AMST 3100 The 1960s LBJs Great Society

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AMST 3100 The 1960sLBJs Great Society

• Powerpoint 5
• Read Chafe Chapter 8 Farber Chapter 5

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Backdrop Rise of Liberalism

• In 1946, Cyril Connally helped define the
  emerging liberal ideology in his Ten Indicators
  of a Civilized Society.
• 1. Abolition of the death penalty
• 2. Penal reform aimed at rehabilitation
• 3. Slum clearance and new towns
• 4. Subsidized energy/heating
• 5. Free medicine, food, and clothes subsidies
• 6. Abolition of censorship, surveillance, and
  travel restrictions
• 7. Reform of laws against gays, abortion, divorce
  
• 8. Limitations on property ownership
• 9. Preservation of natural beauty, architecture,
  the arts
• 10. Laws against racial and religious
  discrimination

Given the book burnings of the Hitler era, it
became unpopular to advocate book burnings after
WWII and there was a distinct increase in
liberalism in Western cultures. However, there
was less of an increase in liberalism in the
American Deep South, where conservative religious
groups occasionally burned books and rock music
records during the 1950s, 60s, and later.
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The new liberalism

• Connallys ideas represent a shift away from the
  intellectual search for utopia toward the
  policy-based pursuit of enlightened hedonism or
  humanism.
• His ideas reflected what some in the 1960s came
  to call the permissive society.
• Virtually everything he called for was enacted
  into law in the 1960s across most Western
  democracies. These 1960s reforms dramatically
  altered life in Western cultures. Citizens became
  more free than they had ever been.
• While the U.S. headed in this same direction,
  there were relatively more conservatives here
  that resisted these reforms. They argued the
  reforms would lead to anarchy, bloated
  government, overly-restricted capitalism, and
  un-Christian lifestyles.
• At the core of the ideological debate in the U.S.
  were two opposing views of government, with
  liberals more willing to use government as a tool
  to achieve humanistic aims.

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LBJ

• A Southerner, yet a product of the rising
  liberalism of the era
• A reform liberal
• Idealistic
• Social liberal
• strong advocate for civil rights, tolerant of
  social diversity
• Economic liberal
• government can regulate capitalism without
  harming it, the welfare state as a force of good,
  we need a war on poverty
• A hawk on foreign policy issues
• Strong military
• Anti-communist Cold Warrior
• Domino theory containment policy advocated
• Imperialism in the name of freedom is acceptable

Lyndon Baines Johnson
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LBJ

• To LBJ, civil rights was the moral issue facing
  the nation, and the South could never progress
  until it buried Jim Crow.
• LBJ was himself a Southerner who understood both
  the South and poverty.
• One of LBJs most prideful accomplishments was
  the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
• From then on, LBJ expected the gratitude of
  Afro-Americans and could never grasp why so many
  were angry at him by 1966.
• By 1966 his Vietnam war policies began to compete
  with his domestic war on poverty programs.
  Johnson was caught between two wars at once, and
  many felt his domestic programs suffered.

This is a photo of LBJ being sworn in on the
Presidents plane soon after the assassination of
John Kennedy on November 23, 1963. Johnson had
been a key figure in the Senate before becoming
Vice President in the Kennedy administration. He
was therefore very familiar with the workings of
Congress and was masterful at getting legislation
passed.
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LBJ vs Barry Goldwater, 1964

• A classic campaign that pitted two ideological
  purists against each other LBJs emphasis on
  equality versus Goldwaters emphasis on
  individual liberty.
• Goldwater was more hawkish on foreign policy than
  LBJ and endorsed a get tough policy against
  reds.
• LBJ, like most Democrats, feared being labeled
  soft on communism so he too pushed an
  aggressive foreign policy aimed at containing
  communism.
• In the campaign, LBJ painted Goldwater as likely
  to start World War III while he painted himself
  as the candidate of peace and moderation.
• The Daisy Girl TV advertisement implied a vote
  for Goldwater was a vote for nuclear holocaust.
  It was an effective negative ad that was a
  harbinger of future media tactics by both
  political parties.
• LBJ presented himself as the peace candidate, yet
  in reality he was seriously considering a
  dramatic escalation of American troop presence in
  Vietnam.
• LBJ, a Southerner, took most of the North, East
  and West, but failed to take the Deep South.

Goldwater was an economic conservative. He was
opposed to New Deal policies and crusaded
against the federal government, welfare policies,
and labor unions. But he was not a social
conservative and would probably not identify much
with the current Republican platform.
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Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964

• LBJ used the Gulf of Tonkin incident (August,
  1964) involving dubious reports that U.S.
  warships had been attacked to win a congressional
  resolution giving him a free hand in crafting
  policy in Vietnam.
• This resolution was passed after less than 9
  hours of consideration by a Congress that did not
  seriously consider the consequences of giving the
  President so much war-making authority.
• The Congressional vote was unanimous. It passed
  by 416 to 0. The Senate vote was 82 to 2.
• At that time, Vietnam was not an area of national
  concern.
• After securing Congresss approval with this
  resolution, LBJ dramatically escalated U.S.
  involvement in Vietnam.
• Subsequent information suggests the entire
  incident did not occur and was manufactured by
  the Pentagon for the benefit of LBJ.

