Chapter 38
Part-3
The LBJ Brand on the Presidency
Lyndon Johnson had been a senator in the 1940s and 50s, his idol was
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he could manipulate Congress very well
(through his in-your-face “Johnson treatment”); he was also quite vain
and egotistical.
President Johnson proved to be much more successful than Kennedy at working
with Congress.
As a president, LBJ went from mildly conservative to liberal, utilizing Kennedy’s death to
pass a Civil Rights Act of 1964, which:
1.
banned all racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public,
including theaters, hospitals, and restaurants.
2.
Banned sexual as well as racial discrimination.
3.
Created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), aimed at
eliminating discriminatory hiring.
Johnson’s program was dubbed the “Great Society,” and it reflected his New Deal
inspirations.
Public support for the program was aroused by Michael Harrington’s The Other
America, which revealed that over 20% of American suffered in poverty.
Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964
•
In 1964, LBJ was opposed by rightwing Republican Arizona senator Barry
Goldwater who attacked the federal
income tax, the Social Security system,
the Tennessee Valley Authority, civil
rights legislation, the nuclear test-ban
treaty, and the Great Society.
•
However, Johnson used the Tonkin
Gulf Incident, in which North
Vietnamese ships allegedly fired on
American ships, to look tough on
communism in Vietnam.
•
Johnson received congressional
approval for the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution, which gave him a virtual
blank check on what he could do in
affairs in Vietnam.
The Great Society Congress
On election day, Johnson won a huge landslide over Goldwater to stay president.
Johnson’s win was also coupled by sweeping Democratic wins that enabled him
to pass his Great Society programs and begin his “War On Poverty”.
Congress doubled the
appropriation on the
Office of Economic
Opportunity to $2 billion
and granted more than $1
billion to refurbish
Appalachia, which had
been stagnant.
Johnson also created the
Department of
Transportation and the
Department of Housing
and Urban Development
(HUD), headed by Robert
C. Weaver, the first black
cabinet secretary in the
United States’ history.
LBJ also wanted aid to education, medical
care for the elderly and indigent,
immigration reform, and a new voting
rights bill.
Johnson gave money to students, not schools,
thus avoiding the separation of church
and state by not technically giving money
to Christian schools.
In 1965, new programs called Medicare and
Medicaid were installed, which gave
certain rights to the elderly and the needy
in terms of medicine and health
maintenance.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
abolished the “national origin” quota and
doubled the number of immigrants
allowed to enter the U.S. annually, up to
290,000 – in effect, shifting our major
sources of immigration to Latin America
and Asia.
An antipoverty program called Project Head
Start improved the performance of the
underprivileged in education. It was “preschool” for the poor.
The National Endowments for the Arts and
Humanities was created to aid artists of
all sorts
Battling for Black Rights
The 24th Amendment eliminated poll taxes, and in the “freedom summer” of
1964, both blacks and white students joined to combat discrimination and
racism throughout the South by attempting to register black voters.
But in June of 1964, a black and two white civil rights workers were found murdered in
Mississippi, and 21 white Mississippians were arrested for the murders. However,
the all-white jury refused to convict the suspects.
Also, an integrated “Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party” was denied its seat.
Early in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. continued
his peaceful resistance to unjust laws and
resumed his voter-registration campaign in Selma,
Alabama. He and his followers were assaulted
with tear gas by state troopers.
LBJ’s responded by calling for America to overcome bigotry, racism, and
discrimination.
Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965 attacked racial discrimination at the polls by
outlawing literacy tests and sending voting registrars to the polls.
Interestingly, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted in white office-seeking
southerners beginning to court black votes, as they realized they’d need their
support.
Black Power
1965 began a period of violent black protests and riots in major cities (ex. Watts in
LA). New black leaders such as Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little), preached
black separatism inspired by the Nation of Islam and its founder, Elijah
Muhammed.
They urged action now, even if it required violence, to the tune of his battle cry, “by
any means necessary.” Malcolm X was killed in 1965 by a group of Black
Muslims after he had broken ties with the Nation of Islam.
Stokely Carmichael had formerly led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) and had a great appreciation for the two civil rights acts
passed in ‘64 and ‘65, but because of the slow progress of the civil rights
movement in bringing economic equality, he now urged an abandonment of
peaceful demonstrations in order to more swiftly bring about GENUINE
equality.
Carmichael’s new creed, “Black Power,” became a rallying cry by blacks
seeking economic equality and equal cultural acknowledgement in
American society, but just as they were slowly moving in that direction, more
riots broke out, and nervous whites threatened with retaliation.
