Great Society. The Great Society, President Lyndon B.
Johnson's sweeping reform program in the turbulent 1960s, represented the high‐water mark of activist government.In response to seismic social changes and pressures, Johnson proposed an unprecedented array of legislation designed to transform society and advance individual fulfillment through a broad range of federal interventions.
Background.
With John F.
Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Johnson inherited more than the presidency. Many of the intellectuals whom Kennedy had drawn to Washington stayed to pursue an unfulfilled liberal agenda. A spirit of altruism, intensified by the assassination, provided an ideal climate for
liberalism. But as the martyred president's image grew to mythical proportions, Johnson appeared all too human by comparison. A constant reminder of this contrast was President Kennedy's brother Robert, Johnson's principal rival.
Johnson himself was a veteran of three decades of activist federal policy. His years as a youthful apostle of the
New Deal defined his liberal outlook. As a congressman during
World War II, he participated in the government's mobilization of resources against the Axis powers. As Senate Democratic leader in the 1950s, he pragmatically advanced a moderate agenda. Once he became president, the populist Johnson reemerged; he resolved to use all of his executive powers to extend and even surpass the New Deal's progressive record.
In 1964, a prosperous economy and the presidential election set the stage for a flurry of legislative initiatives. Johnson's landslide victory over the Republican candidate, Senator Barry
Goldwater, gave the president both a powerful mandate and large Democratic majorities in Congress to carry it out. Johnson articulated his “Great Society” vision, a broad‐ranging statement of national purpose, in a commencement address at the University of Michigan in May 1964. His ambitious goals included equality of opportunity, enhancement of urban life, restoration of natural beauty, improvement of education, ending poverty, and implementing racial justice. He also unveiled a new approach for enlisting the nation's best minds to define problems and propose solutions: White House conferences would address such critical issues as
civil rights, the environment, and health care, and task forces would set the course toward the Great Society by developing legislative initiatives.
Civil Rights.
Some of the Great Society's most significant achievements were in furthering racial equality. As the
civil rights movement turned from the courts to the streets,
television gave protests against discrimination a nationwide audience. Capitalizing on a groundswell of public opinion, Johnson used the presidency as a pulpit to define the cause as an urgent moral and civic issue. He quietly promoted a bipartisan coalition that overcame a two‐month Senate filibuster and passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, barring racial discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and schools receiving federal funds.
The following year, televised scenes of racial violence fueled support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although Johnson accurately predicted that the legislation would make elected officials more responsive to minorities, he also recognized that he was delivering the white South to the
Republican party. The third sweeping civil rights measure—to ban discrimination in housing and to strengthen federal protection in other areas—was passed in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther
King Jr.The radicalization of the black movement challenged LBJ's efforts to promote change from within the political system. As militant new leaders confronted the establishment and appealed to a rising black consciousness, urban
riots manifested the rage and hopelessness that gripped the nation's inner cities. While the problem of racial discrimination would persist, the Great Society fundamentally altered race relations in America. The sweeping changes wrought by the three civil rights measures created a new social framework for subsequent generations of all races.
The War on Poverty.
To promote equal opportunity, Johnson launched an “unconditional” war against
poverty. With the creation in 1964 of a new government agency, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), antipoverty programs were begun to assist the poor in helping themselves. The Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps provided income, remedial education, and job training to impoverished youths. VISTA, a domestic counterpart to the
Peace Corps, sent volunteer organizers into economically depressed areas. The Community Action Program made grants to local antipoverty initiatives and spawned such national projects as Head Start, an enrichment program for preschool children; and the Legal Services Program, which provided lawyers to defend the rights of low‐income citizens. Other Great Society measures in addition to the OEO programs included an expanded food‐stamp program and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, both of which directly benefited the poor.
