Lyndon Baines Johnson's early years. Johnson Lyndon: biography, politics, personal life, interesting facts, photos
36th President of the United States Lyndon Johnson
In the history of American and world politics, the attitude towards the figure of Lyndon B. Johnson is still ambiguous. Some call him a great politician and a great man, others characterize the 36th President of the United States as a power-obsessed opportunist. In historical literature, when mentioning Johnson, the epithet “bruised giant” is widely used. Giant - because this man was truly great and significant, beaten - because it was Johnson’s personal qualities that significantly contributed to the country’s bogging down in the Vietnam War.
Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding Johnson's accession to the presidency, he managed to gain considerable popularity. The successor to the assassinated Kennedy, who was not just a beloved president, but an idol and an icon, would in any case find it difficult to shake off comparisons with JFK. And in any case, these comparisons would not benefit him! However, Johnson's domestic politics contributed significantly to the growth of his rating. Foreign policy ruined everything.
Childhood and youth
Lyndon Baines Johnson (or LBJ, as contractionist Americans called their president) was born on August 27, 1908 in Stonewall, Texas. The future president's father, Samuel Johnson Jr., was a farmer; his mother, Rebecca Baines, was a journalist before her marriage, but left her career for the sake of her family.
Subsequently, Lyndon Johnson liked, on occasion, to mention the hardships and poverty that he supposedly had to endure in his childhood. However, this was an exaggeration; the family did not live in luxury, but did not beg either. An ordinary American family with five children will inevitably begin to count every cent! So that the eldest son, Lyndon, could get an education at the Texas Southwestern Teachers College, the family had to take out loans.
An energetic and assertive young man, Lyndon Johnson showed his abilities well during his school practice in the city of Cotull. It was here, in a segregated small-town Texas school, that Johnson's successes launched his political career. The young teacher coped with his duties so well that he attracted the attention of the local elite. And when in 1931, Richard Kleber, a large rancher and member of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party, was looking for an assistant to work in Washington, one of his friends recommended the young and energetic Lyndon Johnson.
Beginning of a career as a politician
John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
In his new role, Johnson set to work with the same energy that so amazed everyone at the Texas school. He showed great interest in the peculiarities of the work of Congress, began to actively participate in the life of the Democratic Party, and established relations with his father’s friend, member of the House of Representatives S. Rayburn. Already in the summer of 1935, Johnson received the post of Texas commissioner of the National Youth Administration.
Two years later, Johnson successfully ran for the House of Representatives from the 10th Congressional District of Texas, and his active support of Roosevelt's New Deal ideas brought the young politician to the attention of the president. Johnson becomes a member of many serious and influential committees. Let us note the chronology of the development of LBJ’s political career:
1942 - Member of the House Committee on Naval Affairs.
1947 - Member of the Armed Forces Committee.
1948 - victory in the elections to the Senate. Serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign and Interstate Commerce Committee.
1951 - Deputy Leader of the Democrats in the Senate.
1954 - Johnson is re-elected to the Senate.
1955 - Democratic leader in the Senate.
1960 - Lyndon Johnson runs for President of the United States, but loses the election to John Kennedy.
1961 - Johnson assumes office as vice president.
1963, November 22 - assassination of John Kennedy. Johnson takes the oath of office and begins serving as president.
Mr President
Johnson began his presidency by strengthening existing social policies aimed at improving the lives of Americans. In his first government announcement, on January 8, 1964, Lyndon Johnson declared the beginning of an “unconditional war on poverty.” His Great Society program included a series of major social reforms aimed at eradicating poverty and racial segregation. The program included transformations in the education and health care systems, solving transport problems and other major changes.
Even Lyndon Johnson's most ardent opponents and ill-wishers cannot dispute the significance of his social reforms. The Civil Rights Act, which gave southern Americans of color the right to vote and equalized the rights of women and men. Establishment of Medicare public health insurance. Introduction of Welfare social benefits. Subsidy programs for low-income families and increased social insurance payments. Construction of highways and measures to combat water and air pollution. Model Cities programs and the creation of a teaching corps.
