In Memory of LBJ

 Lyndon Baines Johnson was never one of my favorite presidents as a man—he seemed quite unrefined, especially compared with the suave John F. Kennedy whom he succeeded after JFK’s shocking assassination. Yet I’ve come to rank him among America’s most effective presidents, thanks to his unmatched legislative triumphs like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. 

Those of you who were born by 1950 certainly remember Kennedy’s assassination on November 23, 1963, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson’s sudden elevation to the presidency aboard Air Force One on that fateful day.

Although Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination for president, JFK (who was nine years younger) secured that nomination on the first ballot at the July 1960 Democratic National Convention. He then promptly selected a running mate, offering that position to Senate Majority Leader Johnson, who had placed second in the presidential balloting.

Johnson thus became the 36^th POTUS and was elected for a full four-year term by a landslide in the 1964 election. By that time, he was widely known as just LBJ, and in that presidential campaign he widely used the phrases “All the way with LBJ” and “LBJ for the USA.” 

LBJ was born in Texas in 1908, and in 1930 he graduated from what is now Texas State University in San Marcos with a Bachelor of Science in history and a high school teaching certificate. (TXST compares unfavorably with the other two public Texas Universities, UT Austin and TAMU.) He taught at Sam Houston High School in 1930-31 and also entered politics that year.

Johnson served as a congressional aide from 1931 until 1937, the year he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for over 23 years. In 1949 he was elected as a U.S. senator, and he served as the Democratic whip from 1951 until 1953.

In January 1953, LBJ was chosen as Senate minority leader by his fellow Democrats, the most junior senator ever elected to that position. In 1954, Johnson was re-elected, and since the Democrats won the majority in the Senate, he became the majority leader, and some say he was the most effective Senate majority leader ever.

The first years after LBJ’s election as POTUS in 1964 were highly successful. Many months ago, I first thought about writing this tribute to Pres. Johnson upon thinking about the importance of the legislation he was able to pass in 1964 and ’65. I didn’t realize at the time, though, that it was partly because he was finalizing the legislation initiated by JFK.

That connection was portrayed well by the 2016 movie LBJ. Although it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, it didn’t reach theaters until November 2017. I wish it had been released immediately after it premiered, as it could well have changed the outcome of that very close, and very unsatisfactory, 2016 presidential election.

The film, which I don’t know why June and I didn’t watch in 2017, didn’t make me think any more highly of LBJ as a man; I didn’t like his cussing and crudeness at any point in his life. But it did cause me to think even more highly of him as a president and helped me to agree with a recent ranking of Johnson as the ninth best president in U.S. history, one notch above JFK.

If you are at all interested in learning more about one of the most prominent U.S. presidents, I encourage you to watch the movie LBJ, which was directed by Rob Reiner, who was tragically stabbed to death two months ago (in Dec. 2025). It is available for free streaming on Kanopy, available on DVD in many public libraries, and for rent at just $4 at Prime Video.

LBJ, quite unlike the current POTUS, was a man of integrity, who overcame his southern prejudices and signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In spite of his later over-involvement with the Indochina War in the 1960s, he is a man well worth remembering and honoring still.