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The sympathy that flowed from Kennedy's death translated into support for Johnson. He pledged to continue Kennedy's agenda and he lived up to his reputation as a legislative master in bringing about passage of the most ambitious domestic legislative agenda since Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal." Johnson's approval rating reached its apex at 79% on March 5, 1964, just after his first 100 days in office. He worked with Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia to reduce the federal budget below $100 billion in exchange for what passage of the Revenue Act of 1964, which lowered tax rates. But this was only the beginning. In late 1963 Johnson took the first step in his War on Poverty. he appointed Kennedy's brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, then head of the Peace Corps, to manage this program. In March 1964, Johnson askec Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which created the Job Corps and the Community Action Program, designed to attack poverty locally.
His biggest challenge would come in quarterbacking the civil-rights bill that his predecessor had sent to Congress in June 1963, which had met with strong opposition. Johnson asked the slain president's brother Robert Kennedy to lead the administration's effort on Capitol Hill. Some of his biographers have concluded that he did so for political cover, in case the effort failed. This time he bill was met with the same tactics that prevented the passage of civil rights bills in the past. Southern congressmen and senators used congressional procedure to prevent it from coming to a vote. They held up major administration bills that were considered urgent in order to bargain with the bill's supporters to pull the bill. Johnson was quite familiar with these tactics, as he had used them himself in the past. He had used a similar tactic against the civil rights bill that Harry Truman had submitted to congress fifteen years earlier.
Johnson was able to get the bill through the Rules Committee, which had been holding it up in an attempt to kill it. He used the threat of a discharge petition to force it onto the house floor. This got the House rules committee to approve the bill and moved it to the floor of the full house, which passed it shortly thereafter by a vote of 290–110. In the Senate, the anti-civil-rights senators were left with the filibuster as their only remaining tool. Overcoming the filibuster required the support of over twenty Republicans, and they were not inclined to be cooperative going into an election year. Johnson convinced Republican leader Everett Dirksen to support the bill and Dirksen was able to attract the necessary Republican votes to overcome the filibuster in March 1964. After 75 hours of debate, the bill passed the senate by a vote of 71–29. Johnson signed the fortified Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2. That the evening after signing the bill, Johnson told an aide, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come". He was correct.
Johnson ran for President in 1964, campaigning on a slogan which described his proposed domestic agenda for 1965. His speechwriter Richard Goodwin called it "The Great Society"—and incorporated this in detail as part of a speech for Johnson in May 1964 at the University of Michigan. It covered Johnson's vision of urban renewal, modern transportation, clean environment, anti-poverty, healthcare reform, crime control, and educational reform. In the presidential election Johnson defeated his conservative Republican rival Barry Goldwater by a margin of 61.1% to 38.5% in the popular vote, and 486 to 52 in the electoral college.
In his second term, Johnson was able to achieve many of his "Great Society" legislative goals by expanding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and continue his "War on Poverty". He was assisted in part by a growing economy, and his programs helped millions of Americans to rise above the poverty line during his administration. Civil rights bills that he signed into law banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing. The Voting Rights Act prohibited certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans.
And then there was what Johnson called "that bitch of a war."
When Lyndon Johnson became president, he took a different approach the the issue of Vietnam than the one his predecessor was expected to take. Whereas Kennedy had talked about a decreased US presence in Vietnam, Johnson was a firm believer in what was known as "the Domino Theory" (i.e. the idea that if Vietnam fell to communism, other surrounding Asian nations would also fall, like a row of dominoes.) Johnson was committed to a containment policy to stop Communist expansion. At the time of Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. When he became President, Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. Johnson ordered an increase in the number of American military personnel in Vietnam. He did so following what was known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which happened just over two weeks after the Republican Convention of 1964.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident actually refers to two separate confrontations between the North Vietnamese and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, performing an intelligence patrol, engaged three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats, resulting in a sea battle. One US aircraft was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six were wounded. There were no U.S. casualties. It was originally claimed that the second Tonkin Gulf incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but subsequently it has been shown that there were no actual North Vietnamese torpedo boat attacks in that incident. As the result of these two incidents, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Johnson authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression." The resolution was Johnson's legal justification for sending U.S. forces and the commencing war against North Vietnam. Johnson later admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based in part on a false pretext.
By the end of 1964, there were approximately 23,000 military personnel in South Vietnam. U.S. casualties for 1964 totaled 1,278. By 1968 over 550,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam. For 1967 and 1968 they were being killed at a rate of about 1,000 a month. Johnson closely watched public opinion polls, which in turn led to his direct involvement in the management of the war. At first he downplayed the war and made very few speeches about Vietnam. Early polls showed that the public was consistently 40–50 percent supportive of the war effort and 10–25 percent opposed to it. But as the war continued and casualties mounted without the appearance of easy victory, support for it declined, and it became an issue divided the Democratic Party.
Johnson is said to have often privately cursed the Vietnam War. In a conversation with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Johnson blamed "that bunch of commies" running The New York Times for their articles against the war effort. In a discussion about the war with former President Dwight Eisenhower on October 3, 1966, Johnson said he was "trying to win it just as fast as I can in every way that I know how." Johnson escalated the war effort continuously from 1964 to 1968, but the number of American deaths rose. In two weeks in May 1968 alone American deaths numbered 1,800 with total casualties at 18,000. Johnson persisted in his belief in the Domino Theory. He said, "If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco."
The Tet Offensive took place in early 1968. This was a series of military campaigns began on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army against the forces of South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian commands and control centers throughout South Vietnam. From this point on, Johnson was consumed by Vietnam more than ever. Venerable CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite gave an editorial report during the Tet Offensive in which he told the public that he believed that the war was unwinnable. In response, Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
As casualties mounted and success seemed further away than ever, Johnson's popularity plummeted. College students and others protested, burned draft cards, and chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Johnson could not travel anywhere without facing protests. In March of 1968, as his poll numbers continued to drop, he announced that he would not seek re-election to the Presidency. The Secret Service would not allow him to attend the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where thousands gathered to protest. Johnson's poll numbers reached their lowest point at 34% in August of 1968. The public was polarized, with the "hawks" rejecting Johnson's refusal to continue the war more aggressively, and the "doves" wanting the US out of Vietnam. In the 1968 election, although he realized that Republican candidate Richard Nixon was closer to his position than Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, he supported Humphrey publicly, saying "the Democratic party at its worst, is still better than the Republican party at its best".
Johnson summed up his involvement in the Vietnam War as President by writing:
“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”
Johnson said that he was afraid that if he tried to defeat the North Vietnamese regime with a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, he might provoke the Chinese to intervene similar to their intervention in 1950 during the Korean War. He was also afraid that this might provoke the Soviets into launching a military invasion of western Europe.
Johnson died four years after leaving office on January 22, 1973. Many believe that the stress of the Vietnam war was a major contributor to his early demise.