History 65

The Great Society and the 2^nd Warren Court

February 23, 2006

I. 1964

1. LBJ Image (healer, approving legislation; foreign policy, ethics)

            2. The Republican Race (the Lodge bid; the Goldwater nomination)

3. The Frontlash Agenda (negative attacks foreign policy; consolidating civil rights base; limitations of economic vision)

            4. The Jenkins Scandal (polls and LBJ vulnerabilities; Baker/McCloskey affair; arrest and reaction—role of Fortas; continuing fears; election outcome—coattails and transformation of House; ideology and a hollow victory?)

II. The Heyday of Liberalism

            1. The Great Society (new congressional balance; LBJ and New Deal background; Medicare, Medicaid, and government health insurance; AFDC and origins of American welfare state; education—Title I and Head Start; War on Poverty—uncertain origins, community action programs, VISTA—resistance from Democratic machines)

            2. Civil Rights (Voting Rights Act; 24^th amendment—poll tax; Loving and elimination of last vestiges of segregation; mild open housing bill 1968; transfer back to courts—development of “right-related liberalism”)

3. Political Ramifications (right: challenging peripheral issues: apportionment and Tuck bill crime and Miranda and White dissent; left: collapse of biracial civil rights coalition—MLK, poverty and open housing; SNCC, CORE, and black nationalism; 1966 elections; increasing polarization of confirmation battles—Fortas)