[Narrator]: This little boy would grow up in the hills of Texas. He would leave to serve his state and his country in public office. He would give himself up to politics completely. He would struggle with a course of events, with fate and history. He would be loved and hated. He would know triumph and tragedy as the 36th President of the United States. For Lyndon Johnson, November 22, 1963, would be the longest day of his life. A few hours after having breakfast with John Kennedy, the young president was dead. He felt he was a man in trouble, he said later, in a world that is never more than minutes away from catastrophe. He found it hard to believe that this nightmare had actually happened, and the nightmare echoed around the world.

[Walter Cronkite]: "We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin from Dallas, Texas..."

[Multiple News Reporters]: "...The President has been rushed to a nearby hospital..."
"...President Kennedy has been shot...", "...The news shocked the nation..." "...Three shots were fired at the motorcade today..."

[President Johnson]: "This is a sad time for all people. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God's. It was a great national tragedy. At that time, it was more essential than it might have been that the successor take over with a firm hand, with a clear indication of confidence that he could run the country and was in charge. He understands that he has to rise above the terrible events to create a sense of continuity and stability, which the country desperately needs."

[President Johnson]: "No words are sad enough to express our sense of loss... I profoundly hope that the tragedy and the torment of these terrible days will bind us together in new fellowship, making us one people in our hour of sorrow. So let us here highly resolve that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not live or die in vain. He said, 'let us begin.' Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue."

[Narrator]: It was an inspiring moment. There was no doubt about this man. He was not a fluke of history. He would hold the nation on course. One of the most pressing concerns to the new president was the investigation of the assassination. A special commission was established. The President chose all the members. Senator Richard Russell, his old friend, was reluctant to serve.

[Russell]: "Well now Mr. President, I'm highly honored you'd think about me in connection with it, but I couldn't say that with Chief Justice Warren. I don't like that man."

[LBJ]: "You're my man on that commission and you're going to do it, and don't tell me what you can do and what you can't because I can't arrest you and I'm not going to put the FBI on you, but you God damn sure going to serve, I'll tell you that."

[Narrator]: What you get is a man who's operating very quickly on two tracks: one is fulfilling Kennedy's agenda, and the other is the Grand Design and his administration.

"Lyndon Johnson courted American businessmen and preachers and labor guys and everybody tirelessly, guys that he had had the worst fights with. He'd say, 'I need you, I'm the only president you got. I need your help. Won't you just put aside all that in the past? I've put it aside. Let's work together because we have a chance here.' Well, I mean, what could you say?"

"He got up earlier than anybody else and he turned on his three TV sets in the White House bedroom and he read every paper that he could get his hands on. He read the 'Congressional Record' before daylight and then on top of that, he started calling people about 7 am in the morning. He never was short of information. He had the AP and UPI news tickers in his office and even when he was talking on the phone with somebody, he'd stand there and read the clips. He would sometimes get so close to you, you would actually bend over backwards. He would look you right in the eyes and it's hard to resist somebody when you're in that position."

"He would get right up in your face, put his nose right up against yours, throw his arm around your shoulder, appeal to everything under the sun from God, patriotism, motherhood, apple pie, you name it in order to persuade you to do what he wanted you to do. He's been portrayed as Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and in a sense, he was. He's been portrayed as a crude, rude, brutal, coarse, unlettered individual. On the other hand, he was at times an extremely sympathetic, very compassionate, a generous, thoughtful, gracious, and charming individual. He could charm the bird out of a tree if he wanted to."

[Narrator]: Lyndon Johnson had a loping walk. They called it the "LBJ trot" because he was always on the move, speaking several times a day, holding impromptu press conferences. And when he wanted a change of scene, LBJ would say, "I'm going to show you the greatest thing you ever saw, the greatest treasure that no money in the world can buy," and he would fly his cabinet and staff and reporters to what became known as a Texas White House. His ranch was a stone's throw from the river. He liked to conduct business at the ranch under a big oak tree. This was his country. He felt in control, and he liked to walk along the banks of the river and feel peaceful like he had when he was growing up. He was proud of the old homestead. Proud of his ancestors. The old frontier ran deep in him. The Hill Country is known for its beautiful wildflowers. Lady Bird's passion for flowers set the stage for her role as first lady. She turned her attention to a national beautification program. She saw it as a symbol of improving everyone's quality of life. Mrs. Johnson did more than plant flowers in public places. She planted environmental values. With her leadership as first lady, conservation and ecological issues became legitimate, and she had some unexpected help.