The Great Society brought about many positive changes and promised even more improvements in American life. But the program had to be curtailed: the United States entered the Vietnam War.
Vietnam War
On August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox was fired upon and torpedoed in the Gulf of Tonkin by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats. On August 4, in the same place, during a storm, the radars of two American destroyers showed the approach of unknown objects. Due to bad weather it was impossible to see anything, and the captains decided to open fire. Although there was no evidence to prove or even hint at the presence of North Vietnamese boats near the destroyers, after the incident on August 2, Johnson did not express the slightest doubt about the possibility of an attack.
The events of August 2 and 4, 1964 are now known as the “Tonkin Incident.” They were the reason for the President's order to launch retaliatory strikes against North Vietnam. Johnson also secured the adoption of a resolution by Congress to support any action that the President deems necessary to “repel the attack on the US armed forces and prevent further aggression” in Southeast Asia. A war began, which did not bring anything good to either America or its president. It was the Vietnam War that became the main criterion for assessing Lyndon Johnson's performance as president.
The Vietnam War was the biggest and bitterest fly in the Great Society's ointment. Although in 1966 the president assured the country that the United States economy was capable of providing both guns for Vietnam and butter for the Great Society, a year later many social programs were curtailed and taxes were increased. The budget could not support the costs of the war.
African-American unrest intensified in the country. The incidents led to casualties, for example, in the summer of 1967, during protests by the colored population in Newark, 26 people died, and 40 in Detroit.
Lyndon Johnson's rating was rapidly falling, the people were dissatisfied with their president. His popularity fell so low that he did not even try to stand as a candidate in the new presidential elections. On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon became President of the United States. Johnson went to Texas, where he died on January 22, 1973 in his native Stonewall.
Lyndon Johnson
Full name: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
He graduated from Johnson City High School and Southwestern Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. He taught polemics and rhetoric at the Sam Houston School in Houston.
In 1960, Johnson decided to run for the Democratic nomination for president. He was actively supported by Harold Hunt. Johnson announced his candidacy on July 5, a few days before the party's national convention. In the first round of the primary elections, he suffered a serious defeat, and in the second he lost to John Kennedy and was appointed vice-presidential candidate. Following Kennedy's victory in the 1960 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson assumed office as vice president on January 20, 1961.
In November 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated, and from that day Johnson began serving as president. Johnson (riding in the same motorcade as the President) assumed the duties of President, taking the oath of office aboard Presidential Airplane 1 at Dallas Airfield just before departing for Washington.
Date of birth: August 27, 1908
Date of death: January 22, 1973
Place of birth: Texas, USA
Johnson Lyndon Baines- one of a galaxy of prominent American figures of the twentieth century. Also Lyndon Johnson known as the former President of the United States.
Lyndon was born in Texas, into a farmer's family near Stonewall. He studied at a regular school, and then went to receive further education at the Teachers College, which was part of the University of Texas. Soon the former student himself became a teacher in the field of rhetoric.
His talent for speaking in front of the public was noticed, and the young man was invited by Congressmen Kleberg to the position of personal secretary.
Lyndon became interested in politics and joined the Democratic Party. Soon the talented young man was promoted to the level of commissioner of the national administration dealing with youth affairs in Texas.
The next career step soon followed - the young politician reached the federal level and took a seat in the House of Representatives, representing, naturally, Texas. Soon he had appointments to all the Congressional committees that had the greatest influence. A direction was taken for the New Deal.
Lyndon soon decided to run for the Senate. He was supported by Roosevelt, who provided the majority of the resulting three dozen percent. Perhaps his next appointments were related to the US building up its military power.
The politician took seats on the House Committee, first on Navy Affairs, and then on the entire Armed Forces. In addition, he was directly involved in a committee related to research in the field of nuclear energy.
Soon the politician managed to become a senator. Using his instincts, he made the acquaintance of the Democrat R. Russell, who had great influence in the highest political circles, and received two chairs on two committees.
One was the Armaments Committee, the other was the Trade Committee. This allowed Lyndon to rise almost to the very top of his political career - first he became a deputy, and then the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate.
Soon the finest hour of the already famous politician came - he decided to take the chair of the head of state. He was supported by the Democratic Party, but despite this, he lost both rounds of the primary elections.
As a result, the politician got the role of vice president. But soon everything changed - the president was killed, and his seat suddenly became vacant. The decision was made with lightning speed,
Lyndon, literally a few hours after the assassination attempt, already took the oath and became acting leader. O. head of state. Due to the death of the previous president, the politician was able to run for a second term and won the election.
Entry into the Vietnam War significantly reduced the president's ratings, and he did not go to the next elections. He returned to his homeland, Texas, began writing his memoirs and sometimes gave lectures at the local university. In 1973 he died of a heart attack.
Achievements of Lyndon Johnson:
Was President of the United States for six years
Legislatively abolished racial inequality
Introduced one of the health insurance systems
Approved several significant laws on motor vehicles
Entered the war with Vietnam
Dates from the biography of Lyndon Johnson:
1908 was born
1931 became secretary of R. Kleberg
1937 Became a member of the US House of Representatives
1941 Senate campaign begins
1948 became a senator
1954 Re-elected to another term in the Senate
1961 became vice president
1963 Became President of the United States
1969 resigned as president
Died 1973
Interesting Lyndon Johnson Facts:
Took over as president after Kennedy. Several hours passed from the assassination attempt to the taking of the oath of office as head of state.
He paid great attention to the problems of assassinations - both of presidents and ordinary people.
One of the first problems on which the presidential work began was the fight against poverty.
Became Nixon's predecessor.
Died of a second heart attack caused by smoking habit
Served in the US Navy for a year as a lieutenant commander.
November 2011
The Associated Press reported that recently released tape recordings made in the Oval Office of the White House during Lyndon Baines Johnson's presidency show "the US president's personal and often emotional connection to Israel." It is emphasized that during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969), “the United States became the main diplomatic ally and the main supplier of weapons to Israel.”
But the AP agency does not try very hard to highlight President Johnson's activities for the benefit of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Most scholars of the Arab-Israeli conflict talk about Johnson only as president during the 1967 Six-Day War. But few of them know about his actions taken to save Jews endangered during the Holocaust - activities that could have cost him expulsion from the US Congress and even imprisonment.
Indeed, the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” would be very useful in assessing the activities of this Texan, whose 100th birthday was celebrated in August 2008. It is no coincidence that one of the annual Jerusalem conferences dedicated a working week to the memory of Lyndon Johnson.
Historians have discovered that this man, as a young congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to enter the United States for Jews living in Warsaw and apparently oversaw the illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through the port of Galveston, Texas...
The main source for confirming Lyndon Johnson's pro-Jewish activities are the unpublished theses for the 1989 dissertation of University of Texas student Louis Homolak, "Prologue: The Background of L.B. Johnson's Foreign Policy Activities, 1908-1948." This activity of Johnson was confirmed by other historians in their interviews with the president's wife, members of his family and political associates. A review of Johnson's personal file shows that he inherited kindness toward the Jewish people from his family members. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher was a member of the Zionist Organization of America. According to L. Homolak, Aunt Jesse fostered in her nephew for 50 years a sense of duty to provide all possible assistance to Jews. When Lyndon was a young man, he witnessed the compassion with which his politically active grandfather and father treated Leo Frank, the victim of the Atlanta blood libel. Jew Leo Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Texas Ku Klux Klan threatened to kill the Johnson family as well. The Johnsons later told friends that the family of the future US president was hiding in the basement of their house, while his father and uncles stood guard on the terrace with guns, fearing an attack by the Ku Klux Klansmen.
Johnson's press secretary later said that "the president often cited the lynching of Leo Frank as the source of his opposition to anti-Semitism and isolationism."
Already in 1934 - four years before Chamberlain's Munich deal with Hitler - Johnson was greatly alarmed by the danger of growing Nazism and gave a collection of essays, Nazism: The Assault on Civilization, to 21-year-old Claudia Taylor, whom he was courting at the time and who later became his wife. It was a kind of engagement gift for the newlyweds.
Five days after he became a congressman in 1937, L. Johnson broke with the Dixiecrats (a 1948 breakaway faction of the Democratic Party) and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens - mainly Jews from Lithuania and Poland.
