and a nuclear nonproliferation treaty was formulated and agreed to in Geneva. In June 1967 the President met with Premier Alexei Kosygin of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was successfully realigned after France withdrew, and the vast Western European alliance was restructured and strengthened.

It was the troubled Southeast Asian problem in South Vietnam to which Johnson devoted long, tormented hours. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had declared that the security of the United States was involved in deterring aggression in South Vietnam from an intruding Communist government from the North. However, there was much disagreement in the United States over this venture; some critics claimed the Vietnam war was a civil one, an insurrection, and not an invasion. When Johnson first became chief executive, 16,000 American troops were in Vietnam as advisers and combat instructors. In 1965 the United States decided to increase its military support of South Vietnam and authorized commitment of more American troops. By 1968 there was considerable disaffection over the Asian policy, and many critics in and out of the Congress determined to force the Johnson administration to shrink its commitment and withdraw U.S. troops.

Beginning in April 1965 with the President's speech at Johns Hopkins University, in which he set forth the American policy of reconstruction of the area and the promulgation of the Asian Development Bank as an instrument of peace building, the Johnson administration attempted to negotiate with a seemingly intransigent North Vietnam, whose troops were infiltrating into the South in increasing numbers. A 37-day bombing pause in December 1965 raised hopes for negotiation, but lack of response from the North Vietnamese blotted this out, and the bombing resumed.

Assaulted by fierce and growing criticism, yet determined to fix some course of action which would diminish the war and commence serious peace talks, the President startled the nation and the world on March 31, 1968, by renouncing his claim to renomination for the presidency. Johnson said that he believed that the necessity for finding a structure of peaceful negotiation was so important that even his own political fortunes must not be allowed to stand in its way. Therefore, he stated, he would not seek renomination, so he could spend the rest of his days in the presidency searching for negotiation without any political taint marring a possible response from the enemy.

On May 11, 1968, it was announced that peace talks would indeed begin in Paris, and in November 1968 the President declared that all bombing of North Vietnam would cease.

Johnson retired to his ranch near San Antonio, Texas, where he took a keen interest in the care and sale of his cattle, while nursing a serious heart ailment.

The tragic Vietnam War was in its last days in January, 1973 when a period of mourning was declared to mark the death of President Harry S Truman. Shortly after it began, it also marked the death of Lyndon B. Johnson.

On the afternoon of January 22, 1973, Johnson suffered a heart attack while lying down to take a nap. He was flown to a hospital by his Secret Service agents, but was pronounced dead on arrival at 4:33 pm. His body lay in state first at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, then, as is usual for American presidents, in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. until his burial on his beloved ranch.

Johnson's Influence

While historians search the record and evaluate its significance, there seems little doubt that Lyndon Johnson's impress on the form and quality of life in the United States will be seen to be large. In the fields of health, education, civil rights, conservation, and the problem of the elderly, his legislative achievements have left their clear mark. His insistence that the pledges of the four preceding presidents be upheld in Southeast Asia is a subject for debate. But it must be argued that his peace-keeping efforts in the Middle East, in the Near East, in Africa, and in Latin America were forceful, remedial, and worthy of praise; the results have proved his policies' merits.

Johnson belongs in the tradition of the "strong president" he dominated the government with his energy and personality and invested his office with intimate knowledge of all government business. He was the target of intense and sometimes virulent criticism, just as all strong American presidents have found themselves ceaselessly and bitterly attacked.

Further Reading

Johnson's The Vantage Point (1971) presents his own perspectives on his White House years. There is not yet an authoritative or comprehensive biography of Johnson. Boothe Mooney, The Lyndon Johnson Story (1956; rev. ed. 1964); and Clarke Newlon, LBJ: The Man from Johnson City (1964; rev. ed. 1966), are journalistic; Sam Houston Johnson, My Brother Lyndon, edited by Enrique Hank Lopez, is a superficial and undocumented account by the President's brother.

