Lyndon Johnson Biography
Lyndon Johnson became President in a moment of cultural transition. The 1960s were a time of transformation in gender roles, in the concept of family, in social justice, and in ideas about justice and the good society. Johnson was the first President whose administration coincided with the ability of live television news to transform public opinion. No previous President had had to fight a war where embedded journalists like the young Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather reported home each evening in living color on the nightly television network news. Many Baby Boomers grew up doing their homework and eating supper in eye- and ear-shot of the news from Vietnam and the graphic spectacle of children burned by napalm and acres of coffins belonging to American servicemen coming home amid growing "body counts." Television affected Johnson's Presidency negatively in other ways, too. John Kennedy's good looks had helped secure the election of 1960, but Johnson, who was actually a rather handsome man, a powerful speaker, and a compelling physical presence, looked like a caricature of himself on camera. While he probably had the most coherent vision for federally engineered social change of any President, Johnson was hampered by a media presence whose power he recognized but which he could not master as he had so many other obstacles in his life. Paradoxically, the ready access to television on the part of the vast majority of Americans also served Johnson from time to time. Televised news conferences and speeches lent an air of special significance and legitimacy to the signing of major bills and allowed Johnson a platform for promoting his domestic agenda. The promising start to Johnson's administration was colored by the looming shadow of the war in Vietnam. In the end, Vietnam scarred Johnson's ability to lead, endangering the projects that were closest to his heart and compromising his legacy. Inspired and influenced by Franklin Roosevelt's programs and charismatic power as a leader, Johnson was a powerful force in national politics throughout the 1940s and 1950s before becoming Vice-President in 1961 and President from 1963-1968. He was a larger-than-life figure and fierce in-fighter who brokered deals and dominated Washington politics for three decades, only to find himself at the end hijacked by a faraway war that he inherited and felt compelled to escalate. Johnson left public life in 1969, haunted by the fact that he might be remembered more for the failures of the Vietnam War than for all of his "Great Society" programs.
During his long service in the Senate, Johnson displayed greater gifts for action and compromise than any senator since the time of Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser." As Senate majority leader, he managed to ensure the censure of the virulent anti-Communist Joseph McCarthy, as well as the passage of 1300 pieces of legislation. Johnson was also heavily responsible for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Though his time in the White House was overshadowed by the Vietnam War, Johnson's term as President saw the passage of more progressive social legislation than any administration since the early years of the Roosevelt administration under the New Deal. Johnson's commitment to social reform and his Great Society Programs saw not only the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with more than 430 other measures designed to address the problems of cities, the poor, the elderly, and the young. Johnson sought funding that permitted virtually every American to attend college. He made efforts to improve and enhance the cultural life of the United States, and signed major programs ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to Project Head Start into law. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1966 provided for the construction of some 240,000 units of low-cost housing, and three billion dollars for urban renewal. To oversee these activities, Johnson created a new Department of Housing and Urban Development, and appointed the first African-American cabinet member to oversee it. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the quotas based on national origin that had been a feature of United States immigration policy since the 1920s and replaced them with hemispheric "ceilings." Johnson's decision to escalate the war in Vietnam in 1965, and his decision to "Americanize" the war was consistent with the policies followed by every United States president since World War II, including Kennedy. We now know that Johnson held deep personal doubts about the war, but felt that "to leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of American commitment." Johnson and most of his advisors had been schooled in the ideology of Cold War political life, and they still subscribed to the "Domino Theory" - the idea that withdrawal from Vietnam meant that Thailand, Burma, and the rest of Southeast Asia would all succumb to communist-dominated regimes. Though he had won re-election by a landslide in 1964, the increasing body counts and the growing division in the country between "Hawks" and "Doves" cost Johnson what had arguably been the most powerful political base of any president in the twentieth century. Worse still, despite the massive body of social legislation, riots were erupting in major cities across the country. In March, 1968, he announced in a televised speech that he would not seek re-election. He returned to his ranch in the Hill Country in Texas, where he had been born and where, as he said repeatedly, "people knew when you were sick and cared when you died."
Some of Johnson's journalist biographers have failed to take the impact of Johnson's Hill Country background into account. Consequently, they have painted him only in terms of his shadow side-as a politician who made a Faustian bargain with power that dominated his life and his relationships. There was much more to Johnson than this-the young school teacher who was deeply moved by the plight of Hispanic families he encountered on his first job; the man who fought for measures he had virtually crafted on his own to wage a war on poverty, racial discrimination, and other social ills. Throughout his life Johnson harbored an outsider's and a Southerner's prejudice about what he regarded as the Northeastern intellectual establishment, which he saw personified in the Harvard-educated Kennedys and their Washington minions, who, born to money, privilege, and power lost no chance to disparage Johnson when he was Vice-President. It was Johnson, not Kennedy, who was the bedrock of political support for the civil rights movement, and it was Johnson, not Kennedy, who understood the complexities of southern community and southern poverty and who cared about creating a culture of inclusiveness by providing access to education, medical care, and decent housing for everyone. Johnson had even pushed for space exploration before Kennedy adopted it as a pet project.
