The Great Society

11 Key excerpts on "The Great Society"

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  Growing Up in a Land Called Honalee

  The Sixties in the Lives of American Children

  • Joel P. Rhodes(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of Missouri

    (Publisher)

  Qualitative changes must shape the political agenda ahead in order to ensure the realization of his vision: “The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” 1 In the broad context of modern American political history, Johnson’s ambitious Great Society can be understood as the third (and final) major era of reform in the twentieth century, building on the Progressives’ regulatory state while expanding the New Deal’s welfare safety net through the pursuit of social justice for all. The cherished notion of equality of opportunity lay at its core. LBJ believed that what had left so many mired in poverty and prohibited countless others from achieving the American Dream, even in the midst of unprecedented national affluence, was a debilitating combination of scant education, inadequate health care and nutrition, substandard housing, insufficient job training, and outright racism. Johnson aimed to eliminate these barriers and level the playing field so that his fellow Americans could master their own fate. “I know that government cannot resolve all problems,” he conceded

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  Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

  • Doris Kearns Goodwin(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Open Road Media

    (Publisher)

  These gigantic aspirations—although clearly unattainable within one Presidency, or one generation—were not, however, intended merely as rhetorical exhortation. They expressed Johnson’s intention to embark on a mammoth program of social reform. The climate that made it possible for a President to adopt such large ambitions and to succeed in enacting so many of his proposals was the product of converging historical circumstances. The shock of Kennedy’s death, the civil rights movement, an emerging awareness of the extent and existence of poverty, a reduction of threatening tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, all helped Americans to focus public energies and perceptions on the problems of their own country. More important was the deepening confidence that sustained economic growth, steadily increasing affluence seemed now an enduring and irreversible reality of American life. Therefore the problem was no longer simply the creation of wealth—that would continue—but how best to apply our riches to the improvement of American life.

  Moreover, The Great Society was a response to—indeed, part of—gradually emerging currents in American awareness—the sense that we were losing control of our own society, that the means we had devised to create wealth had consequences that were beginning to threaten and degrade humanity. Along with the civil rights and peace movements came consumerism, environmentalism, and women’s liberation, all protests against the system, not just for its economic deficiencies, but at its constriction of the possibilities for human fulfillment.

  Thus a multitude of changing conditions and attitudes conspired to convince a President who was bent on achievements that would leave his mark on the country’s history that The Great Society was not a utopian vision, but the inevitable direction for progressive action. Indeed, without this conviction neither the concept nor the many successful efforts of implementation would ever have come from the White House. For political leaders in a democracy are not revolutionaries or leaders of creative thought. The best of them are those who respond wisely to changes and movements already under way. The worst, the least successful, are those who respond badly or not at all, and those who misunderstand the direction of already visible change.

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  Affirmative Action

  • John W. Johnson, Robert P. Green Jr.(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  He put it thusly: “The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice. . . . It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of 30 affirmative action the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. . . . It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.” 18 The American electorate, at least for a short while, was sympathetic with Johnson’s vision. In November1964 Johnson was elected president in his own right. In competition with conservative Barry Goldwater, Johnson amassed 61.1 percent of the popular vote, the most decisive majority in a presidential election to that point in American history. Perhaps more importantly for the prospects of The Great Society, Johnson’s coattails swept in the largest and most liberal majority of senators and representatives serving in Congress since the New Deal. The 89th Congress that assembled in January 1965 did not disappoint the president and those who shared his vision for the country. Most of the legislation that would constitute The Great Society originated in bills drafted in the White House or the Executive Office Building. An impressive 69 per- cent of Johnson’s proposals hammered out in 1965 found their way into law; the figure for 1966 was 56 percent. By contrast, the success rate for Presi- dent Dwight Eisenhower’s legislative agenda in 1957 was 37 percent, and Kennedy’s in 1963 was a mere 27 percent. 19 Moreover, the laws passed in the Johnson years were hardly garden variety. Taken as a whole, the sweep and consequence of Great Society legislation was rivaled only by the laws passed in the early years of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which—not so coincidentally—was the model that Johnson strove to surpass.

