Why Was Johnson A Good President

The impact that Johnson had has been forgotten. Johnson remains in pretty bad standing in this country. In 2010 there was a poll asking Americans to assess the last nine presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. Kennedy came out on top with 85-percent approval. The only one close to him was Reagan with 74 percent. Nixon at the bottom with 29 percent. George W., 47. And Johnson 49 percent. In another recent poll, Johnson is now down to 42 percent. Another poll, in which 68 percent of Americans say that they think of Johnson as only an ordinary or only an average or below-average president. People forget about his civil rights advancements because he was unsuccessful in Vietnam.
There are many obvious reasons for people to hate LBJ.
Many of them involve Vietnam and how he went back on his word to send troops out there. People blame him for the war, and the war is known as the only war America lost. The problem is that even if we won, we would have lost. It was the first televised war and it was fought against the most cruel warriors that we had ever witnessed. It was not just the fact that we lost that made everyone hate it, it was the fact that we got to see up close and personal the cost of the war.
The worst part of coming after Kennedy is the fact that he came after one of the most charming presidents ever. It made Johnson seem like a villain when in reality he got more done that I believe Kennedy would have. Compared to Kennedy, Johnson was a vulgar old man, but in reality, his empathy is what drove his push for Civil Rights.
People didn’t like Johnson because he came off as cruel, dictatorial, grandiose, and even vicious, but I think Johnson is really important because he was the leading factor in the civil rights bill of 1964 getting passed.
That bill and the Voting rights act of 1965 shaped how our modern democracy works today. Suffrage has spread from rich white landowners, to white land owners in ____, to white people with Jackson in ____, to women in 1920, to black people in 1965. An entire race went politically unnoticed for almost 200 years. Johnson is the sole reason of
that.
The Great society was an extension of the “New Deal” that FDR pushed for.
It was a set of domestic programs to improve our population as a whole. One of the most controversial of these was the War on Poverty. When he was younger, Johnson was employed as a school teacher in a very poor town with a high Mexican American population. Him teaching there made him empathetic for minorities and the impoverished, which still has a large overlap.
The main part of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 which focused on creating education opportunities for the poor and making it easier for them to get out of the slums. Reagan argued that LBJ fought a war on poverty and lost, I disagree. When LBJ was sworn into office 22% of the nation was living under $3,000, by the end of his administration it was under %12. Now you could argue that the Vietnam War created jobs that took them out of poverty, but because of him, today that number is 14%. Lyndon B Johnson is the political definition of taking a stand. He would see something that he recognized as wrong and he would change it. He didn’t care how long or how much effort it took. He would get it done. Lyndon B. Johnson “We are going to pass a civil rights bill if it takes all summer. We are going to pass it because no nation can long or prosper if millions of its citizens are barred from their purpose and are denied the use of their talent.” This determination led to the law that defined the 20th
century.
Despite his conservative voting history, he quickly jumped to a more liberal agenda. The strongest focuses of the LBJ administration consisted of Civil Rights and Healthcare. His Civil Rights advancements were the most since Lincoln, He had little support and was the opposite of what many people expected. A liberal southerner.
The Keystone of the LBJ administration was giving black people equality on all levels to white people. To some it might seem like LBJ was at times trying to stop MLK from succeeding because he was putting back forcing a main bill out that could be filibustered, when In reality LBJ knew how to get it done and that they didn’t have enough support when MLK wanted to act. LBJ was a political mastermind. His father served in the Texas house of representatives, LBJ was born into the career. MLK was an activist and an incredible speaker, but he didn’t know the legislative process like LBJ did. Without key politicians like JFK and LBJ, MLK could have gotten little to nothing done.