Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
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Y]our generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people [...] You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
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Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
-President Lyndon Baines Johnson, addressing the University of Michigan Class of 1964 and assembled guests.
A few days ago, I wrote about a man whose personal and legislative accomplishments could easily have merited five diaries.
Compared to the subject of today's diary, that's potatoes so small they'd make those of the potato famine positively robust.
Of the 14 task forces called for in Johnson's Great Society, one resulted in 10 Acts:
- Wilderness Act of 1964,
- Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965,
- Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965,
- Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965,
- Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966,
- National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,
- National Trails System Act of 1968,
- Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968,
- Aircraft Noise Abatement Act of 1968, and
- National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
But wait, there's more. I often blast Wikipedia for having many of the details but little of the story, but the details are here for anyone interested.
I was interested in what life was like before those changes, which is why I put a call out to friends and relatives who remember life before Great Society or had access to people who did. (Only one taker, usefully. Anyone with anything to contribute is thoroughly encouraged to do so in a comment.) But I am also interested in looking at how the 2008 election could bring sweeping reform similar to what Johnson enacted starting in 1964.
Fortunately, we can expect such reform. Unfortunately, we have needed it for too long. But to borrow and paraphrase from Sen. Barack Obama, the hour is not yet past at which we can change this nation's course.
We are fortunate that we do not need the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And programs like VISTA and food stamps already exist to be improved upon. But there is still work we can do. What follows is a comparison between legislation enacted by the Johnson administration and legislation we might expect of the Obama administration:
- Medicare/Medicaid. Provided medical coverage to seniors and to welfare recipients. Corollary: Americare: universal health coverage. Free to families who qualify for SCHIP, otherwise heavily discounted versus what private companies charge. Cuz competition in capitalism is kind of the point. Every Republican will vote against it, possibly excluding those up for re-election in 2010, and the others will get to tell their constituents why they voted against health care and business.
- Environmental reform. Did various things, including protecting some land from development, and instituting emissions requirements on vehicles. Corollary: American Wildlife Act. This would basically undo what the Bush administration did, then add extra protection for our natural resources. Even bears. Corollary: Breathe-Easy Act. Would establish much more stringent emissions requirements for vehicles. Corollary: Forever Fuels Act. Would reward companies for exploring and refining non-polluting energy sources. Corollary: Global Warming Act. Would criminalize publishing false or intentionally misleading data about global climate change; would pledge to undo all the crap we've done to the environment since Reagan; would pledge aid to developing countries in keeping their emissions down and marketing their renewable energy options.
- Bilingual Education Act. Improved the education of students with limited English skills. Corollary: Language Education Act. For native English speakers, would begin second-language education at 4 years old and require eighth-grade reading and writing level in English and fourth-grade reading and writing level in the second language to graduate from middle school and 12th-grade English and 6th-grade foreign language skills to graduate from high school. For non-native speakers, would be a bit more complicated. If you want to compete in a global economy, and if you want to improve your English, learn more than one language. Yours truly has partial fluency in a second language.
- Public Broadcasting Act. Led to PBS. Corollary: Permanent Public Broadcasting Act. Would make PBS materials available in multiple languages on TV and on the Internet (and available as a streaming download). Corollary: C-SPAN Availability Act. Would make C-SPAN a channel available to anyone who got at least two of the big four (CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox).
There is no analogous legislation for the veterans education bill Obama will sign (since you and I know there's no way Bush will actually support the troops on this one; he'll say it's wasteful spending). That's because the G.I. Bill was often actually adequate back in the 1960s, or at least not as woefully inadequate.
I am similarly unaware of analogous legislation for a version of FISA that isn't basically a pardon for the phone companies that started spying on Americans as soon as a month after Bush took office. (Wait, weren't we suddenly incredibly unsafe without the Protect AT&T Act? Whatever happened to doomsday?)
What stands in the way of this and other reform, as what stood in the way of Johnson and enacting more social change, is money. Johnson had the war, and the next president will have one as well.
But the next president will have something Johnson didn't: a deficit of 9 trillion dollars, over half a trillion of which Japan has bought. China has another $390 billion. Enacting some of this legislation will cost a lot. Some of that can be recouped through withdrawing combat troops from Iraq and leaning hard on the Iraq government to at least care a tiny bit more about corruption. Some of it can be recouped through rolling back the Bush tax cuts and letting gas companies fend for themselves instead of giving them tax breaks just for being really nice rick guys. And some of it will be recouped through more tax money generated from more workers once we have immigration reform passed — since the politicians who think they're supposed to hate brown people will be fewer, and the Democrats will be more.
(Oh, and here's a fun nugget. Here are Ralph Nader's contributions to this period. If only he had stayed in research and advocacy instead of running for president.)
And here's something else the next president won't have: a people who didn't ask for all of this. I've seen the case made elsewhere that Johnson launched all of these programs partly because Kennedy was going to anyway and partly hoping they'd take war coverage off the TV. When I asked my father, who was born in 1958, about the Great Society, he said this:
I was 6 when Johnson was elected. Any policy he tried was drowned by Viet Nam. I knew about Viet Nam because it was on tv day and night.
The whole country was enraged by one thing after another.
I would have guessed the Great Society was something in the '20s.
Another name would be Wishful Thinking.
But the country now is begging for change. Primary participation rates are skyrocketing. Campaign contributions are breaking records every month in a recession. A victorious Obama could easily ride this wave of success into an actual uniter presidency, and one that could do as much (for the greater good, mind) in eight years as any president has done since Johnson.
To counter this, the RNC will not keep playing the San Francisco Liberal card. "Change you deserve" was developed to say "Hey, we'll give you some of what you want, but don't you think we should cut taxes even more?" Note that this is not "Change you want" but "Change we are willing to pretend we support if you'll actually vote for us." So the RNC will hammer away at the issue of the deficit, thus trying to punish Obama for something the RNC saddled him with (like the need for these reforms in the first place). The RNC may, in 2012, actually pretend that balancing the budget is suddenly important. Picture it: "I will eliminate the deficit by cutting taxes and increasing deportations! Hey, why are you leaving the room? I'm a fiscal conservative! Cutting taxes eliminates the deficit!"
Will it happen? Dunno. Can it happen? Oh my, yes. We could be halfway through 2011 before the RNC publicly realizes it has nothing to run on to oppose the change 75 percent of the country loves. And since people will have a choice between negative campaigning and positive campaigning, any attack ads the RNC puts up will likely do more harm than good to their cause.