Aspects of Johnson's life and presidency are treated in William S.White, Citadel: The Story of the U.S. Senate (1957); and The Professional: Lyndon B Johnson (1964); Michael Amrine, This Awesome Challenge: A Hundred Days of Lyndon Johnson (1964); Rebekah Baines Johnson, A Family Album, edited by John S. Moursund (1965); Charles Roberts, LBJ's Inner Circle (1965); Theodore H. White, The Making of the President (1965); Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson, The Exercise of Power: A Political Biography (1966); Philip Geyelin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (1966); Jim Bishop, A Day in the Life of President Johnson (1967); James Deakin, Lyndon Johnson's Credibility Gap (1968); Hugh Sidney, A Very Personal Presidency: Lyndon Johnson in the White House (1968); Tom Wicker, JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality upon Politics (1968); and Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (1969); Lady Bird Johnson, White House Diary (1970), is a record of the Johnson presidency as experienced by his wife; for the mid-century political background see James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (1968).

(click to enlarge)
Lyndon B. Johnson (credit: Courtesy of the National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

(born Aug. 27, 1908, Gillespie county, Texas, U.S. — died Jan. 22, 1973, San Antonio, Texas) 36th president of the U.S. (1963 – 69). He taught school in Houston, Texas, before going to Washington, D.C., in 1932 as a congressional aide. In Washington he was befriended by Sam Rayburn, speaker of the House of Representatives, and his political career blossomed. He won a seat in the U.S. House (1937 – 49) as a supporter of the New Deal, which was under conservative attack. His loyalty impressed Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who made Johnson his protégé. He won election to the U.S. Senate in 1949 in a vicious campaign that involved fraud on both sides. As Democratic whip (1951 – 55) and majority leader (1955 – 61), he developed a talent for consensus building through methods both tactful and ruthless. He was largely responsible for passage of the civil rights bills of 1957 and 1960, the first in the 20th century. In 1960 he was elected vice president under John F. Kennedy; he became president after Kennedy's assassination in 1963. In his first few months in office he won passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most comprehensive and far-reaching legislation of its kind in American history. Later that year he announced his Great Society program of social-welfare and civil rights legislation. His attention to domestic matters, however, was diverted by the country's escalating involvement in the Vietnam War (see Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), which provoked large student demonstrations and other protests, beginning in the late 1960s. Meanwhile, discontent and alienation among the young and racial minorities increased as the promises of the Great Society failed to materialize. By 1967 Johnson's popularity had declined steeply, and in early 1968 he announced that he would not seek reelection. He retired to his Texas ranch.

For more information on Lyndon Baines Johnson, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Aug. 27, 1908, near Stonewall, Tex.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: Southwest Texas State Teachers College, B.S., 1930; Georgetown Law School, 1934
• Military service: U.S. Navy, 1942
• Previous government service: aide to U.S. Representative Richard Kleberg, 1932–34; Texas director, National Youth Administration, 1935–37; U.S. House of Representatives, 1937–49; U.S. Senate, 1949–61; Senate majority whip: 1951–53; Senate minority leader, 1953–55; Senate majority leader, 1955–61; Vice President, 1961–63
• Succeeded to Presidency, 1963; served, 1963–69
• Died: Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson City, Tex.

Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed the Presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He won passage of his Great Society domestic programs and was elected President in one of the greatest landslides in American history. He escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, eventually sending more than 500,000 troops to fight. Mounting casualties in an unwinnable war led to his withdrawal from the race for a second elected term in 1968.

Johnson grew up in Johnson City, Texas, which was named for his grandfather. After high school he went to California for a year, then returned home and worked on a road gang. After graduating from Southwest Texas State Teachers College he taught at a high school in Houston and in 1932 worked for Richard Kleberg, a member of the House of Representatives. In 1935 he became Texas director of the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency, and began building a campaign organization for his political career. Meanwhile, Johnson's wife bought an Austin radio station and gradually accumulated a large fortune that made the family financially secure.

Johnson was elected to Congress in a special election in 1937 as a New Deal Democrat, and remained in the House until 1949. In 1941 he was defeated in a special election for the U.S. Senate. He was the first member of Congress to go into active duty during World War II, winning a Silver Star for gallantry in action when his plane was fired upon in the South Pacific. In July 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered all legislators in active service to report back to Congress, and Johnson returned to the House.

In 1948, after winning a runoff Democratic senatorial primary against Texas governor Coke Stevenson by only 87 votes out of a million cast, Johnson won the general election against his Republican opponent by a 2-to-1 margin. Because of the likelihood that some of his votes in the primary were obtained fraudulently, he became known to his enemies as “landslide Lyndon.”

Johnson quickly moved up the ladder in the Senate. He became the Democratic party whip in 1951, chaired the Preparedness Committee, which investigated government contracts during the Korean War, was elected minority leader in 1953, and ran the Senate as majority leader after the 1954 election returned it to Democratic control. He instituted the Johnson Rule, giving every Democratic senator, no matter how junior, at least one good committee assignment.

As Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson insisted that he had no power except the “power to persuade.” But Johnson could be masterful in persuasion. With his aide Bobby Baker, Johnson made careful “head counts” to anticipate when he had a majority vote. He did frequent personal favors for senators and gave important committee assignments to those who voted with him. When Johnson sought to persuade another senator, wrote newspaper columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, he would move in close, “his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics.” Mixing logic, humor, and bullying tactics, Johnson would leave his target “stunned and helpless.”

As majority leader, Johnson established a remarkable record of legislation, including passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1960. In doing so, Johnson became identified as a Westerner rather than a Southerner in order to advance his Presidential ambitions—no Southern officeholder had been elected President for more than a century.

In 1960 Johnson ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination but lost to Senator John F. Kennedy on the first ballot by a 2-to-1 margin. When Kennedy offered Johnson the Vice Presidency, he accepted, to the astonishment of many of Kennedy's aides. Johnson helped Kennedy win several Southern and Western states that were decisive in the Democratic victory. As Vice President, Johnson headed the space council, which decided to put the headquarters for manned space flight in Houston, Texas. He also chaired the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and the Peace Corps Advisory Council.

On November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Johnson had been in the President's motorcade, and he took the oath of office on Air Force One, which flew the new President, along with Jacqueline Kennedy and her slain husband, back to Washington. “All that I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today,” Johnson told the grief-stricken nation when he addressed a joint session of Congress. “Let us continue,” he told the nation, announcing that he would keep Kennedy's cabinet and top aides.

Johnson continued with Kennedy's domestic programs, expanding them and labeling them the Great Society. He won passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended racial discrimination in public accommodations, and passage of a set of programs to reduce poverty, which led to the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1964.

In the summer of 1964, Johnson was nominated by the Democrats by acclamation. He crushed his Republican opponent, conservative Barry Goldwater, winning more than 61 percent of the popular vote. Johnson swept a large number of liberal Democrats into Congress and used his party majority to win passage of his Great Society programs. In the next two years Congress passed a federal aid to education act, health care reimbursement programs for the aged and the poor, new urban programs (including the Department of Urban Affairs), a tax cut that sparked economic growth, and a foreign trade bill that spurred U.S. exports. In 1967 Congress approved a new Department of Transportation.

Perhaps the most significant law Johnson won from Congress was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a measure to protect the voting rights of blacks in the South; it tripled the number of black registered voters within three years, and within a decade changed the Democratic party from a party of white conservative segregationists into a biracial coalition of moderates.

In foreign affairs Johnson concentrated on U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In August 1964, after reports of attacks on U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, he asked Congress for a resolution authorizing him to take all necessary measures to protect the armed forces. Soon thereafter Johnson escalated U.S. involvement, first by ordering the bombing of North Vietnam in the winter of 1965, then by ordering U.S. troops into combat in the spring. U.S. troops in Vietnam increased to 100,000 by the fall, and more than half a million by the end of 1966.

Democrats suffered large losses in the midterm elections of 1966 because of antiwar sentiment, though they retained majorities in both the House and Senate. Antiwar sentiment in the United States led to demonstrations against the war on college campuses and in Washington. With no end to the war in sight and American casualties growing rapidly, Johnson's popularity slid. By late 1966 his ability to get Congress to pass his programs had diminished.

Johnson made progress in arms control talks with the Soviet Union, though in January 1967 he signed the Outer Space Treaty with Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin, which banned placement of nuclear weapons in earth orbit, on the moon or other planets, or in deep space. In 1968 the United States became a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons to other nations and prohibited assistance to nonnuclear nations in the making or acquisition of nuclear arms.

In January 1968 the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in Saigon and other cities. Americans watched television images of the American embassy under siege, and public opposition to the war increased. In March Johnson barely defeated an antiwar Democratic challenger, Eugene McCarthy, in the New Hampshire primary. Knowing that with the Democrats so divided his renomination would be worthless, Johnson withdrew from the race on March 31. He also announced a reduction in the bombings of North Vietnam in an attempt to seek peace. But the war continued with no letup on the ground, and American casualties passed the 40,000 mark. Johnson helped his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, secure the Democratic nomination, but his war policies hurt Humphrey, who lost the election to Richard Nixon.

In giving up his office after one elected term, Johnson followed the pattern set by other Vice Presidents who took office after the death of an incumbent. Although Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman were subsequently elected in their own right, none of them ran immediately for a second elected term. In January 1969, an exhausted and emotionally spent Johnson retired to his ranch near Johnson City, Texas. He worked on his memoirs and helped organize his Presidential library at the University of Texas in Austin. He died of a heart attack on his beloved ranch, just one day before the Paris Peace Accord, which ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, was concluded.

See also Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964); Humphrey, Hubert H.; Kennedy, John F.; Nixon, Richard M.

Sources

• Joseph Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
• Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1960–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
• Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966).
• Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
• Lyndon Johnson, Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971).
• Howard E. Shuman, “Lyndon B. Johnson: The Senate's Powerful Persuader”, in First among Equals: Outstanding Senate Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by Richard A. Baker and Roger Davidson (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1991)

(1908-1973), thirty-sixth president of the United States. Johnson was an extraordinarily energetic and ambitious politician. A native of the hill country of Texas, he appeared to his enemies as a stereotypical Texan: large, crude, egotistical, manipulative, and overbearing. Although a remarkably resourceful congressional leader, he could not shake the popular view that he was a wheeling-dealing political operator. When as president he greatly expanded American involvement in the Vietnam War, he polarized the nation and badly damaged his standing with the American people.

Contrary to myth, Johnson grew up in fairly comfortable circumstances. He earned a degree from South West Texas State Teachers College in 1930, taught school in Houston, served as a congressional aide in Washington, and became Texas director of the National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency. Elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives in 1937, he served until 1949, and then moved to the Senate.

Johnson rose quickly in the upper chamber, becoming majority leader in 1955. In that capacity he developed a well-earned reputation for hard work, attention to detail, and great skill at reconciling varied interests. As John F. Kennedy's vice-presidential running mate in 1960, Johnson helped his ticket to victory. He became president when Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.

Thanks mainly to profitable investments in radio and television, Johnson was wealthy, but he identified with poor people, including African-Americans and Hispanics, and he greatly admired the liberal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he reached the White House, he resolved to broaden and expand the New Deal--to create what he called the Great Society. Using all his political talents to the full, he secured approval in 1964 of the War on Poverty program and the first significant civil rights legislation since the 1870s. After a landslide victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, he pressed successfully for a wide range of liberal programs, including Medicare (health insurance for the elderly), Medicaid (care for the welfare poor), federal aid to elementary and secondary education, a more liberal immigration law, creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, and a federal guarantee of voting rights. Thanks in good part to Johnson's extraordinarily able leadership, much of the agenda of modern American liberalism finally became law of the land.