On the way to the Moon, we discovered the Earth. The view from space would change the way we perceive our world. And our great achievements revealed a new challenge: Conservation on a small planet. "What I think made Johnson go, as president, was that he had a grand design. On the one hand, the war on poverty, and on the other hand, what he calls the 'Great Society,' meaning, that you will raise not just the standard of living, but the quality of life in the country."

[LBJ]: "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."

[Narrator]: Having grown up poor, his commitment to eliminating poverty was all-consuming. He wanted every American citizen to rise out of poverty and every child to get a good education.

"He saw government as an instrument to help the most vulnerable people in American society. Capitalism has a hard cutting edge. You trample people in the process and Johnson said, 'we're not going to let you trample those people, we got to find a way to give them a voice.'"

[Narrator]: A century after the Civil War, prejudice and segregation still divided the country.

"When he took on the Civil Rights issue, he took on the toughest thing in our history. We fought a civil war over this. The American dilemma, it's right at the heart of our appraisal of ourselves as a nation and as human beings."

[Narrator]: In the summer of '63, 200,000 people marched on Washington to support civil rights.

[MLK]: "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last."

[LBJ]: "I'm about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings. Not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences. Thank you and good night."

[Narrator]: In the election of '64, LBJ won the greatest victory in modern times. The presidency was now his, in his own right. He called it a mandate for action, and he meant to use it that way.

The inauguration: The President said he enjoyed every minute of it.

"When you win big," LBJ said, "you can have anything you want for a time almost anything and then they'll turn on you, they always do, the pendulum will swing back."

[LBJ]: "For what is justice? It is to fulfill the fair expectations of man."

[Lady Bird]: "Somebody said to him one time, one of his really good close advisers, 'Mr. President, you're going to spend all your capital on this if you do it', political capital, the mandate, if you will, that he'd gotten. And he looked up and said 'what's it for then.'"

[Narrator]: He saw himself in a desperate race against time. He drove his staff and Cabinet and Congress to the limit.

"He knew more about every member of Congress. He knew what their philosophies were and what it would take to get a vote and he would be arguing and debating and begging, saying 'I want you to support your country, will you do that?'"

"Lyndon Johnson, we passed 200 major laws in 1965 and 1966 alone. There hasn't been anything like this. We got Medicare and Medicaid. We got aid to education. We got higher education. We got consumer laws and environmental laws. We saw a revolution in the size of the government's role in American life in attempting to redress grievances and address the shortcomings of our society."

"You really also have to understand that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was not written in Washington D.C., it was written on the long road from Selma to Montgomery and it was written by the people with their feet and with their aches and with their pain and with their blood and with their tears. And we had an ally in this process because the television brought the meanness right into their living room, thereby making Lyndon Johnson's leadership easier."

[LBJ]: "At times, history and fate meet at a single time, in a single place, to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American Life. Their cause must be our cause too because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice and we shall overcome."

"I don't think I appreciated how strong his commitment was until the Selma protest came along. He became a hero and a champion of civil rights. To me, this is not politics, this is a real feeling, real compassion, this is a human-hearted man."

In August of '65, President Johnson had every reason to feel that the pendulum was still swinging his way. Congress had passed the Voting Rights Act and the legislation for the Great Society was moving along. He left Washington D.C. to relax at the LBJ Ranch.

[Police Sirens]: 5,000 people riot in Watts (Los Angeles), burning, looting and sniping at police. Riots would later break out in New York, Chicago, and Detroit. "Aimless violence finds fertile ground," the president said, in the poverty of slums, facing a future with little hope, without education or skills, and trapped by hatred. It was as LBJ had been saying, not a southern problem but an American problem.

[Stars and Stripes Forever]

[Narrator]: Lyndon Johnson, in continuing the American commitment in Vietnam, was moving along a path that had been set out for him by his predecessors going back to Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Very few people at the time could believe that the United States could be defeated by a ragtag army in the jungles of Vietnam. But grim realities were setting in. The situation in Vietnam is getting worse. The energy and persistence of the Viet Cong is astonishing. There is no way the South Vietnamese are going to win by themselves. The U.S. must be more involved. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged Johnson to increase U.S. commitment and to consider bombing North Vietnam. At this time, there were 23,000 American troops in Vietnam. Johnson will now make the most important decision of his political career. As the war progressed, some of the military became frustrated. They didn’t like this kind of war: a war of attrition, a half war. In 1965, LBJ shifted the U.S. role in Vietnam from providing assistance, to providing combat soldiers. By the end of the year, there were 185,000 troops in Vietnam and more were on their way.

