Education was the real road out of poverty, Johnson believed, and he wanted to be the Education President. There were several programs to provide new educational opportunities for America's youth.
"Before I am through," he said, "no community in America will be able ever again to ignore the poverty in its midst." And now he was committing his power to the cause of the poor. Roosevelt, in the Senate, representing an entire conservative state, he had tacked to the right. Although he had begun his career in Congress as a staunch supporter of Franklin D. He stunned many of his old constituents by declaring war on poverty in the early days of his presidency. There were programs designed to reduce the conditions of poverty in which too many Americans were trapped. The list of those legislative achievements was staggering, because his vision was large, and his reach was wide. The result was the outpouring of legislation that would continue-although encountering significant speed bumps caused by the war in Vietnam-right on to the end of his administration five years later. Along with his ability to bring reluctant senators to his side of a proposition, he skillfully exploited the trauma the nation experienced in the wake of Kennedy's murder-a sense that the country wanted to feel that something important and worthwhile was being accomplished in the midst of tragedy. In virtually no time, Johnson-catapulted into the presidency after Kennedy's assassination-changed that condition. Hughes after the assassination of President Kennedy. So many of the Kennedy initiatives were still stalled in committees.Īboard Air Force One, with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side, Lyndon Johnson is sworn in as President by Judge Sarah T. Kennedy had had an ambitious agenda, but he had faced a Congress that was often hostile and almost always reluctant to move. His reaction was that the only power he had was the power to persuade-which prompted another senator to observe, "Good God Almighty, that's like saying the only wind we have is a hurricane." It was legendary, but it was real, and it was a power Johnson carried with him into the White House. When Johnson was majority leader in the Senate, reporters started calling him powerful. His legacy-his revolution, if indeed that is what it should be called-was an avalanche of legislation. Barbara Jordan, in the last year of her life, gave her assessment of what that reshaping amounted to: "He stripped the government of its neutrality, and made it an agent on behalf of the people." "Lyndon Johnson was a revolutionary and what he let loose in this country was a true revolution." Johnson was "the man who fundamentally reshaped the role of government in the United States," says historian David Bennett of Syracuse University. "History should make no mistake," Joseph Califano, one of his chief lieutenants of those days says of him. It is the centennial of LBJ's birth, an appropriate occasion to reflect on the life of the man who once loomed so large on the national stage-to reflect particularly on the five years of his presidency. But this year affords another opportunity.
The century he set for evaluation is still a long way off. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried."
"I hope it may be said, 100 years from now," he told the Congress as he departed Washington in 1969, "that we helped to make this country more just.
Johnson counted on history to make the final assessment. President Lyndon Johnson speaks to the press in the Oval Office, June 17, 1965.
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