Lyndon Johnson

From Wikinfo

**Lyndon Johnson**
Image:Lbj.jpg
Order:	36th President
Term of Office:	November 22, 1963 - January 20, 1969
Followed:	John F. Kennedy
Succeeded by:	Richard Nixon
Date of Birth	Thursday, August 27, 1908
Place of Birth:	Gillespie County, Texas
Date of Death:	Monday, January 22, 1973
Place of Death:	Johnson City, Texas
First Lady:	Claudia Alta Taylor ("Lady Bird")
Profession:	teacher
Political Party:	Democrat
Vice President:	Hubert H. Humphrey

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th (1963-1969) President of the United States. He took office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He brought to the office enormous political skills and high ideals but was brought down by a few glaring flaws.

Johnson was Congressman for the 10th Texas district from 1937 to 1948, a Texas Senator from 1948-1960, Senate Minority leader from 1952-1955, and Senate Majority Leader from 1955-1960. In 1960 he ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination. He was defeated by JFK, but won the vice presidency on Kennedy's ticket.

Johnson had huge ambition, combined with a more thorough knowledge of how to get legislation through the U.S. Congress than any president has ever had. He had no hobbies, and other than his own immediate family, no real interests outside politics [XXX - what about ranching?].

Although LBJ was unusually progressive for a Texas politician, he had a close relationship with the oil industry and other Texas businesses, such as the construction firm Brown and Root, the same businesses that figure so heavily in the energy, transportation and foreign policy policy making of the second Bush administration. Johnson's connections and political career also earned him enormous wealth, including a radio and television network which was held and managed by his wife. After having lost a Senate primary to ballot-stuffing in 1941, Johnson employed the same tactics in his succesful 1948 nomination campaign.

According to investigative jounralist Seymour Hersh in his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot, John F. Kennedy was blackmailed into selecting Johnson as his Vice-Presidential running mate with scandalous information supplied by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson and Hoover were close. The information probably concerned John F. Kennedy's personal life. Kennedy and his advisors had actually preferred Missouri Senator Stuart Symington as a running mate.

Image:Lyndonjohnson.jpg
Lyndon Johnson being sworn in aboard Air Force One, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy

Following Kennedy's assassination in Texas, an event which has sparked innumerable conspiracy theories, Johnson served out the remainder of the term in manner that he felt was consistent with Kennedy's political agenda. He convinced Kennedy's cabinet to serve out the rest of the term, including Robert Kennedy (despite the acrimonious relationship between Johnson and Kennedy). He also used his considerable political savvy to ensure passage the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These actions allowed Johnson to easily win the 1964 presidential election.

The beginning of his first full term of his presidency were noteworthy for social reforms packaged as the Great Society, notably the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He had a distaste for the American war effort in Vietnam, which he had inherited from John Kennedy. But Johnson believed that America could not afford to look weak in the eyes of the world, and so he escalated the war effort continuously from 1965-1968, which resulted in thousands of American deaths and perhaps ten times the number of deaths in Vietnam. Still, America could not control what was happening in Vietnam. In later years, Johnson's presidency was dominated by the Vietnam War. As more and more American soldiers, many of them conscriptees, died in Vietnam, Johnson's popularity declined, particularly in the face of student protests ("Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?").

Political reprisal was the order of the day in the Johnson admisnitration, as it would be in the Nixon administration. The Department of defense expanded its domestic survellance operations against the Peace Movement as did the FBI. The Selective Service System issued orders to local draft boards instructing them to reclassify all students involved in draft resistance as "1-A" and thus eligible to be drafted and sent the Vietnam as soon as possible.

As a result of popular outrage, in March of 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, and he retired from public life at the end of his term. He died four years later. Like his successor, Richard Nixon, he was never tried for war crimes committed in Indochina.

Supreme Court of the United States appointments

Abe Fortas - 1965
Thurgood Marshall - 1967

Links

Sources

Seymour Hersh. 1997. The Dark Side of Camelot. Boston: Back Bay Books. ISBN 0316360678, pages 121-130.
Robert Mann (historian). 2001. A Grand Delusion: America's Descent into Vietnam. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465043690.
Robert S. McNamara 1995, 1996. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0812925238, ISBN 0679767495.
Kirkpatrick Sale. 1973. SDS. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0394719654, pages 406-407.
Crisis at Columbia: Report of the Fact-Finding Commission Appointed to Investigate the Disturbances at Columbia University in April and May 1968. 1968. New York: Vintage Books, pages 10-12.