Lyndon Baines Johnson and Ronald Reagan

Johnson fought wars on two fronts: against poverty at home, and against Communism in Vietnam. In both he expended huge amounts of personal and political capital, and in both, ultimately, he was unsuccessful. Reagan also fought two wars, one domestic and one foreign. The domestic war was against government itself; the big liberal government of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman in which Johnson was trained and which he had expanded to a great extent. The foreign war was a deepening of the Cold War against Communism, which Reagan was determined to win. In both of these, Reagan was ultimately successful, to differing degrees.

This points to what may be the most important difference between these two presidents. Lyndon Johnson was the chief exponent of the idea that government, especially a big federal government, was the solution to most of America's social problems. Ronald Reagan was just as convinced that such big government

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by force of circumstance by a tighter coalition of aides, led by James Baker, Mich'l Deaver, Ed Meese, and Donald Regan. Reagan did not share Johnson's mania for loyalty and secrecy. He was not threatened by disagreement within his staff, preferring to hear many conflicting points of view before reaching a decision. But though he allowed disagreement, he did not tolerate discord. Reagan could not work in an atmosphere of tension. His first year as governor had seen much political infighting and maneuvering, and he was determined to avoid that in his presidency. Therefore, he valued above all the ability to work together in his subordinates. Reagan relied heavily on his staff to form his ideas into programs. Key staff members like Jim Baker and Ed Meese had more to do with the specifics of Reagan policy than even staff tyrants like Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman had in the Nixon White House. Sometimes, in fact, the staff managed to engineer policy in ways that ran counter to Reagan's goals, as when the Reagan Administration acted to limit Japanese car imports despite the president's stated commitment to free trade. Such independence by the staff would have been unthinkable in the Johnson Administration, but it was ess
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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