Many of these programs, however, have evoked criticism. Medicare and Medicaid, although important to millions of people, proved to be much more expensive than proponents had anticipated. Partly because of cutbacks in funding, the War on Poverty fell far short of expectations. The civil rights laws, while promoting legal equality, did not address the socioeconomic problems of African-Americans. Aggressive neoconservatives counterattacked in the 1970s and 1980s, keeping American liberalism on the defensive.

Johnson's most troublesome problems as president stemmed from his escalation of the American military presence in Vietnam, which was in the throes of civil war. Intervening massively--with bombing raids and ultimately more than 500,000 American troops--Johnson grew increasingly stubborn and secretive. But his policies failed to turn the tide of battle. At home antiwar activists protested angrily, and bitter debates overwhelmed the hopeful, liberal mood of the early 1960s.

In 1968 Johnson began at last to listen to new advisers. He announced that he would not run again for president and that he was encouraging peace talks in Paris. But he refused to make significant concessions, and the war continued. When Johnson left office in January 1969 he was tired, despondent, and unpopular with the majority of the American people. He returned to his ranch in Texas, where he died four years later.

Bibliography:

Paul K. Conkin, Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (1986); Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (1984).

Author:

James T. Patterson

See also Elections: 1960 , 1964. For events during Johnson's administration, see Civil Rights Movement; Great Society; Medicaid; Medicare; Vietnam War.

Early Life

Born into a farm family, he graduated (1930) from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Southwest Texas State Univ.), in San Marcos. He taught in a Houston high school before becoming (1932) secretary to a Texas Congressman. In 1934 he married Claudia Alta Taylor (see Lady Bird Johnson), and they had two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. A staunch New Dealer, Johnson gained the friendship of the influential Sam Rayburn, at whose behest President Franklin D. Roosevelt made him (1935) director in Texas of the National Youth Administration.

In the House and the Senate

In 1937, Johnson won election to a vacant congressional seat, and he was consistently reelected through 1946. Despite Roosevelt's support, however, he was defeated in a special election to the Senate in 1941. He served (1941–42) in the navy.

In 1948, Johnson was elected U.S. Senator from Texas after winning the Democratic primary by a mere 87 votes. A strong advocate of military preparedness, he persuaded the Armed Services Committee to set up (1950) the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, of which he became chairman. Rising rapidly in the Senate hierarchy, Johnson became (1951) Democratic whip and then (1953) floor leader. As majority leader after the 1954 elections he wielded great power, exhibiting unusual skill in marshaling support for President Eisenhower's programs. He suffered a serious heart attack in 1955 but recovered to continue his senatorial command.

Presidency

Johnson lost the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy, but accepted Kennedy's offer of the vice-presidential position. Elected with Kennedy, he energetically supported the President's programs, serving as an American emissary to nations throughout the world and as chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council and of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities. After Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, Johnson was sworn in as president and announced that he would strive to carry through Kennedy's programs.

Congress responded to Johnson's skillful prodding by enacting an $11 billion tax cut (Jan., 1964) and a sweeping Civil Rights Act (July, 1964). In May, 1964, Johnson called for a nationwide war against poverty and outlined a vast program of economic and social welfare legislation designed to create what he termed the Great Society. Elected (Nov., 1964) for a full term in a landslide over Senator Barry Goldwater, he pushed hard for his domestic program. The 89th Congress (1965–66) produced more major legislative action than any since the New Deal. A bill providing free medical care (Medicare) to the aged under Social Security was enacted, as was Medicaid; federal aid to education at all levels was greatly expanded; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided new safeguards for African-American voters; more money went to antipoverty programs; and the departments of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development were added to the Cabinet.

