Transformations: A New South?

Abstract

Lyndon Baines Johnson had always wanted consensus politics but by 1968 he was facing mounting opposition over his foreign policy in Vietnam from the left, and vociferous attacks on his radical legislation on civil rights and economic policies from the right. He admitted: ‘There were deep divisions in the country, perhaps deeper than any we had experienced since the Civil War. They were divisions that could destroy us if they were not attended to and ultimately healed.’ On his return to the ranch in Texas he walked beside the Pedernales River and reflected that as President ‘I had given it everything that was in me’ (Johnson, 1971).