ciety is often criticized today for its lack of long-term effects and its extravagant spending on domestic issues, but John A. Andrew III in Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society writes that in fact the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were crucial laws which marked turning points in the civil rights movement. Other social programs, Andrew says, not only did help millions of Americans live better lives, they were also expressions of Johnson's desire to right the racial wrongs of the past (Andrew 184-185).
It is ironic that Johnson's major foreign policy--war in Vietnam--was the primary reason that the Great Society began to fail. Johnson and the nation simply could not support a war abroad and the kind of expensive domestic programs proposed by Johnson. Not caring about the people of Vietnam, but being driven by a fear and hatred of communism, like leaders before and after him, undermined the good Johnson had done on behalf of the most needy Americans at home.
Both Kennedy and Johnson raised public expectations to what might have been unreasonable levels with respect to their domestic policies and programs, so that history might judge the results of their efforts more harshly than they should be judged. After all, the issue of racism at all levels of society is still alive early in the 21st century, so how effective could the Kennedy-Johnson domestic efforts for progress in the 1960s have been? Such a perspective is not fair, however, because those efforts were only the beginning of a long and perhaps never-ending struggle for justice for all Americans.
Johnson, in the Foreword to Kennedy's The Burden and the Glory, notes the role Kennedy played in advancing the cause of freedom and peace, in developing and executing domestic and foreign policy. Johnson writes that Kennedy was a man who built hope for peace and freedom at home and abroad. In life as well as in death, Johnson says, Kennedy made people beli...