[people singing] "How many times can a man..." , "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind."

[Narrator] As involvement deepened, the war became more costly in money and in lives.

"Johnson did feel that he could use military power as he had used political persuasion that Ho Chi Minh would come to the table."

To LBJ, Ho Chi Minh was a functionary of Moscow. To the Vietnamese, he was a symbol of nationalism and victory. He had defeated the French. He could defeat the United States. Ho would fight with the same style that he'd used against the French: wear out the enemy, harass them, bog them down in the rice patties, separate them from the people. Johnson wrote directly to Ho. He would stop the bombing of North Vietnam if the infiltration into South Vietnam is stopped. Ho replied, "halt all acts of war and then talk peace." Johnson wanted to negotiate. He halted the bombing but not the war. Ho did not respond.

"Johnson's hope was that he was dealing with somebody who was pragmatic, who was a politician, who would bend, and in essence what he's saying is 'you must have a price, what's your price?' We'll give you an Asian development bank. We'll give you a billion dollars. Just call a halt to this war. Be reasonable. Make peace. But Ho Chi Minh was unbending. He was not going to let Lyndon Johnson shape the life of his nation."

[LBJ] "This will make it necessary to increase our active fighting forces by raising the monthly draft call from 17,000 over a period of time to 35,000 per month and for us to step up our campaign for our voluntary enlistments."

[protestors chant repeatedly] "Save the war in Vietnam, bring the troops home."

[Narrator] Congress became critical of the war. How could we continue to pay for the Great Society and also pay for the increasing cost of Vietnam? Robert McNamara had lost his heart for the war. But Johnson remained firm. They found themselves increasingly in conflict.

"We had these big arguments. I said 'the television is going to destroy you because every night they're showing the dead and the wounded on the American side. They're showing these pictures every night on television.'"

"We didn’t get too far before the war started to drain our resources, not just our money, but the kind of gut resources, the resources of the heart."

[Narrator] Millions of young people demanded change. Not only in the lines of authority, a change in our culture, in all directions. But especially, they wanted to change the direction of Lyndon Johnson.

[protestors chant] "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today. Hey, hey, LBJ..."

[Narrator] By January 1968, there were 550,000 U.S. forces in Vietnam. Victory was just around the corner, but around the corner was Tet: the start of the Vietnamese New Year and a shift of the war to the cities. General Westmoreland maintained that the enemy had suffered a military defeat, but Americans were appalled. The destruction and brutality sank in as never before.

"It's true that the United States could have won that war if we put in, let's say a million, a million and a half Army, if we had resorted to tactical nuclear weapons. But what Johnson had the good sense to realize is that this was impermissible. That however much he wanted to win in Vietnam, the idea that they should go to that extreme might well provoke the third world war which our involvement in Vietnam was supposed to prevent."

"The greatest impact of the war was on the President, and it tore him up because he didn't want to be a president at fought a war overseas. He wanted to be a president at fought a war against poverty and ignorance and disease at home, as he often said. And the whole tension of his presidency was trying to continue the Great Society while the war went on."

[Narrator] Lyndon Johnson saw his world crumbling. The whole situation was unbearable, he would say later. "I felt I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions." He came to realize there was only one way to heal the divisions in the country.

[LBJ] "Good evening my fellow Americans, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office -- the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

"He wanted a benefit out of his decision. He wanted something that made the whole thing worthwhile and he said 'I don't want to spend the rest of the year politicking. I want peace' and that's what he built his withdrawal on."

[LBJ] "Most all of my life as a public official has been spent here in this building. For 38 years since I worked on that gallery as a doorkeeper in the House of Representatives, and now it's time to leave. I hope it may be said 100 years from now that by working together we help to make our country more just, more just for all of its people as well as to ensure and guarantee the blessings of liberty for all of our posterity." Through the years when time would permit, here is where I would always return to the Pedernales River. This is my country, the Hill Country of Texas.