Lyndon Baines Johnson, the thirty-sixth President of the United States, was an oversized man of overbearing charm. Through a combination of diplomacy, flattery, and compromise, Lyndon Johnson became one of the most successful statesmen ever to hold the position of Senate Majority Leader. Informal in dress and demeanor, Johnson did not think twice about the possible impropriety of lifting up his shirt to show reporters the scars from his most recent operation. With a big nose and even bigger ears, a jutting lower jaw, and a leathery face that was furrowed with age, President Johnson had the weathered look and manner of an old Texas cattle rancher. The way he held his thick brow over the dark, almost squinting, slits of his eyes lent his face an air of quiet confidence. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, President Johnson made use of the overwhelming national grief to push Kennedy's sweeping civil rights bills through Congress. His success in holding the nation together during a time of national crisis, and actually turning the horrible event into a positive lasting legacy, earned him his own term as President. President Johnson took the social reform policies of the Kennedy Administration to new levels in a domestic program which he called "The Great Society." President Johnson's "Great Society" was responsible for a myriad of reforms, from Project Head Start and various antipoverty and urban renewal programs to Medicare and progressive civil rights acts. Despite the great, lasting successes of "The Great Society" program, Johnson's term was ultimately consumed in the shadows of the unpopular war in Vietnam. Continuing the foreign policy practiced by the three previous administrations, President Johnson felt compelled to escalate the situation in Vietnam even though war was never officially declared by Congress. The war put such a financial strain on the federal budget that Johnson was forced to sacrifice a number of his more costly programs. Furthermore, the fact that the President had usurped Congress's right to declare war cost him the support he needed to push his domestic legislation through Congress. He recognized that his position on Vietnam kept him from being an effective President, yet he could not in good conscience change his position. In the end he decided that the nation could resolve the situation better if he were to step down. In a speech which he delivered in March of 1968, he unexpectedly declined to run in the following year's election.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was born August 20, 1908 in the small town of Stonewall, Texas. He was the eldest of five children born to Sam and Rebekah Johnson, both of whom taught in local public schools. Both Lyndon's father and grandfather had at one time served in the Texas State Senate. When Lyndon was five, his family moved to nearby Johnson City, a small town named for his grandfather. Lyndon attended elementary school and high school in the Johnson City public school system. After high school he traveled with a group of friends to California, staying away nine months before a lack of job opportunities forced him to hitchhike back to Texas. Upon returning home, Lyndon worked on a road construction crew for a year before enrolling in Southwest Texas State Teacher's College in 1927. Johnson borrowed $75 from a local bank to pay his initial tuition, and then took a job as a janitor to pay the rest of his way through school. Lyndon graduated in 1930 and began teaching public speaking at a high school in Houston. One year later a friend by the name of Richard Kleberg, who had just won a seat in the United States House of Representatives, offered Lyndon a job as his personal aide in Washington. Over the course of the four years Lyndon Johnson worked as Kleberg's aide, he became a strong supporter of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs and took a year of law courses at Georgetown University. In 1935 President Roosevelt appointed Johnson the director of the Texas district of the National Youth Administration, where he was responsible for organizing employment and educational opportunities for young people.
On November 17, 1934 Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia "Lady Bird" Alta Taylor, the daughter of a Texas rancher and store owner. The couple had two daughters, Lynda and Luci. Luci Johnson married Patrick J. Nugent in a Washington ceremony on August 6, 1966; Lynda Johnson married Charles S. Robb in a ceremony held in the White House Rose Garden on December 9, 1967.
See Lady Bird Johnson: First Lady Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson founded and chaired the First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Nation's Capital, served as the honorary chairperson of Project Head Start for disadvantaged children, and kept busy taking care of many other important political and social projects.
In 1937 James Buchanan, the representative from Johnson's home district, passed away, and Johnson began campaigning in the special election as a New Deal Democratic candidate. He won the election and was re-elected for a full term in 1938 and again in 1940. In the House, Johnson fought for public housing, a rural electric program, and reform legislation to make the government more efficient.
In 1941 Lyndon Johnson made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate. A month after his narrow defeat, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Johnson volunteered for active duty. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy and given command of a small ship in the South Pacific. Lieutenant Johnson served on only one surveillance mission in the Australian combat zone before President Roosevelt recalled all members of Congress back to Washington in 1942. Lieutenant Johnson received the Silver Star for his service in World War II. Back home, Johnson remained in the House for seven more years before resigning his position for a seat in the Senate.
Lyndon Johnson ran for the Senate again in 1948. He beat Coke Stevenson, his Republican opponent in a landslide victory, and took his seat the following January. Senator Johnson was elected Democratic Minority Leader and chairman of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee in 1953. With the midterm election of 1954, which gave the Democrats a majority in the Senate, Johnson was elected Senate Majority Leader. As Majority Leader, he was responsible for the passage of two major civil rights bills, in 1957 and 1960 He also served as chairman of the Aeronautical and Space Committee, which was responsible for passing the legislation which established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Senator Johnson bid for the Presidential nomination of the national Democratic Party at the convention in Los Angeles in 1960, but lost to Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy offered Johnson the Vice Presidential nomination, and Johnson accepted. The Republicans nominated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for President and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. for Vice President. The Kennedy/Johnson ticket beat the Nixon/ Lodge ticket by a slim margin in the popular election and in the electoral college. Lyndon Johnson became the Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1961.
