IV.

The Great Society

In his first State of the Union address as an elected president, Johnson outlined the Great Society, his own extensive legislative programme to raise the quality of American life. The programme soon began to materialize in one of the most fruitful legislative eras in US history. Congress, against muted opposition, enacted a new housing bill, a Medicare programme to help provide medical care for the elderly, and additional antipoverty measures. Other legislation protected the voting rights of southern blacks, created a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and abolished the immigration quota system. Johnson's appropriation bills for secondary and higher education—a pet project of the former schoolteacher—sent aid to almost every school system in the country. He also continued to support the huge costs of NASA during the build up to the first Apollo Moon landing in 1969; indeed, many regard him as the only president to have a genuine interest in the space programme, beyond political expediency.

Although he had lost some momentum by 1966, Johnson signed bills creating the National Teachers Corps and the Model Cities urban redevelopment programme. In 1967 and 1968, despite diminished Democratic majorities in Congress, the administration succeeded in gaining passage of an open-housing civil rights bill and important education, gun-control, and conservation measures. In all, Congress had implemented 226 of Johnson's 252 legislative requests by the expiration of his term.