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Hope & Anger. In the area of civil rights, Johnson fell victim to his earlier successes. It was a classic case of anticipation outpacing achievement. The bills that he got through Congress in 1964 and 1965 all but completed the task of bringing the Negro to legal parity with America's whites. But progress, inevitably, was slower in the subtler and vastly more difficult task of improving the Negro's lot in terms of income, jobs, housing and education. For the nation's 21.5 million Negroes, the result was a mercurial mood of "hope mixed with anger," as FORTUNE reported this month.
In Congress, Johnson was hobbled by the "stop, look and listen" approach advocated by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Engorged with costly programs enacted by the 89th Congress, the 90th cast a jaundiced eye on Johnson's new requests. According to Congressional Quarterly, from the time Johnson took office until the end of 1966, he got 655 of his 1,057 proposals enacted into law a sensational 62% average. (By C.Q.'s reckoning, Dwight Eisenhower batted 46%, John F. Kennedy only 39%.) But in 1967, Johnson was defeated on his tax-surcharge, civil rights, anticrime, East-West trade and legislative-reorganization bills. Foreign aid was cut by a record $1 billion, poverty funds by $300 million, model cities by $350 million. The rent-supplements program was practically shrunk out of existence from $40 million to $10 million. Despite Congress' fractious mood, however, Johnson did get a number of other bills past Capitol Hill's axmen, most notably: expanded air-pollution control, a consular treaty with Moscow, an outer-space treaty, the first meat-inspection program since Upton Sinclair's exposes inspired a similar bill in 1906, and a major increase in social security benefits.
The economy was also a worry, even though the gross national product neared the $800 billion mark and the nation's uninterrupted expansion percolated into its 84th month, three months longer than the old record. There were inflationary signs, a big balance-of-payments deficit, pressure on the dollar after Britain's devaluation of the pound. Economists and politicians began talking about "profitless prosperity." When Johnson asked belatedly for a 10% surcharge on income taxes to damp down the supercharged economy, Arkansas Democrat Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, insisted on an equivalent cut in federal spending that the President was unwilling to make.
Nuclear Imperative. Though often thwarted, Johnson was hardly rendered ineffectual. Such are the powers of his office at home and abroad that even at the nadir of his presidency, he stirred complaints that he was becoming "King Lyndon." Historians and Congressmen alike began wondering whether the presidency had not grown too strong. Next month a group of historians led by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. will meet in Manhattan to consider that very subject. In the Senate, North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin began an inquiry into the division of federal powers, while Fulbright looked into the "overextension of executive powers."*