Lyndon B. Johnson's Leadership
Imagine living during a time in which power is transforming in the government. Before Lyndon B. Johnson became President, John F. Kennedy encouraged the space program as well as many other endeavors. When Lyndon B. Johnson took over everything changed under his control, and to this day some view him as a good or bad leader. One will study why he became a leader, his leadership and his accomplishments. Lyndon B. Johnson wrote "The American Experience," which was driven by ambition and a lust for power. He was elected in 1965 and he worked night and day to achieve his goal to become President. His biggest fear was to fail and ended up haunting him for the rest of his life. Politics was his life. At that time, he was considered the best when it came to personal relationships, and decided to go to an old advisor…...

The new president then moved on to argue that the best thing to be done was that of continuing the plan instated by Kennedy, through which he planned on making the United States a better and more prosperous country. "And now the ideas and the ideals which he so nobly represented must and will be translated into effective action" (Johnson). As most political analysis would argue, the continuation of the previous plan is not only a strategy to gaining popularity, but also one which stands the most chances of retrieving successful outcomes, due to consistency and the ability to capitalize on the investments which had already been made.

Johnson continued his speech by appealing to the pride of being an American, which was raised by the reiteration of the American goals, strengths and commitments. The country would continue its efforts to make the world a better place, and would offer its…...

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References:

Stubbs, J., LBJ Goes to War, Plattsburgh State University, last accessed on January 20, 2010http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/john.stubbs/pw/page3.html

Lyndon B. Johnson's Let us continue Speech

Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America: An Analysis Fernlund starts off his biography of Johnson by defining the years 1932 to 1968 as the Age of Johnson[footnoteRef:2]—a title not commonly seen for the time period stretching from the internecine wars to the height of the Cold War. From the beginning, therefore, it becomes clear that Fernlund’s purpose in writing the book is not to rehash old material or regurgitate the same old facts about LBJ but to rather to depict the man in a new light—as larger than life, in fact—so that one cannot think of this time period without thinking about how it reflected on him and he reflected on it. This paper will discuss the aim of Fernlund, how well he executes his purpose, whether his treatment of his subject is too narrow, too broad or appropriately detailed, how well the book is organized, and the qualities of the…...

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Bibliography

Fernlund, Kevin. Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 2012. 192 pp.

President Lyndon B. Johnson Describes Great Society" Michael P. Johnson's Reading American Past (pg.
The historical epoch in which Lyndon B. Johnson conceived of and attempted to implement the Great Society represented a critical period in the history of America. Johnson began his presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy during the turbulent 1960's in which unresolved issues of poverty and race threatened to quite literally tear the country apart. Some of these very issues were similar ones faced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the beginning of his lengthy tenure as president in which he attempted to restore America from the throes of the Great Depression. Johnson's Great Society was devised to provide answers to many of these problems, and to foster a new way of thinking about both the U.S. And the responsibilities of its citizens in a way that was every bit as pragmatic as it was…...

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Works Cited

Ember, Steve. "American History: Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War." Voice of America. 2011. Web.  http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/american-history-lyndon-b-johnson-and-the-vietnam-war-133122408/116230.html 

Johnson, Lyndon. "Address at the University of Michigan." 1964. Print.

Siegel, Robert. "Lyndon Johnson's War of Poverty." NPR. 2004. Web.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1589660

LBJ
Psychoanalysis can be a very useful tool for uncovering driving patterns in an individual's character. ith proper care some people are able to identify why they act the way they do, and more importantly, alter their behavior as they deem appropriate. Additionally, the temporal evolution of this science has given us the power to look into the past and judge it from an entirely new perspective. By analyzing a person's most significant influences, it is possible to draw certain conclusions as to the nature of their personality and their possible subconscious motives. Unlocking the modern arsenal of psychological models, historical figures can be looked at from a point-of-view that is not limited by the cold hard facts of their accomplishments and failures; psychology can generate insights into their unique consciousnesses.

It should be noted, however, that psychoanalysis is not a concrete science -- few aspects of it can be quantified. Therefore,…...