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  Presidents from Eisenhower through Johnson, 1953-1969

  Debating the Issues in Pro and Con Primary Documents

  • John King, John R. Vile(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  Johnson never joined those like Huey Long of Louisiana in the 1930s, or "new left" groups of the 1960s, such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who advocated a complete structural overhaul of American society to redistribute wealth and power, but he did believe that wealth and power should be shared particularly in a time of prosperity such as the 1960s. His "Great Society" rested on idealism and optimism about America, and about Americans' relationship with each other and with their govern- ment. Unfortunately for Johnson and for America, local communities resisted Johnson's plans for a national community because they "did not want to be homogenized in some great national blender whose switch was controlled from the White House." 2 The agenda for the "Great Society" was massive. By 1966, Johnson had introduced more than two hundred pieces of "Great Society" legislation in Congress; 181 of which had been passed and signed into law. The range and scope of this legislation was as great as the nation itself. Deeply concerned about equality and opportunity in America, Johnson created agencies within the federal government to promote job training. Johnson thought that opportunity began with education, and so building on the momentum of Eisenhower's commitment to federal support for education, Johnson's "Great Society" legislation included the National Elementary and Second- ary Education Act expanding federal funding for education at all levels. Believing that federal support for education should begin earlier than elementary schools, Johnson created Head Start, a federally funded pre- school program designed to get students learning earlier and assisting parents with childcare. Johnson favored extending these programs and other opportunities to all Americans equally. Accordingly, he was more committed to black civil rights than any postwar president.

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  The American Century

  A History of the United States Since the 1890s

  • Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, Nancy Woloch(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Taylor and Francis

    (Publisher)

  HAPTER FOURTEEN 1963—1968The Great Society and Vietnam

  Martin Luther King Jr., 1966. (AFP/Getty Images)

  John Kennedy bequeathed to Lyndon Baines Johnson (often referred to as "LBJ") a legacy of social reform at home and military interventionism in Vietnam. That turned out to be a highly explosive mixture. Johnson, who wanted to be regarded as "president of all the people," also wanted to achieve a consensus in favor of his Great Society programs. But while he succeeded in implementing those programs in the fields of civil rights, education, and welfare, his escalation of the war in Vietnam led to unprecedented tensions and divisions. The consequences were disastrous. The war undermined social reform, stimulated the growth of irresponsible presidential power, triggered ruinous inflation, eroded fundamental civil liberties, and strained crucial diplomatic alliances. The war led, finally, to violence at home, which, if not so destructive as the violence in Vietnam, was a political turning point. It forced Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race in 1968 and paved the way for the victory of Richard M. Nixon.

  The 1964 Election

  Lyndon Johnson knew as much about the exercise of political power as any American in the post-1945 era. He had grown up in central Texas, learning state and national politics during the New Deal era from such masters as fellow Texan Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives. During the 1950s, when Johnson became leader of the Senate Democratic majority, he often gathered votes by subjecting fellow senators to intense, person-to-person harangues. Such encounters became known as the "treatment"; it was described by one victim as "a great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed in around you." When he moved into the White House, Johnson was perfectly prepared to use the vast powers of the executive branch. "When we made mistakes, I believe we erred because we tried to do too much too soon and never because we stayed away from challenge," he later wrote. "If the Presidency can be said to have been employed and to have been enjoyed, I had employed it to the utmost, and I had enjoyed it to the limit."

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  State of the Union

  Presidential Rhetoric from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush

  • Deborah Kalb, Gerhard Peters, John T. Woolley(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  In the process, Democrats won even larger majorities in the House and Senate. Johnson, a Texan who before serving as Kennedy’s vice president had been Senate majority leader, campaigned in 1964 on the platform of a reform-minded “Great Society.” Working with Congress, Johnson succeeded in 1965 in enacting vast quantities of new legislation; Congress approved 80 of 83 of the president’s plans. Among them were Medicare, which provided health insurance for senior cit-izens; Medicaid, a health plan for the poor; the Voting Rights Act, which aimed to assist minorities in voting; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which helped provide funds for disadvantaged children; and the War on Poverty. In his State of the Union message, Johnson listed a series of goals under the rubric of The Great Society. He stated that the country’s task involved three goals: keeping the economy growing, opening opportunities for all Americans, and improv-ing their quality of life. The president began this message with a look at the international situation. The Cold War between the United States and the communist world was continuing, and the president stated that Americans and Soviets should “come to know each other better” to live in peace. One area that was becoming a greater concern—and before long would domi-nate Johnson’s presidency—was the fighting in Vietnam, where the United States was assisting South Vietnam in its struggle against communist North Vietnam. “Why are we there?” Johnson asked rhetorically, and he provided two answers. The first was that the United States had made a commitment to help an ally fight commu-nism, a commitment that had been honored by three presidents. The second was that if the United States ignored the situation, it would end up increasing the like-lihood of a larger conflict. “Our goal is peace in southeast Asia,” he declared. M r.

