Johnson, Lyndon Baines (1908–1973)

36th president of the USA 1963–69, a Democrat. He was a member of Congress 1937–49 and the Senate 1949–60. Born in Texas, he brought critical Southern support as J F Kennedy's vice-presidential running mate in 1960, and became president on Kennedy's assassination.

After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson successfully won congressional support for many of Kennedy's New Frontier proposals, obtaining enactment of an $11 billion tax cut, a sweeping Civil Rights Act, and an Economic Opportunity Act, all during 1964. He moved beyond the New Frontier to declare ‘war on poverty’ and outlined a vast programme of economic and social welfare legislation designed to create what he termed the ‘Great Society’ in his first State of the Union message of May 1964.

Johnson was born in Stonewall, Texas, and trained as a teacher and lawyer. While working as secretary to a Texan congressman, he attracted the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1936 appointed him director of the National Youth Administration in Texas. During World War II he went to Australia and New Zealand as President Roosevelt's special emissary.

Following his election in 1964 for a full term in a landslide over Senator Barry Goldwater, the Great Society programme became Johnson's agenda for Congress. The 89th Congress (1965–66) produced more major legislative action than any since the New Deal. A bill providing free medical care (Medicare) to the aged was enacted, as was Medicaid; two appropriation bills for education greatly expanded federal aid to education systems at all levels; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided new safeguards for black American voters; and more money went to antipoverty programmes. Other legislation added the departments of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development to the cabinet. He meanwhile continued to support the huge costs of NASA during the build-up to the first Apollo moon landing in 1969.

His foreign policy met with considerably less success, particularly after the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which escalated US involvement in the Vietnam War. Convinced that South Vietnam was about to fall to Communist forces, Johnson began the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965. By the end of 1968, he had increased US forces in South Vietnam from 20,000 to over 500,000. Johnson's actions eventually aroused widespread opposition in Congress and among the public, and a vigorous antiwar movement emerged. As the economic and political costs of the war escalated, support won by Johnson's domestic reforms dissipated. During 1967, riots in the black ghettos of large US cities also damaged the president's image, and by 1968 he was under sharp attack from all sides. He announced in March 1968 that he would not run for re-election. He retired from office in January 1969, leaving the nation bitterly divided by the war.