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Works Cited

Axline, Virginia M. Dibs in Search of Self. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964.

Blank, Warren. The 9 Natural Laws of Leadership. New York: American Management Association, 1995.

Fujii, Lee Ann. "Finding the Middle: an Analysis of Johnson's 1965 Decision to Escalate the War in Vietnam." The International Relations Journal winter/spring 2000-2001: 62-95.

Herrmann, Ned. The Whole Brain Business Book. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Malcolm X and Lyndon B. Johnson
True and real equality of the African-American race: Opposing views from Malcolm X and Lyndon B. Johnson

In the history of the Negro's struggle to fight for his/her civil rights, two important political figures became prominent in advancing the Negro community's cause for equality and abolition of racial prejudice and discrimination: Malcolm X and former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Each political figure advocated for opposing sides of the civil rights movement, yet both had contributed to the development and promotion of giving equal opportunities for Negros, not only in socially, but also legally through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Indeed, the passage and implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had been the primary contention in which Malcolm X and Johnson had argued for equality between the white and black Americans in all aspects of life. In promoting their respective views of this new legislation,…...

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What Malcolm X tried to express to his audience was that the Voting Rights bill was just a ruse that the administration had created in order to alleviate protests from Negro citizens of the country. For him, the bill was just any other resolution that attempted to solve the problem of racial prejudice and discrimination in the country; unfortunately, this ruse had been uncovered early on by Malcolm X and his fellow Negros. Thus, he proposed that what Negros need was not a defective legislative system and a bill that purports to fight for equal rights in the country, but active participation in fighting the social plague that was prejudice and discrimination against Negros. Thus, from the assertion that "... The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves ... " Malcolm X was not extending the fantasy that Negros can achieve equality; in fact, he tried to bring his audience back to reality, tried to downplay the hopes that the Voting Rights bill posed for his fellowmen. Indeed, his arguments had shown that Negros' social realities were a far cry from the peaceful and egalitarian state of society that the administration argues the 20th century to be.

This last assertion was subsisted to by Johnson, who, in his speech "We shall overcome," put up the hopes of Negros by proposing and expressing his desire for the passage of the Voting Rights bill. He put forth the 'fantasy' or ideal that, indeed, equality will be achieved and discrimination, eliminated. This fantasy was realized through the Voting Rights bill, which, he explicated as "[t]he bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races." This generalization was put forth despite criticisms against Malcolm X one year before the passage of the bill to become the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

While Malcolm X kept a pessimistic view of the Negros' welfare under the said legislation, Johnson relied on the bill's power and influence to unite American society, regardless of race, socio-economic status, or beliefs and values of people in life. From the analysis of Malcolm X and Johnson's speeches, it became evident that the former subsisted to a more real illustration of the Negro condition in the country, while the latter (Johnson) believed that a goal, achieved through the fantasy that American society would lead to the development of an egalitarian society, will help and provide opportunities for Negros to better their welfare in the society.

Successes and Failures of President Lyndon B. Johnson's reat Society Plan
Successes of President Johnson's reat Society Concept

President Lyndon B. Johnson's political beginnings coincided with FDR's New Deal in the 1930s, and in many respects, its principles and goals were more a part of his lifelong political agenda than they had been his predecessor's, President John F. Kennedy (oldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 339). Therefore, when Johnson assumed the presidency after Kennedy's tragic assassination in Dallas, Texas in 1963, he immediately set about implementing a very aggressive domestic political agenda whose focus was to improve life for as many Americans as possible, mainly through better educational opportunities, health care availability and affordability, fairness in taxation, and improvement in urban affairs on a national level (oldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 340).

One of the most essential components of Johnson's vision of a reat Society was one in which all people were…...

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Goldfield, D., Abbot, C., Argersinger, J. And Argersinger, P. Twentieth-Century

America: A Social and Political History. 2005. New Jersey: Pearson-Prentice

Hall.

" The Great Society initiative included policies concerning increased education assistance, fundamental protections of civil rights and the right of all Americans to vote, urban renewal, Medicare, conservation, beautification, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, promotion of the arts, and consumer protection (President Lyndon B. Johnson's Biography 2009).
Contributions.

