HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/anarchy/essays/schoolsucks/lyndon.txt

Text File | 1996-04-27 | 11KB | 184 lines

                              LYNDON B JOHNSON
                              ================
         Johnson was born on Aug.  27, 1908, near Johnson City, Tex., the
    eldest son of Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr., and Rebekah Baines Johnson.  His
    father, a struggling farmer and cattle speculator in the hill country
    of Texas, provided only an uncertain income for his family.
    Politically active, Sam Johnson served five terms in the Texas
    legislature.  His mother had varied cultural interests and placed high
    value on education; she was fiercely ambitious for her children.
    Johnson attended public schools in Johnson City and received a B.S.
    degree from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos.  He
    then taught for a year in Houston before going to Washington in 1931 as
    secretary to a Democratic Texas congressman, Richard M.  Kleberg.
    During the next 4 years Johnson developed a wide network of political
    contacts in Washington, D.C.  On Nov.  17, 1934, he married Claudia
    Alta Taylor, known as "Lady Bird." A warm, intelligent, ambitious
    woman, she was a great asset to Johnson's career.  They had two
    daughters, Lynda Byrd, born in 1944, and Luci Baines, born in 1947.  In
    1933, Franklin D.  Roosevelt entered the White House.  Johnson greatly
    admired the president, who named him, at age 27, to head the National
    Youth Administration in Texas.  This job, which Johnson held from 1935
    to 1937, entailed helping young people obtain employment and schooling.
    It confirmed Johnson's faith in the positive potential of government
    and won for him a group of supporters in Texas.

         In 1937, Johnson sought and won a Texas seat in Congress, where he
    championed public works, reclamation, and public power programs.  When
    war came to Europe he backed Roosevelt's efforts to aid the Allies.
    During World War II he served a brief tour of active duty with the U.S.
    Navy in the Pacific (1941-42) but returned to Capitol Hill when
    Roosevelt recalled members of Congress from active duty.  Johnson
    continued to support Roosevelt's military and foreign-policy programs.
    During the 1940s, Johnson and his wife developed profitable business
    ventures, including a radio station, in Texas.  In 1948 he ran for the
    U.S.  Senate, winning the Democratic party primary by only 87 votes.
    (This was his second try; in 1941 he had run for the Senate and lost to
    a conservative opponent.) The opposition accused him of fraud and
    tagged him "Landslide Lyndon." Although challenged, unsuccessfully, in
    the courts, he took office in 1949.

                        Senator and Vice-President.
                        ---------------------------

         Johnson moved quickly into the Senate hierarchy.  In 1953 he won
    the job of Senate Democratic leader.  The next year he was easily
    re-elected as senator and returned to Washington as majority leader, a
    post he held for the next 6 years despite a serious heart attack in
    1955.  The Texan proved to be a shrewd, skillful Senate leader.  A
    consistent opponent of civil rights legislation until 1957, he
    developed excellent personal relationships with powerful conservative
    Southerners.  A hard worker, he impressed colleagues with his attention
    to the details of legislation and his willingness to compromise.

         In the late 1950s, Johnson began to think seriously of running for
    the presidency in 1960.  His record had been fairly conservative,
    however.  Many Democratic liberals resented his friendly association
    with the Republican president, Dwight D.  Eisenhower; others considered
    him a tool of wealthy Southwestern gas and oil interests.  Either to
    soften this image as a conservative or in response to inner conviction,
    Johnson moved slightly to the left on some domestic issues, especially
    on civil rights laws, which he supported in 1957 and 1960.  Although
    these laws proved ineffective, Johnson had demonstrated that he was a
    very resourceful Senate leader.

         To many northern Democrats, however, Johnson remained a sectional
    candidate.  The presidential nomination of 1960 went to Senator John F.
    Kennedy of Massachusetts.  Kennedy, a northern Roman Catholic, then
    selected Johnson as his running mate to balance the Democratic ticket.
    In November 1960 the Democrats defeated the Republican candidates,
    Richard M.  Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, by a narrow margin.  Johnson
    was appointed by Kennedy to head the President's Committee on Equal
    Employment Opportunities, a post that enabled him to work on behalf of
    blacks and other minorities.  As vice-president, he also undertook some
    missions abroad, which offered him some limited insights into
    international problems.

