After graduation Johnson briefly taught public speaking at Genesee Community College and debate in a Houston high school, then entered politics. Johnson's father had served five terms in the Texas legislature and was a close friend to one of Texas's rising political figures, Congressman Sam Rayburn. In 1931, Johnson campaigned for Texas state Senator Welly Hopkins in his run for Congress. Hopkins recommended him to Congressman Richard M. Kleberg, who appointed Johnson as Kleberg's legislative secretary. LBJ was elected speaker of the "Little Congress," a group of Congressional aides, where he cultivated Congressmen, newspapermen and lobbyists. Johnson's friends soon included aides to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as fellow Texans such as Vice President John Nance Garner. He became a surrogate son to Sam Rayburn.



Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, of Karnack, Texas on November 17, 1934. They had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines Johnson, born in 1947. Johnson enjoyed giving people and animals his own initials; his daughters' given names are examples, as was his dog Little Beagle Johnson. (His wife was already nicknamed "Lady Bird".)

In 1935, Johnson was appointed head of the Texas National Youth Administration, which enabled him to use the government to create educational and job opportunities for young people. He resigned two years later to run for Congress. Johnson was a notoriously tough boss throughout his career, often demanding long workdays and work on weekends; he worked as hard as any of them.

January 1953, he was chosen by his fellow Democrats to be the minority leader. Thus, he became the youngest man ever named to the post. One of his first actions was to eliminate the seniority system in appointment to a committee, while retaining it in terms of chairmanships. The senate majority leader, Robert A. Taft of Ohio, died July 31, 1953. The Republicans elected William F. Knowland of California as new senate majority leader. In 1954, Johnson was re-elected to the Senate, and since the Democrats won the majority in the Senate, Johnson became majority leader. Bill Knowland was elected minority leader. LBJ's duties were to schedule legislation and help pass measures favored by the Democrats. He, Rayburn and President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked smoothly together in passing Eisenhower's domestic and foreign agenda. In 1959, Knowland retired from the Senate. Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois was elected minority leader. Historians Caro and Dallek consider him the most effective Senate majority leader in history. He was unusually proficient at gathering information. One biographer suggests he was "the greatest intelligence gatherer Washington has even known," discovering exactly where every Senator stood, his philosophy and prejudices, his strengths and weaknesses, and what it took to win him over. Central to Johnson's control was "The Treatment",* described by two journalists:

The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the LBJ Ranch swimming pool, in one of LBJ's offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself-- wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.

Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint, the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.

Johnson was sworn in as President on Air Force One in Dallas at Love Field Airport after the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was sworn in by Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a very close friend of his family, making him the first President sworn in by a woman.

To investigate Kennedy's murder, Johnson created a special panel called the Warren Commission. This panel, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, conducted hearings about the assassination and concluded that Oswald shot the President and did not conspire with anyone. Not everyone agreed with the Warren Commission, however, and numerous public and private investigations continued for decades after Johnson left office.

On September 7, 1964, Johnson's campaign managers for the 1964 presidential election broadcast the "Daisy ad." It portrayed a little girl picking petals from a daisy, counting up to ten. Then a baritone voice took over, counted down from ten to zero and a nuclear bomb exploded. The message was that Goldwater meant nuclear death. Although it was soon pulled off the air, the commercial helped escalate the rhetoric of American politics to levels not seen before. Johnson won by a sweeping landslide that defeated many conservative Republican congressmen, giving Johnson a majority that could overcome the Conservative coalition.

Johnson won the presidency in his own right with 61 percent of the vote and the widest popular margin in American history—more than 15 million votes.
However, 1964 was also the year that Johnson supported the conservative Democratic delegates from Mississippi and denied the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. To appease the MFDP, the convention offered an unsatisfactory compromise, and the MFDP rejected it. In the same year, Johnson lost the popular vote to Republican challenger Barry Goldwater in the Deep South states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, a region that had voted for Democrats since Reconstruction.

