Memorable Quotations from Lyndon Baines Johnson

Born near Stonewall, Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) was the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to1969. As a Democratic congressman from Texas (1937-1949) he espoused President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. He was elected senator in 1948 and became majority leader after the 1954 elections. After losing the 1960 presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy, Johnson consented to become Kennedy's running mate. After Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Johnson was at once sworn in as president. Declaring that he would carry out the deceased president's programs, he adeptly pushed Congress into enacting an $11 billion tax cut and a comprehensive Civil Rights Act in 1964. Elected in 1964 to a full term, he initiated a program of social and economic welfare programs to establish what he designated the Great Society. It included Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid to education, enlarged antipoverty programs, including Head Start, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development were created. Johnson's domestic successes, though, were soon eclipsed by foreign affairs. When North Vietnam purportedly attacked American destroyers in August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which gave the president authority to take any action required to protect American troops. Johnson began in February 1965 the bombing of North Vietnam and enlarged United States forces in South Vietnam to nearly 550,000 by 1969. The Vietnam War provoked extensive opposition in Congress and among the public, and rioting in 1968 in the African-American ghettos of American cities further tarnished his presidency. He broadcast in March 1968 that he would not run for reelection and retired to his Texas ranch. In 1934 he had married Claudia Alta Taylor, nicknamed Lady Bird. They had two children, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines.