1. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

2. President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society
-Domestic programs promoted by President Lyndon Johnson
-Two Goals- end poverty and end racial injustice
-Also focused on- education, medical care, urban problems,
and transportation
- Expanded the role of the federal government

3. John F. Kennedy-Lyndon B. Johnson
-Some Great Society proposals were inspired by John F. Kennedy's New Frontier policies
-Johnson's success depended on his skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide in the 1964 election that brought in many new liberals to Congress, making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938

4. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson 1937
The Great Society resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt

5. Johnson’s Background as a Teacher
Johnson taught at a segregated elementary school for children of Mexican descent in Cotulla, Texas in the late 1920s. He later taught public speaking at a high school in Houston. Many of his biographers say that Johnson’s experience as a teacher had a profound impact on him. In a speech given in 1965, Johnson said
“I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this Nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.”

6. Great Society Programs
War on Poverty: forty programs intended to eliminate poverty by improving living conditions and enabling people to end the cycle of poverty. Education: sixty separate bills that provided for new and better-equipped classrooms, minority scholarships, and low-interest student loans. Health Insurance:
Medicare: guarantees health care to every American over sixty-five.
Medicaid: government insurance program for Americans whose income is insufficient to pay for health insurance

7. Great Society Programs
The Environment: introduced measures to reclaim our heritage of clean air and water. National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities: created with the philosophy that artists, performers, and writers were a priceless part of our heritage and deserve support. Job Corps: provided enabling skills for young men and women. Head Start: program for four- and five-year-old children from disadvantaged families that gave them a chance to start school on an even basis with other youngsters.

8. 89th Congress
The Fabulous Eighty-Ninth Congress passed so much progressive legislation between 1965 and 1967 that it reminded many Americans of the early days New Deal.
Said Speaker of the House, John W. McCormack:
"It was a Congress of accomplished hopes, a Congress of realized dreams."

9. The Johnson Treatment
The Johnson Treatment has been described as having 'a large St. Bernard licking your face and pawing you all over.' LBJ was a big man, and the original "close talker." The Johnson Treatment was a singular combination of physical intimidation and coercion, and it was one of his most effective tools as he mastered the Senate, and later, to a far lesser degree, the Presidency. The phrase "The Johnson Treatment" is sometimes also used to describe being violated by unwanted company. LBJ would paw you, lean into you, get right up in your grill and ask you for a favor. Except it wasn't really asking. Here LBJ is giving the “Treatment” to Senator Richard Russell of Georgia in 1963.

10. Praise for the Great Society
“Without such programs as Head Start, higher-education loans and scholarships, Medicare, Medicaid, clear air and water, and civil rights, life would be nastier, more brutish, and shorter for millions of Americans.”
-Joseph A. Califano Jr.
"from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century."

11. Critics of the Great Society
Alan Brinkley (professor at Columbia University) has suggested that "the gap between the expansive intentions of the War on Poverty and its relatively modest achievements fueled later conservative arguments that government is not an appropriate vehicle for solving social problems.”
Libertarian economist Thomas Sowell argues that the Great Society programs only contributed to the destruction of African American families, saying "the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."

12. Vietnam War -The Vietnam War killed the Great Society
- The pressure of spending on the Vietnam War — the guns vs. butter debate of the 1960s — eventually brought the Great Society program to a halt and ended the hopes of President Johnson for a second presidential term.

13. Vietnam War -In March 1965 the first U.S. soldiers are sent to Vietnam
-By 1968 there are more than half a million American soldiers in Vietnam

14. How Did the Vietnam War Affect President Johnson and the Great Society?
Had the United States not become involved in Vietnam, historians today would likely remember President Johnson for his leadership in passing civil rights legislation and for his declaration of a "War on Poverty." The Vietnam War, however, proved to be Johnson's downfall. The history and domestic impact of this war are fascinating and extraordinarily important.