In 1938, Johnson was told about a young Austrian Jewish musician who was facing deportation from the United States. Using a cunning trick, the future president sent him to the American consulate in Havana to obtain a residence permit there. Erich Leinsdorf, world-famous musician and conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, owes his salvation to Johnson. That same year, Lyndon Johnson warned his Jewish friend Jim Nova that European Jews were in danger of extermination. “We need to get as many Jews out of Germany and Poland as possible,” was Johnson’s intentions. Somehow he managed to obtain a stack of signed immigration documents, which were soon used to send 42 Jews out of Warsaw. But this was, of course, not enough. According to historian James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle “hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as a port of entry. For a lot of money it was possible to buy fake passports and fake visas to Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American countries. Johnson illegally smuggled cargo barges and planes carrying Jews into Texas. He hid them in the premises of the Texas National Youth Administration. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, and possibly more."
During World War II, Lyndon Johnson joined the Novas in the small town of Austin, raising $65,000 in war bonds. According to L. Homolak, Nowy and Johnson then collected “an impressive sum for weapons for the Jewish underground in Palestine.” One source cited by this historian reports that "Nowy and Johnson smuggled by sea heavy crates marked 'Texas Grapefruits' containing weapons for the Jewish underground in Palestine."
On June 4, 1945, Lyndon Johnson visited the former Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. As Smallwood reports, Johnson's wife, already mentioned, later recalled that when her husband returned home, "he was still shaking, dazed and overwhelmed with an overwhelming disgust and incredible horror at what he saw there."
A decade later, while Johnson was a member of the Senate, he blocked the Eisenhower administration's efforts to impose sanctions on Israel following the 1956 Sinai Campaign. “This indefatigable Johnson never stopped pressuring the American administration,” wrote Isaiah L. Koenan, then head of AIPAC. As Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson consistently blocked the anti-Israeli initiatives of his fellow Democrat William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Johnson's closest advisers during this period included several strong pro-Israel lawyers, including Benjamin Cohen (who had mediated between Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann 30 years earlier) and Aba Fortas, the legendary Washington "insider."
Johnson's friendly attitude towards the Jewish people continued throughout his presidency. Shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Lyndon Johnson, who became US President, told an Israeli diplomat: “You have lost a very great friend, but you have gained an even greater friend.” A month after Johnson replaced Kennedy in the Oval Office, he organized the December 1963 dedication ceremony for the Agudath Achim synagogue in Austin. His longtime comrade Novy opened the ceremony by addressing Johnson in absentia: “We cannot thank the current President of the United States enough for all those Jews he rescued from Germany during the Nazi period.”
Claudia Taylor-Johnson later described that day as follows: “People, one after another, came up to me, touched my sleeve and said: “I would not have come here today if this ceremony had not been dedicated to your husband. He helped me get out of the German ring." Ms. Johnson put it more subtly: “For life, the fate of the Jews was intertwined with the fate of Lyndon.”
The prelude to the 1967 war for Israel was a terrible period when the US State Department, headed by Dean Rusk (US Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969), traditionally unfriendly towards Israel, insisted on an even-handed policy despite Arab threats and acts of aggression. Johnson had no such illusions. At the end of that war, he rather harshly placed all the blame on Egypt. “If a simple act of recklessness is more responsible for the outbreak of hostilities than any other, then it was Egypt's arbitrary and dangerously announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed” (to Israeli ships and cargo fleet). Kennedy was the first president to approve the sale of defensive American weapons to Israel, especially Tomahawk anti-aircraft missiles. But L. Johnson approved the sale of tanks and offensive missiles to Israel, all vital after the Six Day War, when France froze arms supplies to Israel.
“I certainly want to be careful not to focus only on little Israel,” Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg, according to tape recordings recently released by the White House. But when, shortly after the 1967 war, the Soviet head of the Council of Ministers, Alexei Kosygin, asked Johnson at the Glassboro summit why the United States supported Israel when there were 80 million Arabs and only 3 million Jews, the president answered in plain Texan style: “Because it is right.” .
