Friday, October 26, 2007

Washington is a city of monuments: The Mall features buildings, statues and walls commemorating big achievements (like saving the Union) and small ones (like inventing the screw propeller). But until now, Washington had not a single monument to a man who left an enormous mark, not only on American government, but on the lives of our people: Lyndon Baines Johnson. During less than 6 years in office, LBJ led the charge for enactment of a range of consequential laws that enhanced this

nation's education, health, racial, and economic well-being.

Until last month, the only thing named for LBJ in the capital area was a Memorial Grove — a clump of trees on the Potomac River in Virginia. But when the Department of Education building was formally renamed for LBJ on Sept. 17, it finally provided Washington recognition for the man who fundamentally reshaped the role of government in the United States.

On one level, ignoring LBJ in Washington simply replicates what has happened in politics and academia. For Republicans and those on the right, the Johnson years have always been anathema. He promised to be the "education president," the "health president" and the "poor people's president." He was all of that and more, earning the enduring enmity of those who loathe government.

But more surprising is that the man who presided over a spectacular legislative run of victories for activist government that he called the Great Society has been forgotten by the party he once led. At Democratic conventions, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy are the iconic figures to whom speakers pay homage; LBJ goes unmentioned.

Historians, too, seemed to look past LBJ — textbooks and history classes often pay little heed to the achievements of Johnson's domestic agenda.

For many, it seems, the shadow of Vietnam and Johnson's role obscure everything else about LBJ's career and accomplishments.

That is a serious misreading of history, as a brief review of Johnson's legacy makes clear. It is his educational agenda that was deservedly memorialized in the naming ceremony. The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was landmark legislation. It did not have a fancy title like No Child Left Behind, but the ESEA marked the first time the federal government committed to helping local school districts-and with funding, not directives.

The 1965 Higher Education Act provided scholarships, grants, loans and work study programs-hundreds of billions of dollars worth-that made college possible for millions who could not afford it before. In addition, LBJ, himself once a school teacher in a desperately poor Texas district, was the first president to recognize and fund bilingual and special education.

But education is only part of the story. LBJ also transformed the health delivery system for older Americans when he signed Medicare legislation, which has helped almost 50 million citizens stay out of poverty and live longer. He also presided over the enactment of Medicaid, which has served over 200 million needy people since its creation. In addition, the Heath Professions Act helped to double the number of doctors graduating from medical school.

LBJ's War on Poverty became a whipping boy for right-wing critics, but Head Start, Upward Bound, VISTA, the Job Corps and other poverty programs have made their mark across the years, despite diminished resources and lack of commitment in some subsequent administrations.

And it was the political genius of the man who "knew the deck on Capitol Hill" that played a critical role in pushing through the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965.

There is much more. In a nation which no longer seems to address infrastructure needs, Johnson's White House gave us the Urban Mass Transit Act, bringing MARTA to Atlanta, BART to the San Francisco Bay and Metro to Washington. And Johnson was a pioneer of environmentalism, spearheading the Clear Air, Water Quality, Clean Water Restoration, Solid Waste Disposal and Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control acts.

Johnson also gave us regulatory protections like product and child safety, truth in packaging and truth in lending legislation, as well as the creation of OSHA.

LBJ promised that the Great Society would be concerned with the "quality of our lives as well as the quantity of our goods." The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities were the result. There would be hundreds of playhouses, opera companies, professional orchestras and dance companies created or supported with

federal dollars.

With the possible exception of FDR's first term, there was never anything like this record of legislative accomplishment. And while it may be clear why the political right wants to bury the memory of LBJ, the fact that progressives have chosen to disregard his extraordinary domestic achievements is shameful. The naming of the education building is at least a start in redressing this act of historical amnesia.

David H. Bennett is a Meredith Professor of History at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where he teaches 20th century American history. He is the author of 'Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement.'