Plus, a new militant black political party known as the Black Panthers openly
brandished weapons in Oakland, California, as a reaction against what they
viewed as police brutality against blacks.
Tragically, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
As the years passed, thousands of blacks registered to vote and went into
integrated classrooms, and they slowly built themselves into a politically
powerful group.
Combating Communism in Two Hemispheres
Johnson sent men to put down a supposedly communist coup in the
Dominican Republic and was denounced as over-anxious and too
hyper.
In Vietnam, though, he slowly sent more and more U.S. men to fight the
war, and the South Vietnamese became spectators in their own war.
Meanwhile, more and more Americans died.
By 1968, he had sent more than half a million troops to Asia, and was
pouring in $30 billion annually, yet the end was nowhere in sight.
Vietnam Vexations
Alongside the floundering Vietnam situation, the U.S. was also trapped in various world-wide
conflicts due to its new-found role as a superpower.
1. America was floundering in Vietnam and was being condemned for its actions there, and
French leader Charles de Gaulle also ordered NATO off French soil in 1966.
2. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Israel stunned the world by defeating Egypt (and its Soviet
backers) in the so-called 1967 Six-Day War, further intensifying Israeli-Palestinian
relations that lasts to this very day.
Israel gained new territory in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West
Bank of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, numerous protests in America went against the Vietnam War and the draft.
Opposition was headed by the influential Senate Committee of Foreign Relations,
headed by Senator William Fullbright of Arkansas.
“Doves” (peace lovers) and “Hawks” (war supporters) clashed.
Both sides (the U.S. and North Vietnam) did try to have intervals of quiet time in
bombings, but they merely used those as excuses to funnel more troops into the area.
Johnson also ordered the CIA (in a clear violation of its charter) to spy on
domestic antiwar activists, and he encouraged the FBI to use its
Counterintelligence Program (“Cointelpro”) against the peace movement.
More and more, America was trapped in an awful Vietnam War, and it couldn’t get out,
thus breeding more and more hatred and resentment to the American public.
Vietnam Topples Johnson
Johnson was personally suffering due to the number of American casualties, as
witnesses viewed him weeping as he signed condolence letters. He even prayed
with Catholic monks in a nearby church—at night, secretly.
The most serious blow to LBJ’s foreign policy was the Tet Offensive of 1968 in
which the communist Vietnamese attacked every U.S. base in South
Vietnam simultaneously.
Though technically a victory, as the U.S. forces fought off the communists, it was a
wakeup call to the American people that the war was far from over and was in
fact NOT being won.
Johnson also saw a challenge for
the Democratic ticket from
Eugene McCarthy and
Robert Kennedy, and the
nation, as well as the
Democratic party, was
starting to be split by
Vietnam.
Early in ‘68, LBJ refused to sign an
order for more troops to
Vietnam.
Then, on March 31, 1968,
Johnson declared that he
would stop sending in troops
to Vietnam and that he would
not run in 1968, shocking
America.
The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968
•
On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, the “peace” candidate was fatally shot in
California while campaigning, and another Kennedy brother is tragically murdered.
Despite a massive effort by the New Left, new peace candidate Eugene McCarthy was NOT
nominated after Kennedy’s death, as the Democrats chose to go with LBJ’s “successor” VP
Hubert Humphrey.
At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 1968, angry antiwar zealots, deprived by an
assassin’s bullet of their leading candidate, Bobby Kennedy, merged menacingly upon the
streets of Chicago to protest Humphrey’s impending official nomination.
An exasperated international television watched as the crowd broke into a riot with the Chicago
police department bloodily beating down the protesters.
The war had truly come home………….
The gleeful Republicans responded with Richard Nixon, paired with Spiro Agnew, as
their candidates running on a platform calling for victory in Vietnam and a strong
anticrime policy. They simply sat back watching the Democrats destroy each
other.
There was also a third-party candidate: George C. Wallace, former governor of
Alabama, a segregationist who along with his running mate, former air force
general Curtis LeMay, proposed to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the Stone
Age.
Nixon won in a nail-biter, yet with only 43.4% of the popular vote. A minority president,
he owed his victory to division over the war, and protest against the draft, crime,
and rioting.
The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson
•
•
•
Poor Lyndon Johnson returned to his Texas
ranch and died there in 1973.
In the final analysis, LBJ’s Great Society
programs won some noteworthy battles in
education (ex. Head Start) and health care
(medicaid, medicare).
He had committed Americans into Vietnam with
noble intentions, but he was stuck in a situation
where he was darned if he did and darned if he
didn’t.