The 1960s as a historical era recount what can easily be counted as the apogee and the obvious limits of government power to try and affect positive change in people’s lives. Both Kennedy and Johnson were consummate liberal American politicians that had lived through the New Deal, World War II and the Fair Deal how hose government led efforts although completely different had totally changed the landscape of American culture, society and politics from a very libertarian laissez faire and hands of form of government to the creation of what was then an embryonic American Welfare state. Roosevelt with the passage of the Social Security Act and the implementation of the National Labor Relations Board had finally given the less fortunate, workers and those in the margins of society a chance to live a fair life in the United States. This is a paper about the Democratic Party in the 1960s and how it symbolized something to America and especially those who were less fortunate and were thought of as the neediest for assistance.
John F. Kennedy’s signature social and domestic policy agenda was known as the New Frontier and it represented a new vision for the future where he laid out how the United States would be able to overcome the challenges it was facing both domestically and internationally by ending “divided government, improve the quality and justice of American society through new domestic policies, and meet the unknown challenges of the future.” (Savage 77) JFK’s inspiration for this was in the legacy of other powerful Democratic progressive presidents that had used their office to attempt to change the social makeup of American society in their particular eras. JFK’s New Frontier can be easily described as an overwhelmingly rational movement, it could be said that the people closest to JFK acted on things “because they were rational and necessary than because they were just and right.” (Schlesinger 212) The New Frontier was a new way of approaching problems by using the newest and most advanced methods and processes available to Washington policymakers as the name itself suggests it was a way of bringing the United States into the future through modernization and economic justice.
Lyndon B. Johnson is best known for his own ambitious social and domestic policy program known as the Great Society. The Great Society much like the New Frontier took on the legacy of the New Deal and tried to add to it but expanding it even further than the New Deal ever was even at the peak of the Great Depression. The Great Society is best known for one of the initiatives in it the so-called War on Poverty. The idea behind the War on Poverty was not to give poor people handouts in order to try and help lift them out of poverty instead the idea was to try and create a culture of community activism and other programs in the worst places and most disadvantaged communities to give them the tools to fight their own wars on poverty (Farber & Foner 106) The War on Poverty maybe what is remembered about the Great Society but it is by no means the only changes for American society. LBJ during his presidency was able to enact as much change in America’s social policy as has been done since the New Deal. LBJ was able during his presidency was able to get through congress Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, the Higher Education act and many other pieces of legislation that would completely change the face of American society and create a far more just and equitable for the most vulnerable members of society, minorities, the elderly and the por.
LBJ’s Great Society programs have in large part faced the test of time and many of them are still the backbone of America’s social safety net along with Social Security. The Great Society was very successful in reaffirming the values of the New Deal and instilling in the system the importance of fairness and equity for all people. In contrast the New Frontier never effected much political change in American society. JFK served one tragically shortened term in the White House and was never able to make most of his vision for social change a reality. The New Frontier was also as much about a particular strain of thought that valued modernization and rationality as a way of solving problems as much as it was an actual political ideology. The New Frontier might have landed America on the moon before the Soviets but as a logical political exercise it wasn’t nearly as successful as the Great Society.
Another major connection that cannot be ignored in both JFK’s and LBJ’s domestic policy is how intricately they were connected to their respective foreign policies. The New Frontier was also a strategy by the White House in fighting the Cold War and it involved a new approach with the Third World and the Non-Aligned nations. (Savage 331) It was LBJ’s foreign policy failures in fighting the war in Vietnam that ultimately undermined some of the more radical aspects of the Great Society. The American public trust of the federal government and of LBJ as president greatly waned as the situation in Vietnam got worse and less tenable. People also revolted against LBJ because the obvious trade-offs that had to be made in order to fight a war and put together a massive series of very expensive social programs. There had to be a catch and this was exactly what happened when an income tax increase. People lost faith in the government and its ability to fight what essentially a two front war and that brought an end to both the Great Society and LBJ’s presidency. (Bernstein) The Vietnam War brought the dream of the 1960s to and end because it brought into question what liberalism meant and how a government could act like the US was in Vietnam while pretending to fix major social problems at home. It was a contradiction that many couldn’t navigate.
Works Cited
Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.
Farber, David R., and Eric Foner. The age of great dreams: America in the 1960s. Macmillan, 1994.
Savage, Sean J. JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party. SUNY Press, 2012.
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. A thousand days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002.Bottom of Form
