Johnson, Lyndon B. (1908–1973), thirty‐sixth president of the United States.Lyndon Baines Johnson came from a moderately well‐to‐do family in the impoverished hill country of central Texas. After graduating from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1930, he spent a year teaching school before beginning his career in
Democratic party politics as a legislative assistant to a Texas congressman. In 1934, he married Claudia Alta (“Lady Bird”) Taylor. They had two daughters.
Johnson returned to Texas in 1935 to head the state National Youth Administration office, a New Deal agency. Two years later, he won a special election to Congress, defeating a field of eight candidates by staunchly supporting the controversial programs of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who became the first of Johnson's many powerful patrons. As a congressman, Johnson strongly supported rural electrification and won federal funding for a key dam in his district. In 1941, he lost a close race for the U.S. Senate. In a second Senate race in 1948, Johnson defeated former governor Coke Stevenson by eighty‐seven votes in an election marred by suspected voter fraud that gave rise to the nickname “Landslide Lyndon.”
An extremely effective senator, Johnson moderated his New Deal
liberalism without giving up his belief that the federal government should aid the less fortunate. He staunchly backed Presidents Harry S.
Truman and Dwight D.
Eisenhower in waging the
Cold War, making sure that Texas benefited from heavy defense spending. He continued to cultivate powerful leaders, notably House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) and Senator Richard Russell (1897–1971) of Georgia, to advance his career. In 1955, he became Senate majority leader. Criticized by liberal Democrats for his flexibility, Johnson prided himself on his ability to bargain with the Republican Eisenhower administration to secure needed legislation. Famous for his brand of personal persuasion, known as the “Johnson treatment,” he helped in 1957 secure passage of the nation's first civil rights bill since
Reconstruction.
LBJ, as he liked to be called, proved less successful in a 1960 presidential bid. Outmaneuvered and outspent by John F.
Kennedy, Johnson finally agreed to become Kennedy's running mate in order to carry the
South. When Kennedy won, LBJ virtually disappeared from sight as vice president. After Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, however, Johnson displayed both sensitivity and statesmanship by stressing the theme of continuity in carrying out the programs of the fallen leader. In 1964, he persuaded Congress to pass two of Kennedy's most controversial measures, a civil rights bill desegregating public accommodations and a major tax cut, as well as inaugurating his own War on Poverty. With the Minnesota liberal Hubert
Humphrey as his running mate, he easily won a landslide victory over Republican Barry
Goldwater, an outspoken conservative, in the 1964 presidential election.
President Johnson's greatest success in domestic policy came with the enactment of his
Great Society program. Building on FDR's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal proposals, LBJ persuaded Congress to enact more than sixty separate reform measures in 1965. The three most important Great Society achievements were greatly increased federal aid to
education, the enactment of
Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care for the elderly and the indigent, and a voting‐rights act that gave previously disenfranchised
African Americans in the South the political power to protect and advance their interests. Johnson moved quickly to implement his Great Society program, capitalizing on the trauma of Kennedy's death as well as on the heavy Democratic majorities in Congress created by Goldwater's crushing defeat. Critics would charge that many of the programs were overly ambitious, inadequately funded, or carelessly administered. The Great Society, however, suffered most from LBJ's growing obsession with the
Vietnam War.
Against Johnson's legislative success must be balanced his failure in foreign policy. Less sure of himself on diplomatic issues, LBJ relied on advisers he had inherited from Kennedy, who were committed to the defense of South Vietnam, a policy successively upheld by Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Instead of reassessing America's role in what was essentially a civil war, Johnson accepted the domino theory—the Cold War belief that a North Vietnamese victory would doom all of Southeast Asia to
communism. In 1964, after a presumed attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, he persuaded Congress to grant him unlimited power to use force to defend South Vietnam. In early 1965, U.S. warplanes began bombing North Vietnam; in July, Johnson authorized sending 50,000 American combat troops to Vietnam. Yet he refused to declare war, disguised the heavy cost of the fighting, and failed to justify the conflict to the American people. By 1968, despite the presence of more than 500,000 American troops in Vietnam, he had achieved only a costly stalemate. After the
Tet offensive, a bloody setback for the enemy but a devastating blow to American confidence, Johnson rejected Pentagon requests for an additional 200,000 troops. Instead, on 31 March amid mounting domestic protests and facing a challenge for the nomination from antiwar Democrats Eugene McCarthy and Robert
Kennedy, he announced that he would not run for reelection in 1968, and would instead devote himself to peace negotiations with Hanoi. Humphrey won the nomination at a deeply divided Democratic Convention in Chicago but lost the general election to Richard M.
Nixon.
Johnson spent his final years in retirement on his Texas ranch. He died of a massive heart attack on 22 January 1973, just a day before the Nixon administration signed the Paris Peace Accords ending America's direct combat role in the Vietnam War. Ever since, Johnson's reputation as president has been clouded by his failure in Vietnam. In many ways, he was a tragic figure. In Vietnam, he simply tried to carry out the policies of his predecessors. Yet his refusal to explain the war candidly to the American public, in part out of fear that it would reduce support for the Great Society, cost him dearly. At the same time, he received little acclaim for his more enduring domestic achievements. The voting‐rights act did help African Americans gain political office and influence; Medicare and Medicaid would give millions of elderly and impoverished citizens access to health care. Despite later conservative counterattacks, the Great Society remained deeply imbedded in modern American life. An ambitious, hard‐driving politician with an outsized ego masking deep insecurities, particularly in his dealings with the wealthy, socially confident Kennedy clan, he could be devious, bullying, and crude while also displaying high idealism and great generosity of spirit.
See also
Antiwar Movements;
Civil Rights Legislation;
Federal Government: Executive Branch: The Presidency;
Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate;
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution;
New Deal Era, The;
Sixties, The.
Bibliography
Lyndon B. Johnson , The Vantage Point, 1971.
Doris Kearns , Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 1976.
Robert A. Caro , The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 2 vols., 1982–1990.
Paul Conkin , Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1986.
Joseph A. Califano , The Triumph and the Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 1991.
Robert Dallek , Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960, 1991.
Robert Dallek , Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973, 1998.
Robert A. Divine
