Lyndon Baines Johnson and Ronald Reagan led two of the most influential presidencies of post-war America. Yet, their personal and political styles could scarcely have been farther apart. Johnson was a moderate-to-liberal Southerner who moved far to the left; Reagan was a formerly liberal Westerner who moved far to the right. Johnson was a hands-on, lifelong legislator who relished power and used it effectively. Reagan became famous for his hands-off managerial style, relying on his ability as a communicator to sway opinion.
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 was the cause of those problems. Since, in his view, government was good, Johnson sought to expand its role. Reagan, seeing government as evil, sought just as earnestly to reduce its role.
There was very definitely what came to be known as the "Johnson style". Johnson's political style was formed in the rough-and-tumble of post-war Texas politics, where the handshake and the wink often counted for more than formal agreements. Johnson's chief tool in forging domestic ...