Johnson's domestic achievements were soon obscured by foreign affairs, however. The Aug., 1964, incident leading Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf resolution gave Johnson the authority to take any action necessary to protect American troops in Vietnam. Convinced that South Vietnam was about to fall to Communist forces, Johnson began (Feb., 1965) the bombing of North Vietnam. Within three years he increased American forces in South Vietnam from 20,000 to over 500,000 (see Vietnam War). Johnson's actions eventually aroused widespread opposition in Congress and among the public, and a vigorous antiwar movement developed.

As the cost of the war shot up, Congress scuttled many of Johnson's domestic programs. Riots in the African-American ghettos of large U.S. cities (1967) also dimmed the president's luster. By 1968 he was under sharp attack from all sides. After Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy began campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, Johnson announced (Mar., 1968) that he would not run for reelection. At the same time he called a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam; two months later peace talks began in Paris. When Johnson retired from office (Jan., 1969), he left the nation bitterly divided by the war. He retired to Texas, where he died.

Bibliography

See his memoirs, The Vantage Point (1971); White House tape transcripts, selected and ed. by M. Beschloss (2 vol., 1997–2001) and complete ed. by M. Holland et al. (3 vol., 2005–); H. McPherson, Political Education: A Washington Memoir (1972, repr. 1995); biographies by E. F. Goldman (1969), L. Heren (1970), G. E. Reedy (1970), R. Harwood and H. Johnson (1973), D. K. Goodwin (1976), R. A. Caro (3 vol., 1982–2002), R. Dallek (2 vol., 1991–98), and R. B. Woods (2006).

1908 - 1973

U.S. president, 1963 - 1969.

Lyndon Baines Johnson succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Although a long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1937 - 1949) and U.S. Senate (1949 - 1961), and a most effective legislative leader, he had little experience in foreign affairs. With an escalating war in Vietnam, the Middle East had low priority for him.

He was unable to persuade Egypt to limit its armament program; to balance U.S.S.R. arms sales to Egypt, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, Johnson authorized increased military sales to Israel and to conservative Arab regimes, particularly to King Hussein ibn Talal of Jordan. When Egypt blocked the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping in May 1967, Johnson denounced the act as illegal. During the Arab - Israel War of June 1967, Johnson kept the United States neutral, although American sympathies were clearly with Israel. Through his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, Johnson gave crucial support to UN Resolution 242, passed in November 1967, which has been the keystone of Arab - Israeli diplomacy since then. In 1968, Johnson declined renomination for another term.

Bibliography

Safran, Nadav. Israel: The Embattled Ally. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981.

Spiegel, Steven. The Other Arab - Israeli Conflict: Making America'sMiddle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

— ZACHARY KARABELL

A Democratic party political leader of the twentieth century, who was president from 1963 to 1969. Johnson rose to power in the Senate. He was elected vice president in 1960, running with John F. Kennedy, and became president after Kennedy was assassinated. Known for his extraordinary political skill, Johnson guided many of Kennedy's New Frontier projects through Congress, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also started his own set of domestic programs, known as the Great Society, which included the War on Poverty. In 1965, Johnson began a sharp increase in American military involvement in the Vietnam War, which took resources away from the Great Society and was opposed by many of his fellow Democrats. Greatly frustrated by his difficulties over the war in Vietnam, he declined to run for reelection in 1968.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was the thirty-sixth president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. Like three other vice presidents in U.S. history, he assumed the office following the assassination of the president. He took office November 22, 1963, after John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas. Johnson's administration was marked by landmark changes in civil rights laws and social welfare programs, yet political support for him collapsed because of his escalation of the Vietnam War.

Johnson was born August 27, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas. He was raised in Johnson City, Texas, which was named for his grandfather, who had served in the Texas Legislature. Johnson's father, Sam Ealy Johnson, also served in the Texas Legislature. Johnson graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1930 with a teaching degree. He taught high school in Houston, until 1931, when he became involved with Democrat Richard M. Kleberg's campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. Johnson gave speeches and spoke to voters on Kleberg's behalf. When Kleberg was elected, he asked Johnson to accompany him to Washington, D.C., as his secretary. Johnson agreed, and his political career in Washington, D.C., was launched.

