His reputation changed in the early 2000s, as more historians and Americans started to look beyond Vietnam in assessing his tenure. The tide started to turn as much more attention was focused on the sheer breath of domestic accomplishments that he left behind. Lectures, books, films, and television reintroduced Americans to the nation’s thirty-sixth commander in chief. They told the story of a savvy, indefatigable politician who knew how to make the levers of Washington work in a way nobody else could. Most famous was the “Johnson Treatment,” where the six-foot-three Texan would literally hover with body and spirit over colleagues until they gave him the answers he wanted. The recordings of his White House telephone conversations provided an unprecedented glimpse into how Johnson wielded power when nobody was looking. And he got results—the scope of domestic legislation was astounding. Working with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, when the internal balance of power temporarily shifted from Southern conservatives to Northern liberals, Johnson pushed through legislation addressing poverty, health care, civil rights, voting rights, open housing, immigration, elementary and secondary schools, higher education, food insecurity, the environment, cultural institutions, public television, and much more—nearly two hundred pieces of legislation in total.
As compared with the war, Johnson’s domestic accomplishments seemed much more relevant as we moved into the twenty-first century. During an age of immense dysfunction in Washington, his political skills became a roadmap to how power could be made to work. For every news story that Americans read reminding them that nothing was getting done on the big issues of the day, LBJ provided the best evidence available that there was a different road the nation could travel on. Government could work. Presidential power could be effective. Our disjointed and fragmented system did not have to be, even if no one doubted change would be hard. President Barack Obama was reportedly frustrated when advisers kept talking to him about learning more about what LBJ would do; Obama reminded them that he never had anywhere near the congressional majorities his predecessor enjoyed after 1964. He might well have added that he, Obama, faced an implacably right-wing and oppositional Republican Party, whereas the GOP of Johnson’s day included numerous moderates and deal-makers.
In the post–Ronald Reagan era in which the nation had shifted to the right, LBJ’s domestic society also offered a powerful narrative for liberals as to how the federal government could be an extremely effective force for dealing with inequality, injustice, and insecurity. When Johnson started his presidency, Americans who were 65 or over very often fell short of being able to pay for their hospital stays. After Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the insurance to cover those costs was guaranteed by the federal government, paid for through Social Security taxes.