The contributions made by President Johnson were both numerous and significant. In this regard, Firestone and Vogt (1988) report that, "As LBJ led Congress to the completion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to a major tax bill, the first significant federal aid to education, and the program of medical care for the aged that had been pending since Harry Truman's day, surely confidence and optimism were not unwarranted" (1). Following his reelection to the presidency in 1964, Johnson was not content to rest on his laurels but continued his quest for improved civil rights in the country. For instance in…...

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Works Cited

Abbott, Philip. 2005. "Accidental Presidents: Death, Assassination, Resignation, and Democratic

Succession." Presidential Studies Quarterly 35(4): 627-628.

Blight, James G. And Janet M. Lang. The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S.

McNamara. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

68).
Getting liberal legislation passed into law was LBJ's benchmark of effective leadership. He knew how to do it. The most successful at this of any president ever, he followed every detail of legislation and demanded that his aides not simply think they had the support of a representative in Congress but know they had it! "You've got to know you've got him, and there's only one way you know'...Johnson looked into his open hand and closed his fingers into a fist. 'And that's when you've got his pecker right here.' The president opened his desk drawer, acted as if he were dropping something, emphatically slammed the drawer shut, and smiled" (p. 88). Meanwhile, Congress complained it was "bullied, badgered, and brainwashed" (p. 91) by President Johnson's strong-arm Texan tactics.

Schulman (1995) argues that Johnson's liberalism changed national social policy "profoundly" and "permanently altered the nation's political landscape" (p. 121). The…...

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References

Schulman, B.J. (1995). Lyndon B. Johnson and American liberalism: A brief biography with documents. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press.

Dallek used traditional methods of research and structure making his book a true "history" from a collegiate-academic point-of-view. But this does not invalidate Caro's work. The problem, then, in looking at both of these books to be authorities is to figure out if it really matters if Caro's lack of credentials and traditional (meaning library) method of information gathering actually denote a lesser effect on the overall impact of the work. The problem, then, that Caro faces is the determination if his work actually is quote worthy of other historians quoting / referencing him.
For Dallek, his unwavering adherence to strict academic research leaves the punch out of the story of Johnson. It is one thing to have a series of supported and peer-reviewed facts lined up chapter by chapter, and it is yet another to make those facts sing in an engaging story format. Caro's book is by far…...

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References

Caro, Robert J. The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol 1.New York,: Vintage, 1990.

Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1908-1960, vol 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

I knew the Congress as well as I know Lady ird, and I knew that the day it exploded into a major debate on the war, that day would be the beginning of the end of the Great Society.'" in the end, these secrets when revealed, changed forever the way Americans viewed the Presidency, and politicians in general.
Johnson's style of compromise and bargining came to haunt him in dealing with the people and Congress over Vietnam. As Majority Leader in the Senate, he had supported President Eisenhower's foreign policy, partly to move forward his own agenda. What he never understood was that as President, he could not count on the same spirit of bi-partisanship from his Congress. In the end, his actions led to legislation that placed limits on the power of the Presidency.

American politics would never be the same after 1968. For the first time the American people…...

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Bibliography

Caro, Robert a. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. New York: Alfred a. Knoft, 1982.

Caro, Robert a. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. New York: Alfred a. Knoft, 1990.

Caro, Robert a. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. New York: Alfred a. Knoft, 2002.

Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908-1961. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

The Presidency of George alker Bush, 2001-present, has been marked primarily by his war on terrorism, however, he has proposed to make welfare more focused on the well-being of children and strengthen support of families, provide Affordable Health Care for Low-Income Families and Individuals, and has asked Congress to aid him in achieving significant immigration reform that includes matching a willing worker with a willing employer, protecting workers from abuse, and protecting the rights of legal immigrants while not unfairly rewarding those who came here unlawfully or hope to do so.

orks Cited

Dallek, Robert. 2001. Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American

Presidents. Oxford University Press.

Dallek, Robert. 2003. John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights. Quandary. American History

Magazine. August.

