Lyndon B. Johnson

On November 22, 1963, the prosperity and unity enjoyed by Americans under the beloved presidencies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy were smashed to bits by the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, a Soviet sympathizer who had briefly lived in Soviet Belarus and even attempted to move to Fidel Castro's Cuba, despised Kennedy's support of Cold War anti-communist policies like the Truman Doctrine. So, when Kennedy visited Dallas, Texas, where Oswald lived, Oswald took the opportunity to slay the man he held such angry, vehement hatred toward. While traveling across Dallas in a hoodless red car cheerfully celebrated by his droves of fans and voters, Kennedy was shot by Oswald. The bleeding president was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died later that day. The next ~15 years would be plagued by war, economic turmoil, political division, corruption, and bleak despair. Much of this was the result of Kennedy's death; a lot of it was not. But regardless, Kennedy's murder remains a useful demarcation point. With Kennedy's death, Lyndon. B. Johnson became president.

Although Johnson's impromptu inauguration began America's 20-year sojourn into melancholy, I still consider Johnson a good president. His tenure may have been marked by many of the same crises defining the 1970s and early 1980s, but Johnson was not responsible for a majority of those issues. Instead, he expanded upon the noble policies passed by Kennedy, giving America one final chance at a happy 1970s before it was imprisoned in the corruption of Richard Nixon and the incompetence of Gerald Ford. One of the reasons I hold such a high opinion of Johnson's presidency is that he did a ton of wonderful things for racial minorities, particularly black Americans as they demanded more respect and freedom during the Civil Rights Movement. On June 11, 1963, Kennedy requested that Congress draft a bill ending segregation. Congress complied, but Kennedy's life (unbeknownst to all of America) was running short, giving him very little time to ensure the bill passed. That responsibility went on to Johnson.

Johnson was a southerner from Texas, but he still despised segregation. Aside from knowing that it was morally wrong and politically authoritarian, he also worried that it produced unnecessary racial tensions that distracted the south from its real issues. So, he was determined to pass Kennedy's bill. On November 27, 1963, Johnson gave a speech in which he commemorated Kennedy's life. During the address, he suggested that since Kennedy supported the end of segregation, the federal government as a whole could honor his memory by passing the anti-segregation law. This put additional pressure on Congressmen to vote in favor of the bill. Throughout the spring of 1964, Johnson also met with numerous Congressmen, selected a proposal they liked, and promised to sign that law in exchange for their vote in favor of the civil rights law. By July, the bill (known now as the Civil Rights Act of 1964) was approved by both chambers of Congress. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not only did this statute end segregation, but it also prohibited corporations from denying people employment on the basis of their race and said that no federal funds could be directed toward companies, programs, or organizations engaging in racist or discriminatory behavior.

Later in 1964, Johnson became the Democratic nominee in that year's election, running against Republican Barry Goldwater in the generals. Goldwater was a far-right extremist who wanted to sell government agencies to private bidders and nuke communist countries, meaning that Johnson easily defeated him on Election Day. Soon after Johnson's first - and only - typical inauguration on January 20, 1965, another civil rights crisis broke out. On February 18, 1965, a civil rights activist named Jimmie Lee Jackson was attacked by police officers, resulting in his death on February 26, 1965. In retaliation, Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Montgomery to Selma (two cities in Alabama) on March 7, 1965. On the way to Selma, King's protestors crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. While there, they were teargassed and violently beaten by local police, outraging the entire country.

In response to these events, Johnson requested that a bill be drafted enforcing black voting rights. Following the civil war, the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, requiring that no one have their right to vote denied or abridged simply because of their race. The south rarely, if ever, enforced the 15th Amendment. Instead, they found loopholes. They would require voters to pay a tax to vote (since black people tended to be poorer after centuries of exploitation and abuse, it was hard to pay said taxes) and to pass purposefully confusing "literacy tests" that were almost impossible to complete. The laws instituting these measures would also include a "grandfather clause", saying that if someone's grandfather would have been allowed to vote prior to the civil war (which would mean that they were white), then they wouldn't have to pay a poll tax or take a literacy test. On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the bill resulting from his work with Congress. Known as the Voting Rights Act, the law banned literacy tests as prerequisites for voting, allowed the attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes, and set up federal supervision of the state of voting in communities where less than half of all non-white residents were registered to vote.

Around the time of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Selma-to-Montgomery March, the seeds for Johnson's biggest flaw were sown: In order to dispel Goldwater's accusations that he was soft on communism, Johnson sent an American naval vessel to the southern, capitalist half of Vietnam. The purpose of the ship was to discourage the socialist North Vietnam from invading South Vietnam. On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese troops attacked the ship in what Johnson dubbed "the Gulf of Tonkin Incident". It is likely that Johnson heavily exaggerated the severity of the attack and some have theorized that he made up the incident entirely. Regardless, using the Gulf of Tonkin Incident as an excuse, Johnson began bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail - a network of material aid provided by Marxists across Southeast Asia to the North Vietnamese government - on March 2, 1965, in what was known as Operation Rolling Thunder. Soon after, on March 8, 1965, Johnson sent some US troops to South Vietnam, ordering them to guard a South Vietnamese airfield and not to fire unless fired upon. The Vietnam War had begun.

To be fair, both Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had cemented some level of US involvement with Vietnam even before Johnson took office. Johnson also sought to discourage Soviet and Chinese retaliation by keeping his bombing campaigns limited and tame. Full brutality wasn't unleashed until Nixon became president. However, Johnson was still wrong in beginning the Vietnam War. Millions of Vietnamese and American soldiers were injured with several hundred thousand being killed. Civilians suffered and supplies were diverted away from long-term social reforms (even those that Johnson wanted to enact at home!) and it was because of hyperbole on Johnson's part. It may have even been a blatant lie! Johnson also made some truly vile choices during the Vietnam War, such as bombing oil and lotion factories to pressure North Vietnam into surrender.

Since other presidents were complicit in the Vietnam War, it doesn't hurt Johnson's score for me as it would with many others. Additionally, Johnson did start pursuing peace toward the end. For instance, on Christmas Day 1966, he temporarily halted bombings to show North Vietnam that his administration had a peaceful and diplomatic side. On January 31, 1968, the Tet Offensive (named for the fact that it was launched on the Vietnamese New Year) was launched. During the Tet Offensive - which ran until September 23 - North Vietnamese troops seized dozens of towns, villages, and cities across South Vietnam. Although no settlement was ever held for more than a few days, the Tet Offensive still unveiled many humiliating defeats for the US and South Vietnam. As a result, on March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that all US bombings of North Vietnam beneath the 20th parallel would be prohibited and that peace talks between American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese diplomats would begin in Paris, France. This also keeps Johnson's score up. Although it was due to military pressure, Johnson initiated the conferences that, under Nixon and Ford, would culminate in the end of the Vietnam War.

Aside from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act, Johnson also did many other great things for civil rights. After James Early Ray killed MLK on April 4, 1968, Johnson responded to the subsequent riots by signing the Equal Housing Act, which banned racial discrimination in the housing industry. Johnson also appointed Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court, and Robert Weaver, the first black cabinet member. Back in 1924, the same year that Johnson graduated high school, then-President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. This law set up a specific number of people from each country that could live in the US at any given moment. It was one of the most abhorrent and xenophobic restrictions on immigration in American history. On October 3, 1965, Johnson repealed this law by signing the Immigration and Nationality Act. This law technically maintained the quotas Coolidge established, but allowed people to move to the US even if their country had already met its limit provided that that person either works in a field that is highly desired in the United States or has family members in America.

But outside of the Vietnam War, was Johnson's foreign policy good? I would say yes. There were other issues with Johnson's foreign policy separate from the Vietnam War - mainly his expansion of US influence in Latin America - but the positives generally outweighed the negatives. For example, while Johnson generally increased US imperialism in South and Central America, he was also the first person to propose transferring control of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. That idea would be fully actualized under Jimmy Carter. Johnson also brokered two major nuclear arms deals with the Soviet Union. The first was the Outer Space Treaty, which simply banned the storage of Soviet and American nuclear weapons in space. The second was the more significant Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which said that neither the US nor the USSR could host their nuclear missiles outside of their own borders. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty also barred Moscow and Washington DC from helping other countries develop nuclear arsenals.

On May 13, 1967, Soviet officials falsely told Egyptian vice president Anwar el-Sadat that Israel was planning to invade Syria. Furious, Egypt, on May 15, 1967, stationed troops on the Sinai Peninsula, right next to its border with Israel. They then blockaded the Strait of Tiran on May 22, 1967, thus severing Israeli access to one of the lifelines of Israel's trade network and economy. From there, they signed a defensive pact with Jordan on May 30, 1967. These events understandably terrified Israel, which began attacking the Egyptian airforce on June 5, 1967, sparking the Six-Day War. Before the war began, however, Johnson took notice of the crisis and tried to prevent it from exploding into an armed conflict. He worked with Israel to produce the Red Sea Regatta, a plan in which a Western ship would be placed near Egypt's blockade of the Strait of Tiran, thus scaring Cairo into withdrawing. Johnson, as he made very clear, had no intention of actually firing. He also routinely encouraged Israel not to strike. Unfortunately, his warnings were not heeded and the war happened regardless. But still, while Johnson caused one war - the Vietnam War - he also tried to halt another before it could take thousands of lives.

A few months before the 1964 election, Johnson launched the Great Society, a campaign to reform the American government, US economy, and environmental policy in a way that would expand personal liberty and establish more opportunities for ethnic minorities and impoverished communities. To these ends, Johnson added 9,000,000 acres of land to conservation, reduced pollution, and established numerous scenic trails across national landmarks. He also signed the Highway Beautification Act, in which the federal government threatened to strip states of 10% of their highway funds if they didn't dedicate adequate amounts of energy and resources toward making their roads beautiful and ecologically sustainable. The Highway Beautification Act actually ended up being very important for the environmental movement as a whole, as it caused environmentalists to become interested in protecting even the tiniest patches of nature attached to roads and cities.

Johnson also created Medicare and Medicaid, programs that provide free healthcare to the impoverished and elderly, and a set of White House commissions to study various diseases. As part of the Great Society, Johnson set up Project Head Start, a summer camp that teaches important life skills to children between the ages of 3 and 8. Similarly, he created the Job Corps to teach young people the skills they need for numerous well-paying, respected professions, as well as the Office of Economic Opportunity to address the root causes of poverty. The Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development also stem from the Great Society campaign, as well as the Freedom of Information Act which requires the federal government to release small portions of disclosed documents when asked by citizens for that knowledge. Johnson's presidency marked the first time that the arts and humanities received federal funds and grants.

Throughout his tenure, Johnson would give economic aid to poor cities in exchange for said cities passing new housing regulations. If more than half of the students attending a school district are impoverished, then Johnson would give that school district federal economic aid. While this was a good policy, Johnson deserves criticism for giving religious schools funds as well, as that violates the Constitution. Several new consumer protection laws were created by the Johnson Administration. Johnson signed the Traffic Safety Act, giving states additional federal aid if they composed plans to reduce car accidents and traffic jams on their roads.

Overall, I consider Lyndon B. Johnson to be an amazing president. He would accompany Kennedy, Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower in my top 10 were it not for 1 single factor: The Vietnam War. It is this imperialist fearmongering that keeps Johnson out of the most lovely and coveted status a US president can receive: To have their name written in gold, frankincense, and myrrh alongside the men who guided our country through times as difficult as the Great Depression or eras as terrifying as the civil war or Cuban Missile Crisis. But when setting aside that fatal flaw, it becomes apparent how amazing Johnson's presidency really was: Johnson ended segregation, finally enforced black voting rights, fought for immigrants, desegregated the upper echelons of the executive and judicial branches at the same time that he supported nationwide integration, tried to prevent the Six-Day War, signed a duo of vital nuclear arms reduction treaties, and implemented almost 2 dozen new reforms to enrich the lives of all Americans, regardless of race, national origin, gender, or economic class.