The Failure, and Success, of Lyndon B. Johnson.
The rise and fall of Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1968 is now recalled as a cautionary tale in the history of postwar America, illustrating at once the possibilities and perils of bold presidential leadership. Few presidents have achieved the popularity and electoral success Johnson enjoyed in his first few years in office. Throughout 1964 and 1965, his approval ratings hovered around 70 percent, which largely explains why he won the 1964 presidential election in a historic landslide. During those same two years, Johnson surpassed all 20th-century presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the number of important progressive programs he managed to steer through Congress. For a brief time, LBJ’s oversized presence on the public stage diverted Americans from memories of the awful events in Dallas that elevated him to the presidency.
“Johnson, due to his background in Southern politics and rough personal style, was never convincing as a spokesman for the liberal movement, especially among contemporaries used to rallying around the likes of FDR and JFK.”
Johnson's collapse was as startling as his ascent. By late 1966, beset by urban riots and rising crime, mounting opposition to his policy in Vietnam, and the unanticipated costs of Great Society programs, Johnson lost control of the national agenda—and along with it his influence over Congress. His approval ratings fell to 35 percent in 1967 and 1968. By this time, LBJ's critics were beginning to look back upon Kennedy's assassination as a turning point that gave power to an ambitious politician ill-equipped to exercise it. Under attack from left and right, and facing primary challenges from Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, Johnson told the nation in early 1968 that he would not seek his party's nomination for the presidency. Defeated and discredited, he served out the remaining months of his term before retreating in poor health to his Texas ranch, where he died in January 1973.
The Johnson saga has been told many times and in many ways, by liberal critics who identify LBJ's presidency with the failed intervention in Vietnam, by conservatives who see in the Great Society a case study in governmental "overreach," and by a list of historians and journalists who attribute Johnson's collapse to his own personal failures. Who was the real Lyndon Baines Johnson...
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Photo by Gene Forte / Stringer
This piece originally appeared in The Weekly Standard