                                 Presidency
                                 ----------

         The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963,
    elevated Johnson to the White House, where he quickly proved a
    masterful, reassuring leader in the realm of domestic affairs.  In
    1964, Congress passed a tax-reduction law that promised to promote
    economic growth and the Economic Opportunity Act, which launched the
    program called the War on Poverty.  Johnson was especially skillful in
    securing a strong Civil Rights Act in 1964.  In the years to come it
    proved to be a vital source of legal authority against racial and
    sexual discrimination.  In 1964 the Republicans nominated Senator Barry
    M. Goldwater of Arizona as their presidential nominee.  Goldwater was
    an extreme conservative in domestic policy and an advocate of strong
    military action to protect American interests in Vietnam.  Johnson had
    increased the number of U.S.  military personnel there from 16,000 at
    the time of Kennedy's assassination to nearly 25,000 a year later.
    Contrasted to Goldwater, however, he seemed a model of restraint.
    Johnson, with Hubert H.  Humphrey as his running mate, ran a low-key
    campaign and overwhelmed Goldwater in the election.  The Arizonan won
    only his home state and five others in the Deep South.

         Johnson's triumph in 1964 gave him a mandate for the Great
    Society, as he called his domestic program.  Congress responded by
    passing the MEDICARE program, which provided health services to the
    elderly, approving federal aid to elementary and secondary education,
    supplementing the War on Poverty, and creating the Department of
    Housing and Urban Development.  It also passed another important civil
    rights law -- the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

         At this point Johnson began the rapid deepening of U.S.
    involvement in Vietnam; as early as February 1965, U.S.  planes began
    to bomb North Vietnam.  American troop strength in Vietnam increased to
    more than 180,000 by the end of the year and to 500,000 by 1968.  Many
    influences led Johnson to such a policy .  Among them were personal
    factors such as his temperamental activism, faith in U.S.  military
    power, and staunch anti-communism.  These qualities also led him to
    intervene militarily in the Dominican Republic -- allegedly to stop a
    Communist takeover -- in April 1965.  Like many Americans who recalled
    the "appeasement" of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Johnson thought the
    United States must be firm or incur a loss of credibility.

         While the nation became deeply involved in Vietnam, racial tension
    sharpened at home, culminating in widespread urban race riots between
    1965 and 1968.  The breakdown of the interracial civil rights movement,
    together with the imperfections of some of Johnson's Great Society
    programs, resulted in Republican gains in the 1966 elections and
    effectively thwarted Johnson's hope s for further congressional
    cooperation.

         It was the policy of military escalation in Vietnam, however, that
    proved to be Johnson's undoing as president.  It deflected attention
    from domestic concerns, resulted in sharp inflation, and prompted
    rising criticism, especially among young, draft-aged people.
    Escalation also failed to win the war.  The drawn-out struggle made
    Johnson even more secretive, dogmatic, and hypersensitive to criticism.
    His usually sure political instincts were failing.

         The New Hampshire presidential primary of 1968, in which the
    anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy made a strong showing, revealed the
    dwindling of Johnson's support.  Some of Johnson's closest advisors now
    began to counsel a de-escalation policy in Vietnam.  Confronted by
    mounting opposition, Johnson made two surprise announcements on Mar.
    31, 1968:  he would stop the bombing in most of North Vietnam and seek
    a negotiated end to the war, and he would no t run for re-election.

         Johnson's influence thereafter remained strong enough to dictate
    the nomination of Vice-President Humphrey, who had supported the war,
    as the Democratic presidential candidate for the 1968 election.
    Although Johnson stopped all bombing of the North on November 1, he
    failed to make real concessions at the peace table, and the war dragged
    on.  Humphrey lost in a close race with the Republican candidate,
    Richard M.  Nixon.

                                Retirement.
                                -----------

         After stepping down from the presidency in January 1969, Johnson
    returned to his ranch in Texas.  There he and his aides prepared his
    memoirs, which were published in 1971 as The Vantage Point:
    Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969.  He also supervised
    construction of the Johnson presidential library in Austin.  Johnson
    died on Jan.  22, 1973, 5 days before the conclusion of the treaty by
    which the United States withdrew from Vietnam.


                                Bibliography
                                ------------

    Evans, Rowland, and Novak, Robert, Lyndon B.  Johnson, The Exercise of
    Power : A Political Biography (1966);

    Geyelin, Philip, Lyndon B.  Johnson and the World (1966);

    Goldman, Eric F., The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (1969);

    Johnson, Lady Bird, White House Diary (1970);

    Kearns, Doris, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976);

    Schandler, Herbert, The Unmaking of a President:  Lyndon Johnson and
    Vietnam (1977);

    White, Theodore, The Making of the President--1964 (1965);

    Wicker, Tom, JFK and LBJ:  The Influence of Personality Upon Politics
    (1968; repr.  1970).#