Daniel Aaron Lazar » USH: New Frontier & Great Society

The Paradox of the New Elite

Dan Lazar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:34:40 +0000

It’s a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

The two shifts are each huge and hugely important: one shows a steady march toward democratic inclusion, the other toward a tolerance of economic stratification that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

It’s a surprising contradiction. Is the confluence of these two movements a mere historical accident? Or are the two trends related?

Republican Disunity Ad: LBJ 1964 Presidential Campaign Commercial

Dan Lazar — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:49:42 +0000

Republican Disunity Ad: LBJ 1964 Presidential Campaign Commercial

The story behind LBJ’s pursuit of the civil rights bill

Dan Lazar — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:58:20 +0000

President Lyndon Johnson, domineering and manipulative, lives on in American memory as the classic power broker. He bullied opponents, sweet-talked skeptics, and chewed out subordinates. He oozed confidence as he passed one piece of landmark social legislation after another, even as his cockiness helped to mire the country in Vietnam. Yet this is not the Johnson who emerges from volumes seven and eight of The Presidential Recordings, a transcription of his phone conversations from June 1 to July 4 of 1964.

Video: The Presidency of LBJ

Dan Lazar — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:06:06 +0000

Robert Caro writer, 1975 Pulitzer Prize

Jack Valenti former advisor to President Johnson

Anthony Lewis writer, 1955 Pulitzer Prize

Bruce J. Schulman historian, Boston University

Lizabeth Cohen professor, American studies, Harvard

Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of President Johnson delivers the keynote address in the Kennedy Library’s ongoing examination of 20th century presidents. He is joined by Jack Valenti, who served as Special Advisor to President Johnson; Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer Anthony Lewis; and Boston University historian Bruce Schulman to discuss President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s legacy. Harvard University historian Lizabeth Cohen moderates the discussion.

Watch it Here (90 minutes)

T.R. Reid: Looking Overseas For ‘Healing Of America’

Dan Lazar — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:27:59 +0000

Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries’ health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper’s London and Tokyo bureaus.

Listen to this Fresh Air Episode

Tales Of The LBJ Tapes

Dan Lazar — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:35:55 +0000

When Lyndon B. Johnson took office as president, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he began making daily recordings of his private conversations.Historian Michael Beschloss transcribed and edited the tapes’ contents and provided commentary on them in his book Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964.

The book sheds light on Johnson’s thoughts during the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the creation of the Warren Commission to investigate it, the progress of the civil rights bill and the Gulf of Tonkin attack. And it illuminates Johnson’s decision-making process during his administration’s escalation of the Vietnam War.

Listen to the interview with Terry Gross

Truncated Lecture Notes: Did the Great Society Fail or Succeed?

Dan Lazar — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:56:52 +0000

Truncated Lecture Notes: Did the Great Society Fail or Succeed?

The Legacy of the Great Society

Dan Lazar — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:55:25 +0000

“It is not the purpose of this paper to evaluate the original legislation with respect to its successes or failures. This type of analysis has been repeated over and over in conferences and congressional hearings over the past 30 years. Such an exercise is fraught with difficulty as the original goals and objectives of each program were not completely clear and, as mentioned above, the details and implementation of each program were not set out in the original legislation. It was Johnson’s belief that these details would be worked out later. It is shown here that the debates about how to improve or change these programs continue to the present. It is the purpose of this paper to determine what, if anything, remains of the “Great Society” legislation in the 1990s. What is its legacy?”

The Legacy of the Great Society

Inaugural Addresses

Dan Lazar — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:53:30 +0000

Kennedy’s Inaugural Address

Johnson’s Inaugural Address

Response Sheet to JFK & LBJ