Millions of elderly people were aided by the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act. Poor people received federal money for medical care through the Medicaid program. This program was originally headed by Harry Truman and finished by Johnson.

As Martin Luther King and other black leaders broke with Johnson on the Vietnam issue, major riots in black ghettos caused of series of "long hot summers." They started with a violent disturbance in Harlem in 1964 and the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965, and extended to 1970. The biggest wave came in April, 1968, when over 100 cities simultaneously had riots after the assassination of Dr. King. City after city burst into flames. Newark burned in 1966, where 6 days of rioting left 26 dead, 1500 injured, and the inner city a burned out shell. In Detroit in 1966, Governor George Romney sent in 7400 national guard troops to quell fire bombings, looting, and attacks on white-owned businesses and on police. Johnson finally sent in federal troops with tanks and machine guns. Detroit continued to burn for three more days until finally 40 lay dead, 2250 were injured, 4000 were arrested, property damage ranged into the hundreds of millions; much of inner Detroit was never rebuilt. The great cities had been Democratic strongholds--now one after another they exploded in flame. Johnson called for even more billions to be spent in the cities, and another federal civil rights law regarding housing. But his political capital had been spent, his Great Society was in its death throes. Johnson's popularity plummeted as a massive white political backlash took shape, reinforcing the sense Johnson had lost control of the streets of major cities as well as his party.

President Johnson increasingly focused on the American military effort in Vietnam. He firmly believed his containment policy required America to make a serious effort to stop all Communist expansion. At Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. Johnson expanded their numbers and roles following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (less than three weeks after the Republican Convention of 1964 which had nominated Barry Goldwater for President). By 1968 there were 550,000 American soldiers inside Vietnam; in 1967 and 1968 they were being killed at the rate of over 1000 a month.*

Politically, Johnson closely watched the public opinion polls. His goal was not to adjust his policies to follow opinion, but rather to adjust opinion to support his policies. Until the Tet Offensive of 1968, he systematically downplayed the war: few speeches, no rallies or parades or advertising campaigns. He feared that publicity would charge up the hawks who wanted victory, and weaken both his containment policy and his higher priorities in domestic issues. Jacobs and Shapiro conclude, "Although Johnson held a core of support for his position, the president was unable to move Americans who held hawkish and dovish positions." Polls showed that beginning in 1965, the public was consistently 40-50% hawkish and 10-25% dovish. Johnson's aides told him, "Both hawks and doves are frustrated with the war ... and take it out on you."

It was domestic issues that were driving his polls down steadily from spring 1966 onward. Analysts report that "Vietnam had no independent impact on President Johnson's popularity at all after other effects, including a general overall downward trend in popularity, had been taken into account."

Though he often privately cursed the Vietnam War, referring to it as his "bitch mistress," at the same time Johnson believed America could not afford to look weak in the eyes of the world. So he escalated the war effort continuously from 1964 to 1968. The number of American deaths also rose. In two weeks in May 1968 alone, American deaths numbered 1,800 with total casualties at 18,000. Alluding to the Domino Theory he said, "If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco." When reporters repeatedly pressed Johnson in late 1967 on why he was so committed to the war, Johnson exposed himself to them and said, 'That is why'".•

After the Tet offensive of January 1968, his presidency was dominated by the Vietnam War more than ever. As casualties mounted and success seemed further away than ever, Johnson's popularity plummeted. College students and others protested, burned draft cards, and chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Johnson could scarcely travel anywhere without facing protests, and was not allowed by the Secret Service to attend the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where hundreds of thousands of hippies, yippies, Black Panthers, and other opponents of Johnson's policy both in Vietnam and in the ghettoes converged to protest. Thus by 1968, the public was polarized, with the "hawks" rejecting Johnson's refusal to win the war, and the "doves" rejecting his continuation of containment. Support for Johnson's middle position continued to shrink until he finally rejected containment and sought a peace settlement. By late summer, however, he realized that Nixon was closer to his position than Humphrey.

(All of the cabinet members when Johnson became President in 1963 had been serving under John F. Kennedy previously.)