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Successes and Failures of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society Plan
Successes of President Johnson's Great Society Concept
President Lyndon B. Johnson's political beginnings coincided with FDR's New Deal in the 1930s, and in many respects, its principles and goals were more a part of his lifelong political agenda than they had been his predecessor's, President John F. Kennedy (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 339). Therefore, when Johnson assumed the presidency after Kennedy's tragic assassination in Dallas, Texas in 1963, he immediately set about implementing a very aggressive domestic political agenda whose focus was to improve life for as many Americans as possible, mainly through better educational opportunities, health care availability and affordability, fairness in taxation, and improvement in urban affairs on a national level (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 340).
One of the most essential components of Johnson's vision of a Great Society was one in which all people were treated equally and in which the opportunity to live well and prosper were equally available to all, particularly in relation to racial equality. Perhaps Johnson's two greatest successes in that regard was (1) his masterful use of political maneuvering and pressure tactics by which he finally overcame the longstanding conservative resistance...
Some of the other most notable successes of Johnson's Great Society concept included the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs under the Medical Care Act, and the Appalachian regional Development Act that provided badly-needed economic assistance to one-dozen states from Georgia to New York (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 342).
Failures of President Johnson's Great Society Concept
By far, the greatest failure of Johnson's Great Society concept was the manner in which his decisions and those of his executive staff eroded respect for the office of the President…
Goldfield, D., Abbot, C., Argersinger, J. And Argersinger, P. Twentieth-Century
America: A Social and Political History. 2005. New Jersey: Pearson-Prentice
Hall.
President Lyndon B. Johnson Describes Great Society" Michael P. Johnson's Reading American Past (pg. The historical epoch in which Lyndon B. Johnson conceived of and attempted to implement the Great Society represented a critical period in the history of America. Johnson began his presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy during the turbulent 1960's in which unresolved issues of poverty and race threatened to quite literally tear the country
" The Great Society initiative included policies concerning increased education assistance, fundamental protections of civil rights and the right of all Americans to vote, urban renewal, Medicare, conservation, beautification, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, promotion of the arts, and consumer protection (President Lyndon B. Johnson's Biography 2009). Contributions. The contributions made by President Johnson were both numerous and significant. In this regard, Firestone and Vogt (1988) report that, "As LBJ
Dallek used traditional methods of research and structure making his book a true "history" from a collegiate-academic point-of-view. But this does not invalidate Caro's work. The problem, then, in looking at both of these books to be authorities is to figure out if it really matters if Caro's lack of credentials and traditional (meaning library) method of information gathering actually denote a lesser effect on the overall impact of
The Presidency of George Walker Bush, 2001-present, has been marked primarily by his war on terrorism, however, he has proposed to make welfare more focused on the well-being of children and strengthen support of families, provide Affordable Health Care for Low-Income Families and Individuals, and has asked Congress to aid him in achieving significant immigration reform that includes matching a willing worker with a willing employer, protecting workers from abuse,
New Deal, Great Depression, and World War II's Impact The New Deal, the Great Depression, and World War II had an immense impact on American history and African-Americans and women in particular. The New Deal was the largest, most concerted, most blatant spending venture by the federal government to date. It was unprecedented both in its scope and in its effect on working-class Americans. Some of the revolutionary acts of the
I knew the Congress as well as I know Lady Bird, and I knew that the day it exploded into a major debate on the war, that day would be the beginning of the end of the Great Society.'" in the end, these secrets when revealed, changed forever the way Americans viewed the Presidency, and politicians in general. Johnson's style of compromise and bargining came to haunt him in dealing