America in the Sixties

4. “We’ll Have the Opportunity to Move Upward”: The Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson

63 “We’ll Have the Opportunity to Move Upward” The Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson E ACH M A N W HO H A S SUCCEEDED to the American presidency from the vice presidency upon the death of his predecessor is, for a period of time at least, overshadowed by the memory of his predecessor. It is thus a Herculean task that confronts the new president. While propriety as well as political common sense dictate that the new leader should pay homage to his fallen predecessor both loud and often, there comes a point where, if he wishes to succeed with his own agenda, the new president must separate himself from the past. On the surface, it seemed in November 1963 that Lyndon B. Johnson, a man whose presidential ambitions had long been known, faced an impossible task in this regard. Following his assassination, John F. Kennedy had been deified in the minds of the American people—his youth, vigor, and charisma were now seen as the presidential standard. Indeed, most contemporary observers considered Johnson the anti-Kennedy. He was too coarse in manner for those who had inhabited (or briefly visited) Camelot; they saw him, at best, as a Texas curiosity who could never measure up to the expectations set by Kennedy’s charisma. Matching this rather elitist disdain was the visceral hatred with which a large portion of the American people regarded Johnson by 1966, largely over his conduct of the Vietnam War. It is the Kennedy myth in reverse. We can come closer to a fuller historical understanding of the importance of the Johnson presidency when considering that Johnson was the 64 A M E R I C A I N T H E S I X T I E S anti-Kennedy in another significant respect. Unlike Kennedy, who had been bored senseless during his fourteen-year career as a legislator, Johnson had both loved and mastered the legislative process. Indeed, Johnson’s coarse, combative personality made him the perfect type of executive for advancing a legislative program. In the first months of his presidency, he shrewdly used the nation’s grief to gain passage of those bills that Kennedy could not. Then, following a landslide election mandate in 1964, Johnson put on a legislative tour de force—a two-year clinic in how to advance a president’s legislative agenda. What he would label his “Great Society” was a series of laws that went far beyond the liberalism of any of his twentieth-century Democratic predecessors. It was also devastatingly expensive, with bills for his programs coming due decades after Johnson had left the White House. The Great Society was, and remains today, liberalism’s finest legislative moment. Johnson’s upbringing put him on a par with the economically disadvantaged that, despite his stories of being affected by poverty in West Virginia during the 1960 primary, Kennedy could never have understood. Born in 1908 in the hill country of Western Texas, Johnson knew a prairie upbringing that, while not poverty-stricken, did not include such luxuries as a home with electricity or running water. Yet Johnson’s parents fought through their hardscrabble existence to teach their son the value of an education. His mother, Rebekah, was raised by her father to both value and master intellectual pursuits—he taught her to read and taught her mathematics, and she would graduate from Baylor College before marrying and becoming a housewife. Johnson’s father, Samuel, became a cattle trader, cotton dealer, and real estate broker, as well as a Texas politician of some significance—he served five terms in the Texas legislature beginning in 1904. Rebekah saw in her son the makings of the teacher she could have been; Sam saw in him the makings of the politician that he was. They were both right, and young Lyndon would pursue both careers. The Johnson family moved from their farm on the Pedernales River to nearby Johnson City so that their son could obtain formal schooling. Lyndon graduated high school in 1924, the president of a graduating class of seven. Unsure of his future, he spent the better part of the next three years in search of himself—taking a trip with two childhood friends to California, doing roadwork for the county, and even working as an elevator operator. In 1927, sick of the monotony of manual labor, Johnson enrolled in Southwest State “ W E...