John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed the role of the thirty-sixth president of the United States. He was sworn in on Air Force One in Dallas to a nation filled with anxiety and a myriad of unfinished business. The booming-voiced tall Texan with his keen political sense wasted no time. He had been long in Congress learning to twist arms and to form coalitions, and now he applied his skills.
Among his initial major initiatives was the completion of civil rights initiated by Kennedy. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that outlawed discrimination in areas and work places. It elicited only the utmost persuasion on his part to go through its reluctant Senate. The following year, he was followed by the Voting Rights Act which struck down the barriers that had kept Black Americans off the polls over the decades. These laws transformed the nation in a manner that resonates to date.
Johnson did not go as far. He introduced what he termed the Great Society, an all-encompassing range of initiatives that were to eradicate poverty and provide everyone in America with an equal opportunity. Medicare and Medicaid introduced health care to elderly and poor families. Education bills made a lot of money available in schools particularly in the poor neighborhoods. He established the Department of Housing and Urban Development and initiated Head Start on preschool children. During the greater part of his tenure in office, unemployment decreased and the economy buzzed. To a number of historians, these domestic accomplishments are some of the most fruitful spurts of law making since the New Deal.
But the dark shadow of Vietnam was darkening every year. Johnson left behind a small military presence there, but he was gradually raising the American involvement. After reported attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, Congress gave him broad powers to escalate. By 1968, over half a million soldiers were engaged in combat, and the night news showed pictures of battles in the jungle and the increasing number of casualties into American living rooms. The anti-war demonstrations were overflowing in the campuses and the streets of cities. The Tet Offensive in early the same year rattled the confidence of the people although the military leaders described it as a blow to the enemy.
The strain at last came to his head. On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term. His final months were spent in attempts to initiate peace negotiations in Paris, and not much was achieved. Richard Nixon assumed power when he left the White House in January 1969 and the war dragged on many years more.
Looking back, Johnson's record is a study in contrasts. He championed legislation that took millions of people out of poverty, broadened opportunity and dealt a blow to legal racism. Meanwhile, his choice concerning Vietnam took lives, split the country, and ruined his reputation. His death in 1973 at his ranch in Texas, however, leaves the programs he created and the debates he bequeathed to American life. Ultimately, he was a man who believed that government could fix big issues and that he demonstrated that it was possible, albeit at a great cost to his mistakes.