Roosevelt's New Deal Agenda

Johnson’s Great Society vs. FDR’s New Deal
As Woods (2016) points out, Lyndon Johnson was a great supporter and admirer of Roosevelt’s New Deal program when it first rolled out during the Depression Era. When Johnson became president following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, he set about building on the New Deal-era ideas with his Great Society approach to spreading liberalism and the concept that Americans were entitled to things like a good job, good health care, good education, and good homes. The New Deal sought ways to put people to work during an era of economic depression, a way to ease people’s burdens and give them a sense of security, and the Great Society agenda sought to make people feel good about their place in America—but neither really made the ideal a reality.
The Social Security Act of 1935 was signed into law during FDR’s New Deal as an attempt to help workers feel more secure about their retirement. The Depression had shaken their belief in the dollar and the overall economy. Social Security was meant to shore up that belief once more. It promised workers that they could retire with security because while they worked they would pay into a social security fund that would then pay them back with interest when they reached a retiring age. This was just one example of the many different alphabet soup programs that the New Deal developed to try to jump start the economy and put people’s fears to rest. By ignoring the obvious, however—i.e., the games that the central bank was playing and had been playing since its creation in 1913 under the Federal Reserve Act—Roosevelt and the New Deal were only brushing the surface of a very real and deep economic problem in American—namely that the U.S. government had given over the right to coin money to a bunch of bankers on Wall Street and they now controlled the nation.
Johnson’s Great Society was a little different in that it sought not to soothe the economic concerns of a struggling populace but rather to soothe the moral outrage that was still seething in America. Assassinations, civil unrest, a war in Vietnam, and protests at home were just a few of the social problems that were flaring up in the U.S. To distract from these very real issues, Johnson tried to get the poor and lower classes to support his politics by making promises similar in spirit to what FDR promised with his New Deal but different in approach. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964—one example of the approach he took to trying to calm the storm rising up throughout American society.
Johnson (1964) declared that “the great society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time.” Meanwhile, he was committed to blowing up Vietnamese in Asia and sending thousands of impoverished African-Americans drafted into the war to their deaths all so that the military-industrial complex could further its aims and era of new imperialism continue on its merry way. Johnson’s Great Society was no more grounded in reality than FDR’s New Deal. Both might have meant well—and certainly no one would argue that the Civil Rights Act was not the grand achievement of Johnson’s presidency—but the shortcomings of the Great Society mirrored those of the New Deal: neither was able to really make good on its promises.
In conclusion, Johnson left the White House without seeking to run for another term. In other words, he admitted defeat. FDR died in office but his grand ambitions were not met either. The New Deal put some back to way and gave others a feeling of security—but it was borrowing against the future while the central bankers undercut the present. Johnson’s ideals gave a glimmer of hope—but the reality of war still came out on top in the end.

References
Johnson, L. (1964). Great society speech. Retrieved from
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26262
Woods, R. (2016). How the Great Society reforms of the 1960s were different from the
New Deal. Retrieved from http://time.com/4280457/new-deal-great-society-excerpt/