The approval of UN Resolution No. 242 in November 1967 took place under the searching gaze of L. Johnson. The vote for "secure and recognized borders" was critical. The American and British authors of this resolution opposed the return to Israel of all the territories conquered in this war. In September 1968, Johnson explained: “We are not the kind of people to dictate where other states should draw the boundaries between themselves that will guarantee the greatest security to each of them. However, it is clear that a return to the situation before the 1967 Six-Day War will not bring peace. It must be safe there, and boundaries must be recognized there. Some such lines must be agreed upon with the neighbors involved in the conflict.”
Goldberg later noted that "UN Resolution 242 in no way addresses the fate of Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate." This historic diplomacy was carried out under the leadership of President Johnson. Goldberg was at this conversation, which took place in the presidential library: “I have to say about Johnson. He gave me a lot of personal support."
Robert David Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College, wrote in the New York Sun that Johnson's policies "were rooted in personal concepts—his friendship with Zionist leaders, his belief that America had a moral obligation to support Israel's security." , and from his understanding of Israel as a country on the cutting edge. It was very reminiscent of his home state of Texas. His personal views led L. Johnson to speak out in defense of Israel when he felt that the US Department of Defense was not adequately assessing Israel’s diplomatic or military needs.”
In historical context, the American emergency air bridge to Israel in 1973, continued diplomatic support, economic and military assistance, and strategic ties between the two countries all provide confidence and may well bear fruit from the seeds sown by Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Jerusalem Post
Lyndon Baines Johnson(English) Lyndon Baines Johnson) (August 27, 1908, Stonewall, Texas - January 22, 1973, Stonewall, Texas) -
36th President of the United States from the Democratic Party from November 22, 1963 to January 20, 1969.
early years
Born August 27, 1908 near Stonewall, Texas. He graduated from Johnson City High School and Southwestern Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. He taught polemics and rhetoric at the Sam Houston School in Houston.
Political career
In 1931, Congressman R. Kleberg invited Lyndon Johnson for the position of his secretary. In August 1935, Johnson was appointed Texas commissioner of the National Youth Administration.
In 1937, he was elected to the US House of Representatives from Texas's 10th congressional district. Johnson received appointments to influential congressional committees and became an active champion of the New Deal. In 1941 he launched his first campaign for election to the Senate. Despite the support Roosevelt, in the primary, Johnson finished second among 29 contenders.
He became a member of the House Naval Affairs Committee in 1942, and a member of the Armed Services Committee in 1947. He also participated in the work of the special committee on military policy and the joint committee on atomic energy.
In 1948, Johnson entered the Senate. There he became close with the influential Democrat R. Russell from Georgia and received two appointments: to the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Foreign and Interstate Commerce. In 1951 he was elected deputy leader, and in 1955 - leader of the Democrats in the Senate. In 1954 he was re-elected to the Senate.
In one of the President's messages Johnson Congress was told that every 26 minutes in the United States there is one rape, every 5 minutes there is one robbery, every minute there is a car theft and every 28 seconds there is one theft. The state's financial losses as a result of crime amount to $27 billion a year.
After the murder Robert Kennedy the president Johnson spoke at the White House and cited grim statistics on murders in the United States. Since 1885, he said, one out of every three American presidents has been assassinated, and one out of every five presidents has been assassinated.
In 1960, Johnson decided to run for the Democratic nomination for president. He was actively supported Harold Hunt. Johnson announced his candidacy on July 5, a few days before the party's national convention. He suffered a serious defeat in the first round of the primary elections, and lost in the second John Kennedy and was nominated as a vice presidential candidate. After Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election Lyndon Johnson assumed office as vice president on January 20, 1961.
Presidential Period Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One on the day of Kennedy's assassination. The President is surrounded by three women: on the right is the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, on the left is his own wife, nicknamed Lady Bird, in front of him with a Bible in her hand is Judge Sarah Hughes, the only woman in history to take the oath of office as a US President
On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, and from that day Johnson began serving as president. Johnson (riding in the same motorcade as the President) assumed the duties of President, taking the oath of office aboard Presidential Airplane 1 at Dallas Airfield just before departing for Washington.