This is a painting of the USS Maddox, the ship
involved with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was
claimed at the time that the Maddox was attacked
by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats while in
international waters. It has been subsequently
learned that the Maddox was actually doing
electronic surveillance near North Vietnamese
waters and that there probably was never a
torpedo attack.
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LBJs Great Society

• As a reform liberal, LBJ believed in the power of
  government to meet social needs and to
  redistribute limited resources to the poor.
• LBJ prioritized domestic policy initially
  (1964-65)
• 1. Civil rights (against racism)
• 2. War on poverty
• However, by 1966, his new priority was Vietnam
  and his domestic policies suffered as he
  redirected resources toward the war.
• This priority switch greatly angered civil rights
  advocates and doomed LBJ due to the difficulties
  of fighting two wars at once.

Note the dramatic drop in poverty under the
Johnson policies. The war on poverty included
many programs, some of which - like food stamps
and guaranteed college loans - remain popular
today. This war targeted both rural and inner
city poverty, and was perhaps more effective at
fighting rural poverty. Inner city poverty is
partly related to the failure of private
capitalists to provided urban jobs, and there is
an on-going ideological debate over whether and
how government should help with jobs.
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The War on Poverty

• In 1960, the overall poverty rate was around 21.
• The basic approach of LBJs War on Poverty
• 1. Outlaw racial discrimination, emphasize equal
  opportunity.
• 2. Use government programs to help the poor.
• A. Give poor communities resources for them to
  decide usage. Ex Community Action programs.
• B. Create new welfare programs tied to a
  perceived culture of poverty among the poor,
  like job training programs.
• This was the preferred approach. LBJ wanted to
  offer the poor opportunity not money.
• Result
• Poverty declined by 1970 to around 12.
• The welfare state had grown very large and was
  expensive.
• Dramatic upward mobility for some minority
  groups.
• Raised expectations among the poor, some of which
  were not met.

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The War on Poverty programs and beneficiaries

• LBJs War on Poverty emphasized new government
  resources
• Food stamps
• AFDC (Aid for Families with Dependent Children)
• Medicaid (medical care for the poor)
• Public housing
• Jobs programs
• School and child programs
• College loans
• The beneficiaries
• The poor
• Minority groups
• The aged
• In 1960, 40 of seniors were poor.
• By 1970, 25 were poor.
• By 1974, 16 were poor.
• Students

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Consequences of the War on Poverty

• The War on Poverty raised the expectations of
  blacks, and when many remained poor especially
  in the ghetto their continued poverty
  contributed to anger and rioting.
• The execution of the War on Poverty was sloppy in
  many cases, and some policies were more harmful
  than helpful.
• Example public housing projects were probably
  more harmful than helpful in cities like Boston.
• Conservatives and many moderates were upset at
  the rise of the liberal welfare state, arguing
  that it cut into individual initiative and
  created a class of welfare dependents.
• This is a valid point, yet in virtually all other
  Western democracies, the welfare state was much
  more developed and did not seem to cut into
  productivity.
• The war on poverty, while costly, did indeed
  ultimately reduce overall poverty by more than
  43, but it did not eliminate ghettos.

The 1965 Watts riots reflected the anger and
frustration of inner city racial minorities who
were frustrated by years of racism, poverty, and
neglect. The civil rights movement was a decade
old by now and the war on poverty was already
under way. Their expectations had been raised,
yet little had changed in their lives.
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1960s Riots

• By 1964 American cities, especially in the
  Northern industrial regions, were filled with
  racial and class tensions.
• The inner cities were disproportionately racial
  minorities. This is because industrial jobs were
  concentrated here and offered racial minorities a
  chance for upward mobility.
• In the 1960s, industry began to close down these
  inner city jobs as they migrated their factories
  to the suburbs, the South, and to foreign
  countries seeking cheaper labor. As a result,
  unemployment in the inner city shot up to as high
  as 50.
• Yet at the same time, the civil rights movement
  had raised the hopes of urban blacks living in
  these ghettos.
• As blacks saw little change in their conditions,
  they rioted in frustration.
• The most significant riots were the Harlem riot
  (1964), the Watts riot (1965), Detroit (1967),
  Newark (1967) and Washington (1968). Between 1964
  and 1971 there would be hundreds of riots as
  many as 750 by some counts.

The Detroit riots of 1967 were among the worst in
the nations history. The causes included police
racism and brutality, lack of inner city jobs,
lack of affordable housing, urban renewal
projects that were bulldozing black
neighborhoods, and rising black militancy, among
others. The War on Poverty had not produced
enough tangible effects in the inner cities, and
by 1967, Johnson had shifted his attention to the
Vietnam conflict, angering inner city residents.
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LBJ

• To LBJ, the Great Society was a culture of equal
  opportunity in which a beneficent government
  created new resources to raise the standard of
  living for all, rich and poor, black and white.
• Between 1964-1965 LBJ succeeded in passing more
  legislation than many Presidents pass in their
  entire careers.
• His accomplishments were unprecedented, yet as he
  increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam he could no
  longer sustain his promise for the Great Society.
• Frustration and anger among the poor, students,
  liberals, and minority groups would rise and
  LBJs remaining tenure would be conflict-ridden
  as he increasingly devoted the bulk of U.S.
  resources to the war in Vietnam by 1966.

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