A president at the edge of his own success
By the start of 1967 Lyndon Johnson had been president for just over three years and had won the 1964 election by one of the largest margins in American history. The 89th Congress, which sat in 1965 and 1966, had passed a remarkable volume of legislation: Medicare and Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to schools and colleges, a new immigration law and the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Johnson gave this program a name, the Great Society, borrowed from a speech he delivered in May 1964.
The political ground then shifted. In the November 1966 midterm elections the Republicans gained more than forty seats in the House of Representatives and three in the Senate. Democrats kept control of both chambers, but the large liberal majorities that had made 1965 possible were much reduced. The 90th Congress, which met in January 1967, was more cautious, more attentive to the budget and more sceptical of new federal programs.
The war takes up the room
The main reason for that scepticism was Vietnam. American forces in the country had grown from a small advisory presence to a very large combat force, and by the end of 1967 the number of Americans serving there was nearly half a million. The debate over Vietnam troop levels and strategy was now a daily feature of political life, and the cost of the war was beginning to show up in the federal budget.
Johnson wanted both programs, which became a central difficulty. In his January 1967 State of the Union address he asked for a tax surcharge to pay for the war and the domestic agenda, and in the summer he asked for a larger one. Wilbur Mills, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held out for spending cuts in exchange, and the surcharge was not enacted until 1968. The delay fed worries about the state of the American economy, including rising prices and a growing deficit.
What Congress did pass
It would be wrong to describe 1967 as a year of legislative failure. Several significant laws were enacted, often in the autumn:
- The Public Broadcasting Act, signed in November, created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
- The Air Quality Act of 1967 extended federal involvement in controlling air pollution.
- The Age Discrimination in Employment Act, signed in December, barred certain forms of discrimination against older workers.
- A Wholesome Meat Act extended federal inspection standards to meat sold within states.
- Amendments to the Social Security Act, also at year’s end, raised benefits and adjusted other provisions.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other programs from the earlier Congress were also extended or funded. Even so, the tone in Washington had changed. Programs under the umbrella of the War on Poverty drew criticism both from conservatives who thought them wasteful and from some activists who thought them too timid. Proposals that had looked certain two years earlier, such as stronger fair housing legislation, faced a harder road and did not pass until April 1968.
Cities, riots and the question of order
The summer of 1967 added a different pressure. Serious disturbances broke out in many American cities, the most violent in Newark and Detroit. After the Detroit uprising Johnson sent federal troops into the city and, shortly afterwards, appointed a commission to examine the causes of the violence. Its work is covered in the article on the Kerner Commission. Critics on one side argued that the Great Society had raised expectations it could not meet, and critics on the other argued that the programs were too small to change conditions in poor neighborhoods. The word “crime” became a growing theme in political speeches, and it would be central to the 1968 campaign.
Diplomacy, the courts and the Constitution
Not all of the year was about conflict. After the Six-Day War in June, Johnson met the Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin at Glassboro, New Jersey, a meeting that produced little agreement but showed that talks continued despite Vietnam. In June, Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, and the Senate confirmed him in August as the first Black justice. Earlier, in February, the states completed ratification of the 25th Amendment, which clarified what happens when a president dies, resigns or becomes unable to serve. In Congress, the House’s decision to exclude Adam Clayton Powell showed that the legislative branch was also wrestling with questions of authority and race.
Public confidence and the war at home
Through 1967 Johnson’s public standing declined. Supporters of the war had once been the majority, but more Americans came to say that the conflict had been a mistake or that progress was too slow. The phrase “credibility gap”, used by critics for the distance between official optimism and events, was widely repeated. In October, large antiwar protests culminated in the March on the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, one of the architects of the war, had grown privately doubtful and left his post at the end of February 1968.
In the autumn the administration tried to reassure the public. General Westmoreland returned to Washington in November and spoke publicly of progress. At almost the same time a Minnesota senator, Eugene McCarthy, announced that he would challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination, and the first signs of a party split appeared.
The consequences
The events of January 1968, especially the Tet Offensive, made 1967’s optimism look fragile. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek another term. That decision is covered in its own article, but its roots lie in the year described here: a president who had spent his first years in office passing historic laws and who spent 1967 discovering that the war, the cities and an impatient Congress limited what he could do.
Historians still debate how the Great Society should be judged. Many of its institutions, including Medicare, Medicaid and federal education aid, remained in place for decades. Others were cut back or reshaped. What can be said with confidence is that 1967 was the year in which its momentum slowed, and the political argument shifted from what government could build to whether it could keep order and end the war.