As Vice President, Lyndon Johnson was a member of the National Security Council, Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Chairman of the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities (which had been established by President Kennedy), and Chairman of the Peace Corps Advisory Council, which had also been established directly by President Kennedy. Vice President Johnson also went on a number of goodwill tours to Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. In November of 1963, President Kennedy went on a speaking tour of the United States, campaigning for his reelection the following year. He stopped in Texas to cure a split that had developed in that state's Democratic party. Since it was his home state, Vice President Johnson accompanied the President on his visit to Texas. On November 22, 1963 President Kennedy was on his way to make a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart when he was shot and killed. After President Kennedy was pronounced dead, Vice President Johnson, who had been riding in the car behind the President's in the motorcade, traveled to the Dallas Airport where he boarded Air Force One with the intention of returning to Washington D.C. for his inauguration. Johnson, however, chose not to wait, and Judge Sarah F. Hughes administered the oath of office to him in Air Force One while it was parked on the runway of the Dallas Airport. Lyndon Baines Johnson became the thirty-sixth President of the United States on November 22, 1963.
In his first address to Congress, President Johnson declared his commitment to following the programs of the Kennedy Administration. In a time of great national grief, President Johnson recognized the opportunity to push the tax cut and sweeping civil rights reform legislation, proposed by President Kennedy, through Congress. On July 2, 1964 Congress approved the Civil Rights Act, making it illegal for employers, labor unions, and any public institution to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. Also established in conjunction with the Civil Rights Act was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That same year, President Johnson also pushed Kennedy's across-the-board tax cut bill through Congress. In April 1964, President Johnson proved his skill in mediating conflicts with a crisis that erupted from a railroad strike. Management refused to negotiate because they felt that old labor contracts forced them to hire workers for jobs that were no longer necessary. President Johnson invited both labor and management to the White House for a conference to settle the dispute. The conference lasted twelve days before a settlement was reached.
In the summer of 1964 North Vietnamese gunboats fired on American destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Johnson received a blank check from Congress to take any measures necessary to repel future attacks. On November 27, 1964 President Johnson announced he would continue the Vietnam foreign policy by his last three predecessors.
President Johnson's success in passing the Kennedy legislation won him the nomination of the Democratic party to run for his own term in 1964. Hubert Humphrey won the Vice Presidential nomination. The Republicans nominated the conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, and Senator William E. Miller of New York for Vice President. President Johnson campaigned on a platform which promised to continue brisk social and economic reform which he called "The Great Society." The Johnson/Humphrey ticket beat Goldwater/Miller by a large popular margin, and by 486 to 52 in the electoral college.
See Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey: In 1968, when Johnson decided not to run for President again, Humphrey won the Democratic Presidential nomination, but lost the election to Richard Nixon.
The "Great Society" programs passed during President Johnson's own term included the establishment of a Department of Housing and Urban Development, Robert C. Weaver, the first African American cabinet member, was appointed its director. Also established during the Johnson Administration was the Department of Transportation, Medicare (a plan providing medical insurance for the elderly) and a plan for increased federal aid for education. In 1965 Congress outlawed literacy tests as a prerequisite for voting. Also that year, the Appalachia Bill, which was designed to provide federal aid for modernization of impoverished regions left behind by the industrial revolution, was passed. In 1968 a second Civil Rights Act was passed, forbidding discrimination in housing built with federal funds.
When Johnson inherited the problem of Vietnam from President Kennedy, there were 16,000 "military advisers" aiding South Vietnam in its efforts to keep the North Vietnamese communist government from re-unifying the country. By 1965, President Johnson had used the blank check he had received from Congress during the summer of 1964 to raise the number of troops stationed in Vietnam to 184,000; by 1968 he had raised that number to over a half a million. Night after night, television reports showing horrible war atrocities committed on both sides were broadcast on American national news programs. The gruesome footage, combined with the rising death toll of American soldiers, began to turn the tide of public opinion against the war. By 1966 antiwar demonstrations on college campuses were commonplace. The war effort cut into the funds available for President Johnson's "Great Society" programs, and the President also found that his position on the war alienated him from people who had provided the support for his domestic programs in the past. Throughout the war President Johnson believed that an end to the conflict was in reach and continued to look for diplomatic solutions while using military victories to improve his position at the bargaining table. President Johnson recognized that his unpopular position on Vietnam hurt his effectiveness as President, but believing that if South Vietnam fell to communism, then the rest of Asia was sure to follow, he could not in good conscience end the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Feeling that the situation would come to a better end without him, and also hoping to pursue diplomatic measures as a private citizen in bringing about peace, President Johnson announced that he would not run for a second term in a speech which he delivered on March 31, 1968.
President Johnson left office on January 20, 1969 and returned to his home in Hill Country, Texas. In 1971 he published The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency 1963-1969. That same year the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library opened in Austin, Texas. Lyndon Johnson suffered a heart attack on January 22, 1973 and was pronounced dead on arrival at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
