Randall B. Woods - Prisoners of hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the limits of liberalism

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR PRISONERS OF HOPE

Randall Woodss Prisoners of Hope offers us new and revealing insights into the remarkable history of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. He writes from the perspective of a scholar sympathetic to Johnson and his expansive goals, but well aware of the ways in which American history, culture, and politics constrained the activist government role that Johnson envisioned. Anyone who wants to understand our current political struggles should read this book.

Dan Carter, Educational Foundation Emeritus Professor, University of South Carolina

In Prisoners of Hope, Randall Woods draws on his deep understanding of American political history and the southern populist tradition, bringing LBJs vaulting ambition and his extraordinary political skill vividly to life. The Great Society emerges as a decisive moment in the forming of modern Americaboth for better and for ill.

Gareth Davies, author of See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan

Anyone wanting to understand the volatile mix that is American politics today needs to look no further than Randall Woodss penetrating analysis of LBJs Great Society agenda, that set of ambitious economic, social, political, and cultural reforms of the mid-1960s that raised the hopes of the poor and dispossessed and transformed American society, yet, in these very successes, contained the seeds of a right-wing backlash aimed at dismantling its cherished accomplishments.

Richard Blackett

Copyright 201 6 by Randall B. Woods.

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

Designed by Timm Bryson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Woods, Randall Bennett, 1944

Title: Prisoners of hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the limits of liberalism / Randall B. Woods.

Description: New York: Basic Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015040042 | ISBN 9780465098712 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: United States--Politics and government--1963-1969. | Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973. | United States--Economic policy--1961-1971. | Economic assistance, Domestic--United States--History--20th century. | Social legislation--United States--History--20th century. | Liberalism--United States--History--20th century. | United States--Social policy--20th century. | BISAC:

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Presidents & Heads of State. | HISTORY / United States / 20th Century. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Services & Welfare.

Classification: LCC E846 .W66 2016 | DDC 973.923--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040042

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Rhoda and Patricia

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;

Today I declare that I will restore to you double.

ZECHARIAH 9:12

THE PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION OF LYNDON JOHNSON IS remembered primarily for two matters: civil rights, considered a success, and the war in Vietnam, viewed almost universally as a disastrous mistake. Except for the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, Johnsons domestic programthe Great Societyhas largely been ignored. Yet it was perhaps the most comprehensive and ambitious effort to change the political, social, and economic landscape of the United States in all of the countrys history. It established new policies and bureaucracies to deal not only with race relations but also federal aid to education, medical aid for the poor and elderly, immigration, environmental pollution and conservation, urban decay, and the federal role in arts and humanities. Those policies and bureaucracies have, for the most part, survived, but many of the issues with which they dealt remain unresolved. Indeed, they dominate todays headlines and public forums. The cover of the May 2015 issue of TIME magazine featured a photograph of Baltimore police in riot gear chasing a black protester; the title was America, 1968 (2015). Currently, Democrats and Republicans are deadlocked over immigration reform, limits on carbon emissions, Obamacare, education reform, and the proper role of the federal government in the nations cultural life. For those who would understand the issues of today, it is imperative to begin with a reexaminationor, rather, examinationof Lyndon Johnsons sweeping domestic program.

Volumes have been written on the mainsprings of other great American reform efforts, such as the Populist and Progressive movements and the New Deal, but next to nothing on the forces and factors responsible for the Great Society. Those few liberals who have chosen to write about the reforms of the 1960s have portrayed them as the culmination of JFKs idealism, the fulfillment of the New Frontier, ignoring the fact that Kennedys program remained stalled in Congress at the time of his death and that Johnsons vision transcended that of his predecessor. Vietnam has been an albatross that the historical LBJ has been unable to shed. Most academics of my generation were fervently committed to the antiwar movement and have never been willing to forgive the Texan for thrusting the republic more deeply into the Vietnam quagmire. For Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US participation in World War II enhanced his moral credibility and, in the process, the reputation of the New Deal. For LBJ, escalation of the conflict in Vietnam bankrupted him morally, casting a dark shadow over his domestic reform initiatives. Then, there is the enduring cultural and political power of Camelot. The Kennedys detested LBJ as a usurper, a man who through no merit of his own became president and reaped the harvest that JFK had sowed. Finally, some veterans of the civil rights movement see accolades heaped on Johnson as somehow diminishing Martin Luther King Jr. Thus, the extremely faint praise of LBJ in the motion picture Selma. Until Hillary Clinton in 2008, no Democratic presidential candidate had dared invoke Johnsons name. Her husbands Oval Office contained busts of every twentieth-century Democratic president except LBJ. For conservatives, the reform initiatives of the 1960s were and are anathema. During the 1980s, the Great Society became the perfect whipping boy for Ronald Reagan and the New Right, a classic example of the evils of government overreach and the welfare state. Those who have been willing to defend the Great Society, even to speak to its historical significance, have been few and far between indeed.

ON SEPTEMBER 7, 1964, LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON ROSE BEFORE A large audience gathered in Detroits Cadillac Square and delivered a speech as visionary and utopian as any ever given to the American people. Man has never lived in a more exciting time, the president declared. The world is changing before your eyes. The nation must rise to meet the challenges of the present and future, he said, or be relegated to historys dustbin: