17. LBJ’s Funny Side
America’s 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908 – 1973), might have gone down in history as one of the country’s greatest chief executives if it had not been for the Vietnam War. LBJ had spent decades in Congress, both in the House and Senate, whose Majority Leader he became in the 1950s. When fate elevated him from vice president to president after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Johnson entered the Oval Office with an unequaled mastery of the legislative process.
He put that expertise to good use, and pushed through landmark legislative accomplishments such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both Medicare and Medicaid also began during his administration. Had Vietnam not derailed his ambitious “Great Society” program, LBJ would probably rank alongside Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of America’s most transformative presidents. The disastrous war in Southeast Asia and the great legislative accomplishments loom large in the public’s perceptions of LBJ. They obscure, as seen below, the lesser known nutty – and sometimes seedy – side of the man.