I recently found myself in Austin, Texas, and so I decided to visit the Presidential Library and Museum in memory of the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson. To the members of my generation, Lyndon Johnson is still remembered (often disapprovingly) for his prosecution of the Vietnam war. Indeed, opposition to the war forced Johnson to drop out of a run for a second full term, yielding instead the baton to his vice-president Hubert Humphrey.
It is unfortunate that the Vietnam war often overshadows Johnson’s domestic achievements. This record, all part of the War on Poverty and the Great Society more generally, is arguably second only to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The breathtaking scope of the Great Society aimed at removing racial injustice at the ballot box and civic life, relieving older and poor Americans from the want for healthy and dignified lives, and lifting the fortunes of underprivileged Americans through expanded opportunities in education, housing and jobs.
Johnson’s domestic agenda can be appreciated only by taking a longer view on American history. That means to recount the abrupt end of the Reconstruction Era and the gradual demise of voting and other human rights of Black Americans despite the 13, 14 and 15 Amendments that had enshrined them in the Constitution. It was after all only in 1954 that Brown v. Board of Education had ended segregation laws, but racial discrimination in the exercise of voting and civil rights was still around. It was against this reality and with an inspirational push from Martin Luther King and mass demonstrations of Black and White Americans, that Johnson succeeded in passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. That’s why it is often stated that America became a full democracy only after the passage of those two acts. “It is wrong-deadly wrong-to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.” That’s how Johnson put it at the time. Regrettably, his words are still relevant to this day.
The Great Society was though more than restoring political and human rights to all. It also aimed at fighting poverty, extending the safety net, and expanding opportunities. All these initiatives would inevitably push the role of the state beyond the boundaries set by FDR’s New Deal. This was not, however, something the opposing forces were willing to accept. FDR’s New Deal had been inspired by the theories of John Maynard Keynes. After Keynes’s death, other scholars and public figures, like John Kenneth Galbraith, had picked up the Keynesian torch and tried to keep it burning. At the same time conservative and moneyed interests were staging their counterattack on multiple fronts through think tanks, like the National Economic Council, and print outlets, like William Buckley’s National Review. Programs associated with the New Deal were branded as collectivist and socialists, and even an above-board president like Dwight Eisenhower was accused to be a Communist agent (by the founder of the John Birch Society). Furthermore, academics who taught or wrote books on Keynesian economics were attacked for spreading unamerican ideas and were often closed out of academic positions. (In other words, wars about ideas and politics resorting to what we now call cancelling and disinformation is nothing new in America.)
So, the Great Society was conceived and designed at a historical juncture that would coincide with the end of the period the political scientist Robert Putnam has called the Upswing (i.e., the upward trend of progressive ideas). Despite the turning winds, the Great Society came to life with an astounding long list of laws, programs, and institutions. Besides the most well-known, like the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, and Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start, a lot of other programs intended to rectify problems plaguing cities, rural areas, and poor Americans, improve labor laws, promote the arts and culture, and protect the environment. To promote civic engagement, several programs relied on the mobilization of citizens. These programs included the Job Corps to help young people acquire marketable skills; the National Teacher Corps to improve teaching; and the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) to enlist socially conscious young Americans to help poor neighborhoods.
In a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, called his program the Great Society and explained why it was significant. In his words, the goals of the Great Society were to improve the human condition of Americans and elevate American civilization; promote inclusivity in the fruits of the economy; and put a stop to the erosion of values in community life that breeds loneliness, boredom and indifference. Despite the progress we have made since then, many of these problems are to a lesser or greater degree still around us.
As I walked through the library, I started to realize the message of the Great Society to us. It was undoubtedly a lesson in the role of government faced with serious realities both in the foreign and domestic fronts. At the foreign front, the US was in contest with the Soviet Union and China to win the hearts and minds of the newly independent countries, all of them emerging from colonialism. The US could ill afford an internal deficit in democracy and economic inclusivity and equity while fighting in Vietnam in the name of democracy and capitalism. Today, we are in a similar contest with China and other authoritarian governments. The best way to convince other countries that liberal democracies can stand and prosper is for us to set the example. We are currently struggling to do so.
In the domestic front, the plight of Black Americans and the disrespect of their voting and civil rights had reached the boiling point. It was time for the federal government to restore these rights by effective means of enforcement. At the same time, the Keynesian underpinnings of the Great Society echoed the idealism of Keynes himself who believed that economic prosperity ought to be a tool for a society to battle scarcity and enable its members to enjoy the amenities of the good life. The Great Society was aimed toward those ends.
The legacy of the Great Society is still debated as to whether it delivered on its promises. To its critics the record is mixed; but in light of all that has since happened a clear verdict is almost impossible. What we need to acknowledge, however, is that the Johnson administration had the political courage to identify what ailed America and felt compelled to act in the way only governments can act to address longstanding, entrenched and big problems. Today, problems in the economic, social, and environmental fronts along with their dire consequences are still with us. Johnson believed that the government of the strongest and biggest economy had to think big and be at the forefront of the effort to solve the big problems of the day in spite of all the voices to the contrary. Conviction to this principle, not its complete success, is what makes the Great Society a remarkable achievement in the art of governing.
Today, progressive movements face a similar challenge: to summon the inspiration and resolve to lead societies to the politics of problem solving for the betterment of humankind.
Note: More on the politics of that era and about the Great Society can be found in The Price of Peace by Zachary Carter.
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