LBJ: 60 Years Of The Not-So Great Society

Lyndon Johnson was not a ‘tragic’ president. He was a bungler and a megalomaniac.

Jeffrey Folks | September 18, 2026

Many people believe that Lyndon Johnson was a tragic figure: an essentially good man and potentially great president who was misled by his advisers (“the wise men,” as they were called at the time) into escalating a war he could not win but who was otherwise well-meaning and effective.

That view is totally wrong.  Johnson was not a good man who made one serious mistake.

Those who speak of the “tragedy” of LBJ have no conception of the meaning of the word: a tragic figure, in the Greek sense, is a great man who is brought down by a fatal flaw of character, not an accidental event.  Johnson was neither a great man nor one who suffered from one fatal flaw.  He was a man of average intelligence who suffered from megalomania and a host of other forms of confusion leading to the belief that he might be the greatest president.  His “failing” included a pathological need to be admired and loved, but he did not just have one fatal flaw: his entire life was a fanatical pursuit of the impossible without reflecting on the costs or consequences, and as a result, nearly everything Johnson did as president was destructive.

Johnson was obsessed with “doing more” during his first years in office because he knew that presidencies tend to get bogged down near the end.  He was obsessed with the quantity of legislation he could get passed, not the quality.  And most of this legislation was designed to bring him adoration from those who were essentially made dependent on government, which is to say on himself.

He signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Right Act in 1965 and expected that blacks (whom he regularly called “Negroes” and occasionally something worse) would worship him.  He was deeply wounded when more youthful........

© American Thinker