An American Tragedy Time’s 1967 Man of the Year featured a
grotesque caricature of Lyndon Johnson as Lear. His Presidency
was coming apart at the seams and he was beset on every side
from opposition within his party and without. “How the mighty
have fallen” best sums up his unforeseen collapse. LBJ became
the thirty-sixth President of the US following the assassination
of JFK. A year and a bit later, he assumed office in his own
right, with the largest mandate in history up to that time. In
his early days, he ushered in sweeping and unprecedented civil
rights reforms, as well as an ambitious agenda to eliminate
poverty. He was on his way to becoming the greatest President
since Franklin Roosevelt. But he over-reached by sending more
than a half-million troops to Vietnam. As the war dragged on and
US casualties mounted, the normally ebullient Johnson sunk into
depression, at a loss to fathom why Ho Chi Minh didn’t just
quit. Meanwhile, public attitudes polarized into the worst
division of opinion since the US