Great Society

The Great Society represented Lyndon Johnson's attempt to move beyond the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and provide a variety of social programs to uplift the nation. Out of this effort came the "war on poverty," Medicare, environmental legislation, educational funding, and civil rights laws. Unfortunately for Johnson, his vision of a better America clashed with the demands of the Vietnam War. Although most of its programs continue, as a concept the Great Society did not survive his presidency. Johnson's belief that it would be possible to have "guns and butter" proved illusory.

Lyndon Johnson was convinced that liberal nationalism and the power of the federal government could transform society. His faith grew out of his youthful experiences with poverty in Texas, his political apprenticeship during the New Deal, and his desire to surpass Roosevelt's legacy. When he took office in November 1963, after John F. Kennedy's death, Johnson inherited the early initiatives to address poverty that the Kennedy administration had under consideration. With characteristic enthusiasm and expansiveness, Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964 and pushed legislation through Congress to establish the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).

To provide a larger setting for his administration's agenda on domestic affairs, Johnson announced the concept of the Great Society during a commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964. He proposed an ambitious range of programs to provide an improved life for all Americans. How the initiatives were to be paid for was not discussed. With the economy growing at a robust rate and the war in Vietnam not yet a major overseas commitment, it seemed to the president that the United States could pursue the Great Society and play a large role in the world without burdening middle-class Americans.

Johnson achieved a landslide victory in the 1964 election, and his success helped to sweep into office solid Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. During the first six months of 1965, the president used his clout to gain passage of such programs as Medicare, government support of elementary and secondary education, more antipoverty measures, stronger environmental laws (including the Highway Beautification Act, which his wife supported), and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But even as his dreams for the Great Society became law, Johnson's political base eroded.

Escalation of the war in South Vietnam during the summer of 1965 and the racial disturbances in the Watts district of Los Angeles during the same period took a toll on Johnson's authority. By the autumn, Congress became less willing to support new domestic programs and the spending they entailed. The haste with which Johnson had initiated his programs meant that some were not well administered. Failures in implementing the Office of Economic Opportunity fed a political reaction. Although Johnson continued to gain victories in Congress on the domestic front, they were fewer than before. The political momentum of the Great Society was running out as 1966 began.

Over the next two years, as the war in Vietnam intensified and the economy overheated, Republicans made gains in the 1966 elections and proved able to slow down Johnson's initiatives. Fears of inflation ate away at public support for what Johnson and the Democrats had tried to do. The Great Society became identified with rising crime rates and racial unrest. The Johnson administration could not sustain what the president had so confidently proposed after all. Congress cut back on social programs and reduced spending on which the success of the Great Society depended. Johnson's domestic policies had to give way to the increasing economic pressures of the Vietnam War. In the minds of many Americans, the Great Society became a symbol of the overreaching power of the government, one result of which was the stalemated war in Southeast Asia. By 1968, when Johnson withdrew as a candidate for the presidency, the Great Society was a victim of the corrosive effects of the war in Vietnam and Johnson's overly ambitious plans for an America made over.

Key parts of the Great Society, especially Medicare, survived the Johnson presidency and became enduring parts of the social safety net for all Americans. The poverty rate went down during the Johnson years, and his environmental policies had a positive effect on the nation's economic and human resources. Nonetheless, the country's swing to the right in the 1970s left the Great Society a discredited idea. Johnson's vision, which had seemed so strong in the spring of 1964, proved to be another casualty of the ill-fated Vietnam War.

Goldwater, Barry; Johnson, Lyndon Baines; Military-Industrial Complex; Popular Culture and Cold War; Tet, Impact Of.

Andrew, John, III. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1998.

Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Califano, Joseph A., Jr. The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Gould, Lewis L. Lady Bird Johnson: Our Environmental First Lady. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

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