Author Insight Video

Transcript

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson suddenly became the President of the United States. Lyndon Johnson was a fascinating man, a complicated, larger-than-life figure, a native of Texas who grew up admiring Franklin Roosevelt and actually being employed by one of the New Deal agencies. He was committed to New Deal Democratic Liberalism during his career in the United States senate during the 1950’s and early 1960’s, where he was a dominant figure. He was a large man, well over six feet tall. He had a command, charismatic personality.

Johnson wanted to do two things in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of John Kennedy. He wanted to help relieve the nation’s mourning and revive American ideals, energy, and enthusiasm. He also wanted to create a great presidency like that of Franklin Roosevelt, his hero.

To do that, Lyndon Johnson launched a War on Poverty, as he declared it in 1964. For all of the much-celebrated American prosperity of the 1950’s and early 1960’s, it had become apparent that a significant number of Americans, what came to be called the Underclass of Americans, were not enjoying that prosperity. Instead they were mired in a culture of poverty that imprisoned them and really offered no way out. And Johnson was committed to battle that sense of poverty. And so he announced a War on Poverty and in the next year, 1965, he announced an even larger array of programs comparable to what Franklin Roosevelt had done in the 1930’s. Lyndon Johnson called it his Great Society. The Great Society deals not only with creating wealth, prosperity, and affluence for Americans but a Great Society also ensures that every American has a warm bed, a secure house, a good job, and a stable life.

In the midst of those Great Society ideals, Johnson became burdened and distracted by the escalating war in Vietnam. No sooner had he launched the War on Poverty and the Great Society than the American involvement in Vietnam began to grow. And grow. And grow. It agonized Johnson that he had to deflect dollars and energy from his domestic programs to dedicate to the war in Vietnam. But he felt he had no choice. By 1968 he was so frustrated that he said, “We can’t win this war and we can’t get out of this war.”

In some respects it was a tragic situation. For a man who was determined to make a difference in terms of domestic life for the underclass in the United States, he ended up losing his presidency over the war in Vietnam because he could not figure out a way to leave or to win. He lost both the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam and, in the process, lost a presidency.