The 36th President of The United States, Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson: "A Great Society" for the American people and their companion elsewhere was the vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. In his first years in office, he won approval from one of the most extensive legislative programs in the history of the nation. Maintaining collective security, he charged the rapidly growing communist struggle to curb encroachment on Vietnam. Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, in Central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which his family had helped form. He felt rural poverty while growing up, making his way through the University of Southwest Texas State Teachers College; he learned compassion for the poverty of others when he taught students of Mexican descent. In 1937 he successfully campaigned for the House of Representatives on a platform New Deal helped effectively by his wife, the former Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor, whom he married in 1934. During World War II served briefly in the navy as a lieutenant commander, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific. After six terms in the House, they elected Johnson to the Senate in 1948. In 1953, he became the leader of the youngest in the history of the Senate minority, and the following year, when Democrats gained control, was leader the majority. With an uncanny ability he won approval a number of key Eisenhower measures.

In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as running mate of John F. Kennedy, was elected Vice President. On November 22, 1963, when they killed Kennedy, Johnson swore as President. First it obtained the approval of the measures that President Kennedy had been driving at the time of his death - a new bill of civil rights and a tax cut. Then he asked the nation "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor." In 1964, Johnson won the presidency with 61 percent of the vote and had the more than 15,000,000 votes - largest popular margin in American history. The Great Society program became agenda Johnson for Congress in January 1965: aid to education, attack the disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of regions in depression, a struggle large-scale poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Congress occasionally increased or enmendaba, the recommendations enacted hastily by Johnson. Millions of elderly people found relief with the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act. Under Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations in space in a program he had championed since its inception. When three astronauts orbited successfully around the moon in December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You have brought us ... all of us, the world, into a new era ..."

However, two outstanding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite the beginning of the new anti-poverty programs and antidiscrimen, discomfort and brawls in the groups of black people worried the nation. President Johnson steadily exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of law and order, but there was no alternative solution. The other crisis presented by Vietnam. Despite Johnson's efforts to stop Communist aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam to begin negotiations. At the same time, he capitalized on the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election so that he could devote his full effort, that hamper policy, seeking peace. When he left office, peace talks were ongoing; He did not live to see the success of the same, as I Murie suddenly of a heart attack at his ranch in Texas on January 22, 1973.