Johnson's Great Society

On November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill increasing temporarily the national debt limit to $315 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year; and two days later, on November 29, he appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to head a commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Campaigning on the promise of achieving the "Great Society," Johnson and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey were elected President and Vice-President on November 3, 1994, with a record-breaking landslide victory over Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and his running mate, Rep. William E. Miller from New York. It was, at least in an historical sense, the end of Kennedy's "New Frontier" and the beginning of Johnson's "Great Society," which many believed would be an extension of the Kennedy agenda in the hands of a more experienced and pragmatic politician-President.

In the 1964 election, Johnson and Humphrey lost five Southern states, many political observers believe, because Johnson had succeeded the previous July in having passed the, Kennedy initiated and too-long debated, civil rights bill. It was an astonishing achievement considering the former Texas senator and majority leader had many loyal supporters within the "southern bloc," who did not believe the President would give this issue the priority, suppo

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Category: Government - J