Leadership Styles: JFK & LBJ and Their Impact on the Presidency

1. Do Now: Recap Complete the T/F activity to recap JFK Correct in green pen. Challenge: To what extent did Kennedy change the leadership style of the presidency?

2. How did Lyndon B Johnson differ in leadership style to JFK? It’s a question, so it needs a ? underlined LOs: 1. To identify the distinct leadership style and personality of LBJ 2. To explain how his personality, domestic and foreign policies affected the role of the president 3. To evaluate his successes and failures domestically and abroad

3. Lyndon-Bates Johnson • He was fiercely competitive and a master manipulator – due to his political knowledge and experience • He liked the idea of power and had a complex personality according to his friends and wife as he appeared one way to the public and very soft in his personal life. • He had good internal organization • He was very soft and was very warm but he was not eager to get up in front of millions of people and act that way • He was disliked mostly due to America’s role in the Vietnam War and the injustices here (increasing troops in Vietnam to over 550,000 by early 1968) • He went through poverty in rural Texas as a child which taught him that to win and succeed you mustn’t make the people love you but you must overpower them so your decisions are supported.

4. How He Became President • Johnson had a ‘Grass to Grace’ type story, being raised in central Texas, not far from Johnson City. Growing up, he felt the sting of rural poverty, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now known as Texas State University), and learning compassion for the poverty and discrimination of others when he taught students of Mexican descent in Cotulla, Texas. • In 1937 he campaigned successfully for the House of Representatives on a New Deal platform, effectively aided by his wife, the former Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor, whom he had married after a whirlwind courtship in 1934. • In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F. Kennedy's running mate, was elected Vice President. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Lyndon Baines Johnson became the 36th President

5. Style of Presidency • Johnson has several similarities with Roosevelt, in particular his good relations with the media and other politicians. However, you could say that Johnson eventually surpassed Roosevelt, in the sense that he did not just stop with the media, he also went on to establish personal relationships with members of congress, keeping In constant contact especially when it came to lobbying for acts. • Johnson's mastery of the Senate, its complex rules and internal organisation let him drive bills through the legislature in record time; it was a reputation he was proud of, and he kept his own running tally of legislative successes. It is also stated that there were even consent agreements that set a time limit on debates. Johnson also used quorum calls to his advantage by using them to replace brief recesses during meetings so he could have time to cut deals in the cloakroom. He also discouraged prolonged debate and promoted back-room agreements with a much more direct approach. • LBJ was a master at forming personal relationships with members of congress, something earlier presidents had been criticised for not doing. To do this, he had to find republicans to support him during a time when the house was controlled by southern democrats. Johnson was also famous for ‘the treatment’, keeping in close and constant contact with key legislators until deals were made, to mostly through the phone. This was helpful as this enabled Johnson to push his ideas and get contact updates from congress members on the progress of the various rights and acts that he lobbied for. Johnsons success at persuading the congress to pass the ground-breaking legislation for civil rights as well as various welfare programs could be attributed to his superior skills of persuasion.

6. Failures As President Johnson often talked about a plans to launch a ‘war on poverty’. In a speech, Johnson stated that it was time for the USA to move "not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upwards to the Great Society.“ This society "demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.” However, the only problem was that Johnson announced his wildly unrealistic goal of eliminating poverty prior to formulating any concrete ideas about how it might be achieved. He simply assumed that it could be done if we set our minds to it, so he declared the rhetorical war and left it to his advisers to craft policies that would win it. No surprise that the war was lost as a result. The ‘war on poverty only encouraged more cynicism from the public on what the government could actually do’.

7. Was He Successful? Ultimately LBJ was successful but had his legacy significantly tarnished by the Vietnam war. He is responsible for passing the Civil Right Act, perhaps the most important right in American history, as this meant that black people would now be legally required to be treated equally to white people. However, this pales into insignificance when put next to the 500,000+ lives taken in Vietnam.

8. Task: How did leadership styles change under Johnson? Use pages 124-128 to complete your evaluation table of LBJ. • The Great Society • Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act- 07/02/1964 • Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution- 08/07/1964 • Voting Rights Act- 08/06/65 Challenge: Create a list of similarities and difference between LBJ and JFK (there are some similarities!)