Domestic policy
One of Johnson's first initiatives was to create a "Great Society" in which there would be no poverty. Congress has allocated about a billion dollars for these purposes.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, eliminating racial segregation in the US South. National health insurance (Medicare) was established. In the 1964 presidential election, Johnson was elected President of the United States by a significant margin, despite the fact that the South, dissatisfied with the abolition of segregation, voted for a Republican for the first time in 100 years, the famous Cold War hawk Barry Goldwater.
Johnson re-entered office in January 1965, less than 2 years after Kennedy's death, and was therefore eligible to run for another term.
In 1966, Johnson won measures to create a "teacher corps", a housing grant program for needy families, a "model cities" program, new measures to combat water and air pollution, a program to build improved highways, increased social security payments, new measures in medical and vocational rehabilitation. The Johnson administration also took a number of measures to increase road safety - lawyer and political activist Ralph Nader convinced the congressmen of the benefits of this project, in particular, in his book “Dangerous at Any Speed: Flaws in the Design of the American Car.” In September 1966, Johnson signed two highway transportation bills. Funds have been created for state and local governments to develop traffic safety programs. State safety standards for cars and tires were also introduced.
However, the Great Society program was later curtailed due to US intervention in the Vietnam War.
During Johnson's second term, issues related to the rights of black Americans began to escalate again. In August 1965, riots occurred in the black neighborhood of Los Angeles, resulting in the death of 35 people. The summer of 1967 saw the largest uprisings of the African-American population. 26 people died in Newark, New Jersey, and another 40 died in Detroit. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated. After this, unrest among the black population began in 125 cities, including Washington.
Due to the Vietnam War, Johnson's popularity had dropped significantly by the fall congressional elections.
Foreign policy
The main foreign policy event of Johnson's presidency was the Vietnam War. The United States supported the South Vietnamese government in its fight against the communist guerrillas of the MNLF, who, in turn, enjoyed the support of North Vietnam. In August 1964, following two incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam and secured a congressional resolution supporting any action the President deemed necessary to "repel attack on U.S. military forces and prevent further aggression" in the South Vietnamese. East Asia.
In 1964, with the support of the United States, the democratic government of João Goulart was overthrown in Brazil.
In 1965, as part of the proclaimed “Johnson Doctrine,” troops were sent to the Dominican Republic. Johnson himself "justified" the intervention by claiming that communist elements were trying to take control of the rebel movement.
In the summer of 1965, Johnson decided to increase the American contingent in Vietnam. The number of American military forces in Vietnam increased from 20,000 under Kennedy to nearly 540,000 by the end of Johnson's presidency.
In June 1967, a summit meeting between President Johnson and the Soviet Premier took place. N. Kosygin in Glassboro (New Jersey), which paved the way for the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the conclusion of which the president sought for three years.
On January 23, North Korea captured the American reconnaissance ship Pueblo with a crew of 82 people near its shores. A week later, the NLF guerrillas, supported by the North Vietnamese army, launched the so-called Tet Offensive, simultaneously attacking many military installations and cities in South Vietnam. One of the largest cities in the country, Hue, was almost completely captured; in addition, the partisans managed to penetrate the territory of the American embassy in Saigon, which received wide coverage in the US media. The attack cast serious doubt on the reports of American officials and military commanders about the successes allegedly achieved in Vietnam. General William Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, requested an additional 206 thousand troops there.
After the presidency
Due to his low popularity, Johnson did not run for president. Richard Nixon won. On January 20, 1969, Nixon was inaugurated, after which Johnson left for his ranch in Texas. He left big politics, wrote memoirs and sometimes gave lectures at the University of Texas. He died on January 22, 1973 in his hometown of Stonewall from a third heart attack, the cause of which was prolonged smoking. Johnson's widow Claudia Alta (known as "Lady Bird") Johnson died in 2007.
The space center in Houston is named after Johnson. August 27, Johnson's birthday, is a public holiday in Texas.
Vice President of the United States
Predecessor: Richard Nixon 1961–1963 Successor: Hubert Humphrey
President of the U.S.A
Predecessor: John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1963–1969 Successor: Richard Nixon