The difference was that Johnson had encountered poverty and exclusion first-hand. He had worked his way through Southwest State Teachers' College in San Marcos, Texas dropping out briefly to serve as Principal and as a teacher in a Mexican-American school in Cotullos, Texas. After graduation in 1930, he taught high school, coaching a debating team to a championship. In 1931, newly-elected Representative Richard Kleburg took Johnson to Washington with him. In 1934, Johnson briefly attended Georgetown Law School. That same year, he married Claudia Alta (Ladybird) Taylor, who was from a well-off family, and who held a degree in journalism from the University of Texas. She was to become the chief stabilizing force in Johnson's life and probably his most trusted political advisor and business partner. Their relationship endured and prospered despite Johnson's serial infidelities, which she seems to have regarded as only a manifestation of the fact that her husband "loved all people" and that "fifty per cent of the people are women" and that she did not want to "deprive" half of the people of her husband.
Johnson resigned his position with Richard Kleburg to become Roosevelt's Director of the National Youth Administration for Texas. He resigned that position to run for a seat in Congress for the 10th Congregational District, which had been vacated by the death of James P. Buchanan. Two of the newly elected Johnson's projects were rural electrification and public housing. He was appointed to the Committee on Naval Affairs at the special request of President Roosevelt. Johnson remained in the House until 1948, with time out to serve in the Navy, where he was awarded a Silver Star by General Douglas MacArthur for gallantry in action before returning to Congress in 1942 when President Roosevelt order all members of Congress to return. In 1948, Johnson won a Senate seat, and drew attention by conducting his campaign by helicopter flights. By 1951 he was Majority Whip of the Senate. He became Minority Whip in 1953, following the election of Dwight Eisenhower as President, and then was Majority Whip again in 1955 before suffering a heart attack. Nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention in 1956, he lost the nomination to Adlai Stevenson, but in the following year managed to get the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 passed, along with the first legislation for space exploration in 1958. Johnson joined Kennedy on the Democratic ticket in 1960, and became Vice-President. He became President when Kennedy was assassinated, and lost no time in unveiling his Great Society programs, which he sketched out in a speech at the University of Michigan in May, 1964. On July 2, Johnson signed the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden that was nationally televised. He signed the Economic Opportunity Act, the cornerstone of Johnson's "War on Poverty," in August. In the election of 1964, Johnson won 61% of the popular vote with the slogan "All the Way with LBJ." In 1965, Johnson's legislative program for building the Great Society moved ahead, with sweeping programs designed to lend federal aid to education with a focus on disadvantaged children and areas, the implementation of the Medicare system, projects for beautification (Lady Bird's special interest), support for the arts, and other domestic programs designed to enhance every facet of American life." Johnson signed the Medicare Bill on July 30, 1965 in the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, signaling his belief that he was fulfilling the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who had longed for just such a program. In his pursuit of civil rights, Johnson delivered a message to Congress in March on the Voting Rights Bill where he urged all Americans "of all religions and all colors, from every region of this country" to follow him in "the cause of the dignity of man" and the "destiny of democracy." On August 6, Johnson signed the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, in the President's Room off the Senate Chamber, where Lincoln had signed a bill in 1861, freeing slaves who had been forced to serve in Confederate armies. The Voting Rights Act provided for federal intervention to ensure the right to vote.
Unfortunately, in the flurry of legislative success at home, Johnson was ordering a troop build-up in Vietnam, a Cold War conflict that had been building since 1954, and which Kennedy had supported. Kennedy and Johnson both subscribed to the Cold War ideology with its attendant belief in a Domino Theory-that a geographic line had to be held on the proliferation of Communism to prevent its expansion. Perhaps misled by Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara, Johnson continued to allow troop build-ups. As the body counts on the evening news mounted, Johnson became an increasingly polarizing figure. The man whose greatest strength was his ability to use governmental power to improve the lot of the poor and the disenfranchised found himself listening to chants from protesters: "Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Devastated, Johnson announced in March, 1968, that he would not seek re-election. Returning to his ranch in the Hill Country of Texas, Johnson died in January, 1973