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  The American Century

  A History of the United States Since 1941: Volume 2

  • Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, Nancy Woloch(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Lyndon Johnson had greater success than any president since Franklin Roosevelt in putting across his legislative program. After his sweeping triumph in 1964, Johnson could work with comfortable Democratic majorities in Congress. The Democrats—with majorities of 294 to 140 in the House and 68 to 32 in the Senate—enjoyed their largest margin of control since 1937, the year Johnson entered Congress. The seventy-one freshman Democrats in the House, many of whom owed their election to the Johnson landslide, vied with one another in their willingness to cooperate with the White House. Then too, Johnson’s southern background and reputation as a moderate allowed him to enact far-reaching programs without losing his broad popular backing. Those programs often broke sharply with prevailing practice. The Revenue Act (1964) cut taxes by a whopping $11.5 billion even while the government was operating at a deficit. Advocates of an expansionary fiscal policy predicted correctly that the resulting boost in purchasing power would spur economic growth. The Housing Act (1965) provided rent supplements for low-income families displaced by urban renewal or otherwise unable to find suitable public housing. The government would subsidize that portion of their rent that exceeded 25 percent of their income. In 1965, too, Congress renovated the immigration laws, removing quotas based on race or national origin that had existed in some form for more than fifty years. The Great Society, however, channeled most of its energies into four other areas: the war on poverty, aid to education, medical care, and civil rights.

  In January 1964 Johnson called for an “unconditional war on poverty,” and later that year Congress approved the Economic Opportunity Act as the chief weapon in that war. The measure created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which sought to provide education, vocational training, and job experience for impoverished youth. The OEO also sponsored community action programs with a view toward improving employment opportunities, health care, housing, and education in poor neighborhoods. These programs were supposed to elicit “the maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served.” The OEO, which spent $750 million in 1965 and $1.5 billion in 1966, succeeded in reducing poverty but not in eliminating it. Government statistics indicated that 15.4 percent of the American people lived in poverty in 1966, compared with 22.1 percent in 1959. Funds for the OEO were always inadequate, and powerful local interests, anxious to get their hands on antipoverty money and patronage, often gained control of the community programs and used them for their own advancement.

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  Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek's Idea of Spontaneous Order

  • P. McNamara, L. Hunt(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Governing The Great Society is a central problem for philosophers, economists, and political scientists today because, whether by choice, evolution, or fate, we live in something like what Hayek termed The Great Society. My chief goal in this introduction is to sketch Hayek’s account of the intellectual, political, and moral landscape of The Great Society. I will focus 2 ● Peter McNamara closely on the argument and indeed the text of Hayek’s three-volume work, Law, Legislation and Liberty, where he most fully develops his account of The Great Society. 1 In doing so, I also wish to provide a context for the chapters that follow. It is this terrain that our authors will explore and sometimes, it must be said, battle over. Subsequent chapters, outlined at the end of this introduction, will develop in depth the themes of liberalism, conservatism, and the idea of spontaneous order. Hayek repeatedly emphasizes the historical uniqueness and precarious existence of The Great Society. It is a development of the last three hundred or so years. It is characteristic of only certain parts of the Western world. And, despite certain resemblances with, it is somehow distinct from the concepts other thinkers have used to describe the unprecedented character of modern life and the peculiar political and moral challenges to which it gives rise. The Great Society is not simply a “nation state,” an “industrial democracy,” a “mass democracy,” a “mass society,” a “mass culture,” or simply “modernity.” What precisely did Hayek mean by The Great Society? Hayek had a penchant for neologisms and for using old words, and even ideas, in new ways. It was part of his rhetorical strategy as he makes clear at the very beginning of The Constitution of Liberty when he remarks: “If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.

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  The Altruistic Imagination

  A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States

  • John Ehrenreich(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  6

  Kennedy, Johnson, and The Great Society

  A systematic and conclusive account of a period so recent as the 1960s and 1970s is not easily written. For one thing, we do not yet have the perspective that only time can bring: It is easy to determine which of the social policies of the Progressive Era or of the New Deal were lasting and significant, which transient or peripheral. But because many of the social policies of the sixties and early seventies—the heightened concerns with poverty, the urban ghetto, racial and sexual discrimination, and the new programs and laws dealing with hunger, health care, reproductive rights, and housing problems—remain matters of intense current political debate, a full history cannot yet be written.

