President Johnson
1963-1969
How Johnson became President
Immediately following JFK’s assassination, Vice President at the time Lyndon B. Johnson was promptly sworn as president on a waiting airplane and flown back to Washington with Kennedy’s body
The new president managed a dignified and efficient transition, continuing with his slain predecessor’s policies
Johnson’s nomination by the Democrats in 1964 was a foregone conclusion
The republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona
Johnson honed in on the image of a resolute statesman by seizing upon the Tonkin Gulf episode
Johnson portrayed his opponent as a right-wing legislator who wanted to abolish the social welfare programs
- Johnson easily won the presidency, carrying 44 of the 50 states
The Great Society
There were the Big Four legislative achievements that crowned LBJ’s Great Society program: aid to education, medical care for the elderly and indigent, immigration reform, and a new voting rights bill
He channeled educational aid to students, not schools, thus allowing funds to flow to hard-pressed parochial institutions
Medicare and medicaid were welcomed by millions of older Americans who had no health insurance and by the poor who could not afford proper medical treatment
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the “national-origins” quota system
Great Society programs came in for rancorous political attack in later years
24th Amendment
Ratified in January 1964
Abolished the poll tax in federal elections
Blacks joined hands with white civil rights workers-many of them student volunteers from the North-in a massive voter-registration drive in Mississippi during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964
Tonkin Gulf Resolution and Vietnam War
Tonkin Gulf Resolution:
joint resolution of the U.S. Congress passed on August 7, 1964 in direct response to a minor naval engagement known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
the lawmakers virtually abdicated their war-declaring powers and handed the president a blank check to use further force in Southeast Asia.
Johnson boasted that it was “like grandma’s nightshirt—it covered everything.”
Vietnam War
Equally defined by the failure of his policies concerning the Vietnam War as his accomplishments on the homefront
He steadily escalated the U.S.’s involvement in the war
America could not defeat the enemy in Vietnam, which seemed obscene to some people
Antiwar demonstrations had taken place on college campuses
Thousands of draft registrants fled to Canada and others burned their cards
By early 1968 the brutal and futile struggle had become the longest and most unpopular foreign war in the nation’s history
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act
Civil Rights Act of 1964:
act banned racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public, including theaters, hospitals, and restaurants
strengthened the federal government’s power to end segregation in schools and other places
created the EEOC (below) to eliminate discrimination in hiring
proved to be a powerful instrument of federally enforced gender equality , as well as racial equality
Voting Rights Act:
last of Johnson’s Big Four reforms
- signed into law on August 6, it outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registrars into several southern states.
1968
Tet Offensive in Vietnam affected American public opinion of the war and citizen’s views of the President started to turn in an unfortunate direction
Attack on a U.S. base by the Vietnam People’s Army
Johnson announced that he would not run for a second term
Martin Luther King’s assassination caused much grief throughout the country
Robert Kennedy was assassinated during a speech in California
- Republican Richard Nixon won over Democrat and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey