The Not-So-Great Society

Not much talk about today's fiftieth anniversary, is there?

No, not that fiftieth anniversary, the one that the Supreme Court rendered irrelevant this past June.  I'm talking about the fiftieth anniversary of the death of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who died of a heart attack at the age of 64. 

Lyndon Johnson is mostly remembered for escalating the war in Vietnam, though he spent his last year in office trying to en American combat operations in negotiations with the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese governments (a process Richard Nixon threw a monkey wrench in to help himself in the 1968 presidential election).  But Johnson's reputation has improved among historians for the sweeping and transformative programs he shepherded through Congress - the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Job Corps, Medicare, public broadcasting, the 1965 immigration law that ended restrictions on nationals from non-Western countries, conservation, highway beautification (his wife Lady Bird pushed that), and the War On Poverty.  Many lives were made better and stronger from Johnson's initiatives.

We don't need a second New Deal.  We need a second Great Society.   The trouble is, a good deal of the first one has been dismantled, and President Biden ran into road blocks in the previous Congress when he tried to push a second one through.  Although Biden has already pushed through more progressive legislation than any President since Johnson, he had to deal with small majorities in both houses and now has to deal with a Republican House of Representatives - two conditions Lyndon Johnson never had to deal with.  Also, in the 1960s, the country was more united on trying to make America better  for future generations.  Today, Americans are so polarized on how to improve their lot that nothing gets done and there are far-rightists who are hell-bent on undoing Johnson's progressive legacy as well as Biden's.  

Look upon these Mighty Works, this once Great Society . . . and despair.

It is nothing short of high irony that Johnson died five days before a cease-fire in Vietnam was announced, which President Nixon declared was "peace with honor."  It was neither.  

Below is a clip of Walter Cronkite announcing Lyndon Johnson's death on "The CBS Evening News" on Monday, January 22, 1973.