Johnson was not satisfied to be a secretary to a congressman. He began making friends with powerful Democrats, most notably Representative Sam Rayburn, of Texas. Rayburn, who would soon become Speaker of the House, had enormous influence. In 1935, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt named him director of the Texas division of the National Youth Administration, Johnson used his connections to put twelve thousand young people to work in public service jobs and to help another eighteen thousand go to college.

He quit this position in 1937 to run in a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas's Tenth Congressional District. In his campaign he supported Roosevelt's policies, which came under heavy attack by Johnson's opponents. After Johnson was elected, Roosevelt made a point of getting to know him. Soon the two developed a long and lasting friendship.

Johnson remained in the House of Representatives until 1948, though he did spend a brief period in the Navy during World War II. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1941, and lost to Governor W. Lee O'Daniel by fewer than fourteen hundred votes. He ran again in 1948, this time against Coke R. Stevenson, a former Texas governor. Johnson won the 1948 Democratic primary election by eighty-seven votes, but Stevenson claimed that election fraud had allowed Johnson supporters to stuff the ballot box with votes from dead or fictitious persons. A federal district court judge ordered Johnson's name removed from the final election ballot pending an investigation of the fraud charges. Johnson enlisted a group of prominent Washington, D.C., attorneys, led by Abe Fortas, to overturn the order. The attorneys convinced Justice Hugo L. Black, of the U.S. Supreme Court, to reverse the order. With his name back on the ballot, Johnson went on to an easy victory.

Johnson moved quickly to gain power and influence in the Senate. Senator Richard B. Russell, of Georgia, became his mentor in the same way Sam Rayburn had been in the 1930s. In 1951 Johnson became the Democratic whip, which required that he maintain party discipline and encourage the attendance of Democratic senators. Two years later he was elected minority leader, at age forty-four the youngest member ever elected to that position. In 1955, after the Democrats took control of the Senate, he assumed the position of majority leader, the most powerful position in that body.

As majority leader Johnson worked at developing consensus with members from both parties. During this period he became famous for the "LBJ treatment," where he would use clever stratagems and steady persuasion to win reluctant colleagues over to his side. He developed a bipartisan approach with the administration of Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower and sought common ground. He sustained a setback in 1955 when he suffered a heart attack, but returned to government service later that year.

Johnson wanted to be president, and he knew that opposing civil rights would destroy his chances on a national level. He was one of three Southern senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto, a 1956 document that urged the South to resist with all legal methods the Supreme Court's decision outlawing racially segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954). In 1957 he put through the Senate the first civil rights bill in more than eighty years.

Senator John F. Kennedy, of Massachusetts, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960 and named Johnson his vice presidential running mate. Johnson helped Kennedy in the southern states, and Kennedy won a narrow victory over Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

As vice president under Kennedy, Johnson performed numerous diplomatic missions and presided over the National Aeronautics and Space Council and the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson took the oath of office in Dallas. In the months that followed, he concentrated on passing the slain president's legislative agenda. He proposed a war-on-poverty program, helped pass a tax cut, and oversaw the enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. §2000a et seq.). This act outlawed racial and other types of discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Civil rights for all persons was one part of Johnson's vision of what he called the Great Society.

Johnson easily defeated conservative Republican senator Barry M. Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Under his administration Congress in 1965 enacted the Medicare bill (42 U.S.C.A. §1395 et seq.), which provided free supplementary health care for older persons as part of their Social Security benefits. Johnson also obtained large increases in federal aid to education; established the Departments of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development; and proposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C.A. §1971 et seq.), which ensured protection against racially discriminatory voting practices that had disenfranchised nonwhites. This act changed the South, as it allowed African Americans to register to vote for the first time since Reconstruction. Finally, Johnson appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the High Court.

