Full Description
President Lyndon Johnson’s domestic programme, launched in 1964–65, representing the most ambitious expansion of the American welfare state since the New Deal. The Great Society created Medicare (healthcare for the elderly) and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor), passed the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), established federal funding for education, created the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and introduced immigration reform that ended the discriminatory national-origins quota system.
Critical Perspective
The Great Society was undermined almost immediately by the costs of the Vietnam War, which diverted resources and political capital from domestic reform. Johnson’s tragedy — captured in his own private admission that he knew Vietnam would “destroy the Great Society” — is that his most consequential domestic achievements were overshadowed and ultimately curtailed by a foreign policy disaster. The conservative backlash against the Great Society, which began with the 1966 midterms, initiated the rightward shift in American politics that culminated in Reaganism.
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