LBJ's legacy is a complicated one. As John F. Kennedy's vice president, Johnson was thrust into the presidency by Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. President Johnson's speech to the nation just five days later is considered one of the finest of his career. (He began with the somber words, "All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.") Even so, Johnson viewed Kennedy's death as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and to push his own agenda. "I am a Roosevelt New Dealer," Johnson said the day after the assassination. "Kennedy was a little too conservative to suit my taste."
Johnson was a vehement and vocal racist, yet considered a civil rights hero for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a barrage of other legislation advancing social programs as part of his Great Society policy initiatives, modeled after the New Deal of Depression-era President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
But if history has (for the most part) been kind to FDR, the same cannot be said of LBJ.
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