While conservatives argued that the “War on Poverty” stifled individual initiative and increased the demand for
welfare, others charged that the modestly funded programs deflected pressure for more radical solutions. The controversial Community Action Program, a favorite target of conservatives, drew fire for underwriting opposition to local power structures. Although the War on Poverty failed to achieve its idealistic goal of ending poverty in America, the program did improve the lives of many while focusing attention on the problem of chronic, long‐term, transgenerational poverty, allowing neither the press nor the public to continue to ignore the plight of the poor. While the OEO was abolished by President Richard M.
Nixon in 1974, most of the component programs survived.
Housing, Education, Health, and Other Programs.
Another Great Society goal—enhancement of urban life—was advanced through the creation in 1966 of the new Cabinet‐level Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). With HUD came such urban initiatives as the Model Cities Program, which funded partnerships with local communities for urban revitalization and aid to low‐income areas. Mass‐transit legislation helped cities update their transportation infrastructure.
Convinced that
education was the best antidote for poverty, Johnson, a former teacher, envisioned the Great Society as one in which all children could enrich their minds. As president, he orchestrated the passage of scores of measures to provide massive federal aid to education. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 employed a new formula of federal aid to circumvent the traditional stalemate imposed by the separation of
church and state issue. The Higher Education Act, also 1965, funded scholarships and aid to colleges for equipment, buildings, and libraries. Other grants were directed to vocational education. In all, the passage of sixty education measures earned LBJ the title “the education president.”
The Great Society's landmark health legislation, which tripled the federal health budget, overcame three decades of opposition to “socialized medicine.” The enactment of Medicare in 1965 dramatically increased accessibility to health care for the nation's elderly, providing for hospitalization and optional medical insurance. A companion measure, Medicaid, administered by the states through the welfare system, provided hospitalization coverage for poor Americans. Other Great Society health initiatives aided medical research, the construction of medical facilities, and regional medical programs.
The Great Society produced landmark legislation in almost every area of American life. Truth‐in‐lending and truth‐in‐packaging laws provided new protections for consumers. Automobile safety legislation reduced accidents and fatalities, while the Highway Beautification Act, championed by the president's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, enhanced the scenic beauty of the nation's roadsides. A new environmental consciousness brought the first nationwide attack on air and water pollution. To enrich cultural life, Johnson presided over the creation of the
National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the discriminatory national‐origins policy.
The Great Society and Vietnam.
While Johnson's willingness to expend political capital on the Great Society's costly and sometimes controversial reforms increased his political vulnerability, it was the
Vietnam War that ultimately undermined his presidency. As the American commitment of human resources increased from sixteen thousand advisers in November 1963 to more than half a million G.I.s, the prolonged, inconclusive conflict in Southeast Asia fueled inflation, limited domestic spending, ruptured the
Democratic party, ignited a youth rebellion, and caused deep divisions in American society. Tormented by his inability either to achieve victory or to withdraw honorably, Johnson in March 1968 announced that he would not seek reelection.
Tarnished by Vietnam, Johnson's presidency received the same mixed reviews in hindsight that marked contemporary assessments. Liberals praised the Great Society as a noble if idealistic crusade, cut short by a bitter, unpopular war. Conservatives criticized the period as the epitome of big‐government excesses. Yet the Great Society's legislative landmarks remained, profoundly affecting the nation's economic, social, and political life for decades afterward.
See also
Civil Rights Legislation;
Conservatism;
Consumer Movement;
Environmentalism;
Federal Goverment, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Housing and Urban Development);
Housing;
Immigration;
Immigration Law;
Kennedy, Robert;
Medicare and Medicaid;
Public Broadcasting;
Sixties, The.
Bibliography
Doris Kearns , Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 1976.
Robert A. Divine, ed., Exploring the Johnson Years, 2 vols., 1981–1987.
Vaughn Davis Bornet , The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, 1983.
Allen J. Matusow , The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s, 1984.
Irving Bernstein , Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, 1996.
James T. Patterson , Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1970, 1996.
Robert Dallek , Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1961–1973, 1998.
Michael Gillette