International affairs did not go as smoothly for Johnson, especially regarding Vietnam. Kennedy had sent U.S. advisers to help South Vietnam repel what the government characterized as a Communist insurgency that was supported by North Vietnam. Johnson did not wish to abandon the South Vietnamese government, and soon his administration began escalating U.S. involvement. In August 1964 Johnson announced that North Vietnamese ships had attacked U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson asked Congress for the authority to employ any necessary course of action to safeguard U.S. troops. Based on what turned out to be inaccurate information supplied by the Johnson administration, Congress gave the president this authority in its Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (78 Stat. 384).

Following his reelection in 1964, Johnson used this resolution to justify military escalation. In February 1965 he authorized the bombing of North Vietnam. To continue the protection of the South Vietnamese government, Johnson increased the number of U.S. soldiers fighting in South Vietnam from twenty thousand to five hundred thousand during the next three years.

As the war escalated, so did antiwar sentiments, especially among college students, many of whom were subject to military conscription. As casualties mounted, antiwar demonstrations increased and support in Congress decreased. The strategy of escalation did not produce the victory military leaders predicted.

The cost of funding a war ended Johnson's Great Society initiatives. More important, the Vietnam War became the focal point for the nation. Johnson's popularity plummeted, and the nation was torn by conflict over the unpopular war. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. He spent the remainder of his term attempting to convince the South and North Vietnamese to begin a peace process. By the end of his administration, the Paris peace talks were started, which began a long negotiating process between North and South Vietnam.

Johnson left office in January 1969 and returned to his ranch near Johnson City. There he wrote an account of his years in office, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency (1971). His health deteriorated. Johnson died of a heart attack at his ranch, on January 22, 1973, less than one week before the signing of the accords that ended the Vietnam War.

Quotes:

"The noblest search is the search for excellence."

"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground."

"I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us -- dollars and all."

"A man without a vote is man without protection."

"The guns and bombs, the rockets and the warships, all are symbols of human failure."

"Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad."

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Former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson (1908- 1973) suffered from chronic nightmares, a childhood condition he carried into his adult life. As a young child he often dreamed that he was sitting, paralyzed, in a chair as he faced an oncoming cattle stampede. After becoming the vice president in 1961, the setting of his nightmares changed to the Executive Office Building, but the paralysis theme remained the same. He dreamed he was sitting at his desk, just finishing a pile of paperwork. But when he got up to go home he discovered that ankle straps bound him to the heavy chair he was sitting in. Since he was unable to move, he resigned himself to continuing to do more paperwork.

After the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, the content of his nightmares altered yet again, but the paralysis theme remained. He was now lying in a bed in the Red Room; he was unable to move or even speak, but he was able to observe that he possessed the frail, paralyzed body of Woodrow Wilson. The trauma of these nightmares carried over into his waking life, so much so that Johnson regularly looked at the pictures of Wilson that hung in the White House halls just to assure him self that, while Wilson was dead, he himself remained alive and capable of action.

Johnson found himself in a difficult predicament as the Vietnam conflict continued and casualties mounted. He felt he could not withdraw the troops and maintain his (and America's) honor, but he also knew that the opposition was building throughout the country. If he were to remain in office, support for the social programs he was promoting would be jeopardized because of his stance on Vietnam. Once again, Johnson's nightmares reflected the fears and uncertainties of his waking life. He began to dream that he was being swept down a river, struggling to swim to the shore. When he tried to reach the nearest bank, he discovered that, no matter how hard he swam, it never go any closer. He then tried to swim to the other side, but the results were the same and he found himself swimming in circles, exhausting all his energy. This nightmare embodied the impossible situation that Johnson was in, and he realized the only way to rectify the situation was to remove himself as an active participant. Shortly after having this nightmare, he announced his decision not to seek another term in office.