Garland, Howard. 2001. Images in words: Presidential rhetoric, charisma, and greatness. Administrative Science Quarterly. September 01.

George . Bush. The hite House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/index.html. (Accessed June 17, 2005).

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953). American President.org. http://ap.beta.polardesign.com/history/harrytruman/biography/domesticpolicy.common.shtml. (Accessed…...

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Works Cited

Dallek, Robert. 2001. Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American

Presidents. Oxford University Press.

Dallek, Robert. 2003. John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights. Quandary. American History

Magazine. August.

Tonkin Gulf Crisis
The Debate over the Tonkin Gulf Crisis

The Tonkin Gulf Crisis 1964 ranks with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as events that David Kaiser of the U.S. Naval War College refers to as "controversies in American political history that dwarf all others (Ford, 1997)."

There is evidence that President Lyndon Johnson deliberately lied about the incidents leading to the Vietnam War to ensure that plans for war were supported. However, many opponents of this claim say that this is not so. According to Sedgwick Tourison in the book Secret Army, Secret War and Dr. Edwin Moise's Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, evidence that Johnson's administration was deceitful is becoming clearer than it was (Ford, 1997).

Today, Tonkin Gulf researchers are still examining the evidence to determine whether or not Johnson's administration intentionally instigated the first attack on Maddox…...

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Bibliography

Austin, Anthony. (1971). The President's War. Lippincott.

Cohen, Jeff. Solomon, Norman. (July 27, 1994). 30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War. Media Beat. Retrieved from the Internet at  http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html .

Department of State Bulletin. (August 24, 1964) The Tonkin Gulf Incident: President Johnson's Message to Congress. Retrieved from the Internet at http://pages.xtn.net/~wingman/docs/tonkin.htm.

Ford, Ronnie. (August, 1997). New Light On Gulf Of Tonkin. Vietnam Magazine, pp. 165-172.

Kennedy recognizes the need to establish a bond with all the South American leaders, thereby isolating Chavez-Chavez politically as ineffective leader in South America. Kennedy perceived the Third orld in terms of the "national military establishment," and vulnerable to the manipulations of the Soviet Union (Schwab, Orrin, 1998, 1). Kennedy had already gone around with Cuba, and did not wish to repeat his mistakes in Venezuela, but he also had no intention of surrendering Venezuela to the Soviet Union in the way in which Cuba had been surrendered before him.
President Kennedy saw South American diplomacy as the route to turning Venezuela away from bonding with the Soviet Union. He recognized that he could not alienate the rest of South America from the United States, or that would drive them into the sphere of Venezuela's influence over them towards the Soviet Union.

Kennedy calls a meeting with Chavez-Chavez, in private, with…...

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Works Cited

Brown, Seyom. Faces of Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100986354 

Clark, General Wesley K. Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Questia. 15 Nov. 2008  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100986356 .

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65362550

DeConde, Alexander. A History of American Foreign Policy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963. Questia. 15 Nov. 2008  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65362550 .

would help alter the social and political landscape of the nation. However, Kennedy also engaged in controversial and potential volatile encounters such as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War would prove to be one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American history and when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 his vice president and successor Lyndon Baines Johnson continued the bloody and extended process of engaging and then withdrawing from Southeast Asia. Lyndon Johnson's problems in Vietnam were partially offset by the great strides his administration made in securing Civil ights laws. Moreover, Johnson would initiate other social service programs such as Medicare. Johnson's legacy would nevertheless be perpetually obscured by his more dynamic predecessor and successor: Kennedy and Nixon, respectively.
Johnson's successor, epublican ichard M. Nixon will probably be remembered most for his participation in the Watergate Scandal and his resignation…...

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References

Dwight D. Eisenhower." Wikipedia. Retrieved Aug 4, 2006 at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower 

Harry S. Truman." Wikipedia. Retrieved Aug 4, 2006 at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman 

John F. Kennedy." Wikipedia. Retrieved Aug 4, 2006 at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy 

Lyndon B. Johnson." Wikipedia. Retrieved Aug 4, 2006 at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson