The Not-So-Great Society

Review of The Fierce Urgency of No: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society by Julian E. Zelizer. Political historian Julian Zelizer subsumes both subjects into his account of the “battle for the Great Society,” for the accomplishments of the former—at least at the legislative level—were central to Johnson’s vision, and the latter contributed to the conservative revival that eventually stymied it. Zelizer is a fan of what Johnson, Congress, and social movements managed to bring about in a short period of time. As a whole, Great Society programs “constituted nothing short of a dramatic transformation of American government that provided a new foundation of security for all Americans” and, in the process, they “improved the lives of millions of citizens.”