  Each period of reform in American history sheds light upon the previous period—its strengths, characteristic approaches, the issues to which it was blind, its limitations. From the perspective of the creation of the welfare state in the 1930s, the limited, regulatory approach of the Progressive Era is clearly seen; from the perspective of the emphasis on racism and hard-core poverty in the 1960s, the inability of the major New Deal welfare programs to address these issues is revealed. But the period of the sixties has not yet had its subsequent period of reform. Our judgment of it, then, must be a preliminary, anticipatory one.

  Beyond this, the sixties and seventies are part of my own memories. Academic analysis and personal recollection (with all of its inescapable distortions and emotions) are inextricably mixed. I was a participant in many of the events of the sixties, in a limited way as a civil rights activist and in a more substantial fashion as an antiwar activist and a researcher and writer working with community groups on health issues. Thus my sense of what happened, why things happened, and what was important about them is shaped by my own experiences and observations as well as by subsequent academic research and analysis. Any historian is “biased,” of course; one would have to be very suspect of the biases of the writer on social policy who lived through, but was not

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  Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City

  The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

  • Wendell E. Pritchett(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  Housing Authority was located in Johnson’s district. In the early 1960s, Weaver and Johnson had gotten to know each other as members of the PCEO. 4 Although he recognized that the nation was still in shock over the fallen president, Johnson wasted little time in charting a course for the federal government. In the spring of 1964, he unveiled his vision for the future of America in a series of speeches. In May, Johnson told the University of Michigan graduating class that “we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to The Great Society.” This society, he argued, would be “a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.” John-son cataloged the many aspects—health, housing, education—where the country still needed improvement, and he called on Americans to support his efforts to bring the weight of the federal government to bear on these problems. “We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society,” Johnson told the audience. 5 During the next five years, Johnson would lead the country into a new era of domestic policy. The legislation passed during his term and a half would dwarf that of the subsequent forty years. When Johnson left office in 1969, the federal government was dramatically different than when he gave his speech in Ann Arbor. At the same time that he was revolutionizing 248 * C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N domestic policy, Johnson would enmesh the country in its most damaging international conflict to date. The battle over Vietnam, which would spread throughout Southeast Asia, would have a profound impact on the country and would strongly influence and inhibit the president’s domestic agenda. The two years following Kennedy’s assassination were ones of rapid change for urban America, for the federal government, and also for Weaver.

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  American Cinema of the 1960s

  Themes and Variations

  • Barry Keith Grant(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Rutgers University Press

    (Publisher)

  Even so, despite the continued insular- ity of Hollywood filmmaking, American movies of the year are largely about Hollywood’s responses to the shock of the new, the same clash of generational styles, of young and old, the novel and the entrenched, that shaped the wider culture of that time. The assassination of President Kennedy produced a malaise that initi- ated the year, squelching many of the new hopes of the decade’s beginning but giving rise to a restless agitation that only further stimulated the cult of the new, while infusing it with the kind of melancholy strain heard in Dylan’s dirges. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was eager to build on 110 the sense of novelty energizing the Democratic platform and to forestall fears, fostered by his own more advanced age, of reversion to an Eisenhower- like paternalism. This led to an unusual emphasis on social change and innovation in his public address. The quintessential policy of the Johnson administration, The Great Society, was framed as something like a new New Deal, and when Johnson unveiled this program in a famous speech in May, he adopted a style of millennial oratory in a timely dedication to a new age. In this speech, Johnson adapted the frontier metaphor of his predeces- sor to more progressive uses in turning it to the question of domestic crisis rather than to that of global conquest: “Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside [our] cities and not beyond their borders.” In its sense of crisis, The Great Society speech is nearly unprecedented in peace- time American oratory—and, though the conflicts in Vietnam were escalat- ing, it was peacetime if only in the sense that no wars had been officially declared. Yet Johnson speaks to his audience of “the turmoil of your capi- tal” and salutes public “indignation” as a source of positive change. He cites a “catalog of ills” that includes poverty, racial injustice, economic overex- pansion, urban decay, suburban sprawl, and pollution.

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