Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (165 page)

72.
Holland, "After Thirty Years," 203.

73.
John Diggins,
The Rise and Fall of the American Left
(New York, 1992), 191.

74.
Thomas Hine,
Populuxe
(New York, 1986), 170.

75.
Haynes Johnson, "Why Camelot Lives,"
Washington Post
, Aug. 18, 1991.

76.
Life
, Dec. 6, 1963.

1.
New York Times
, Nov. 28, 1963. For commentary see John Blum,
Years of Discord: American Politics and Society
, 1961–1974 (New York, 1991), 135; and Doris Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
(New York, 1976), 174.

2.
Robert Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
(Austin, 1981), 16.

3.
Major sources on Johnson's life, aside from Kearns, include Robert Dallek,
Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960
(New York, 1991); Paul Conkin,
Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson
(Boston, 1986); Vaughn Bornet,
The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson
(Lawrence, 1983); Robert Caro,
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
(New York, 1982); Caro,
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent
(New York, 1989); and Alonzo Hamby,
Liberalism and Its Challengers: F.D.R. to Reagan
(New York, 1985), 231–81.

4.
Cited in Larry Berman, "Lyndon Baines Johnson: Paths Chosen and Opportunities Lost," in Fred Greenstein, ed.,
Leadership in the Modern Presidency
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 144–45.

5.
Robert Dallek, "My Search for Lyndon Johnson,"
American Heritage
, Sept. 1991, pp. 8488. The biographer was Kearns.

6.
David Culbert, "Johnson and the Media," in Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
, 214–48.

7.
Joseph Califano,
The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years
(New York, 1991), 26–28.

8.
Berman, "LBJ: Paths Chosen," 139.

9.
Conkin,
Big Daddy
, 132–36.

10.
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak,
Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power
(New York, 1966), 105; William O'Neill,
Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s
(Chicago, 1971), 105.

11.
William Leuchtenburg,
In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan
(Ithaca, 1983); Hamby,
Liberalism
, 256–65.

12.
Robert Collins, "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Abroad," in David Farber, ed.,
The Sixties: From Memory to History
(Chapel Hill, 1994), 19.

13.
Kearns,
Lydon Johnson
, 226.

14.
Califano,
Triumph and Tragedy
. 142, 110.

15.
Herbert Stein,
The Fiscal Revolution in America
(Chicago, 1969), 452–53; John Witte,
The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax
(Madison, 1985), 155–75; Allen Matusow,
The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s
(New York, 1984), 55–59.

16.
New York Times
, Jan. 9, 1964.

17.
Godfrey Hodgson,
America in Our Time
(Garden City, N.Y., 1976), 173; James Sundquist,
Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years
(Washington, 1968), 111–54; Matusow,
Unraveling
, 119–22.

18.
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin,
Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs
(New York, 1960).

19.
Matusow,
Unraveling
, 108–12; Ira Katznelson, "Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?," in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds.,
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order
, 1930–1980 (Princeton, 1989), 185–211.

20.
Michael Harrington,
The Other America: Poverty in the United States
(New York, 1962), 9, 171–86; Dwight Macdonald, "The Invisible Poor,"
New Yorker
, Jan. 19, 1963, pp. 13off.

21.
The lines became official only in 1964, following passage of the "war" on poverty.

22.
Sheldon Danziger and Daniel Weinberg, "The Historical Record: Trends in Family Income, Inequality, and Poverty," in Danziger, Gary Sandefur, and Weinberg, eds.,
Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 18–50; James Patterson,
America's Struggle Against Poverty
, 1900–1994 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 78–82. The official poverty line, which became a staple of government data thereafter, was based on estimates of food costs required for various-sized families. These costs were then multiplied by three to reach the minimum amounts that families needed to stay out of poverty. These were the lines. In 1964 it was calculated that a family of four needed $1,043 a year in order to afford a decent diet, and three times as much, or $3,130, to stay out of poverty. Liberals in later years insisted that poor people—indeed all Americans—spent considerably less than one-third of their incomes on food and that the multiplier should be higher than three. That would increase the level of the poverty line, and in so doing the number of people defined as "poor." Conservatives retorted that the lines were far too high, therefore exaggerating the numbers. The debate indicated an important point: definitions of absolute poverty are highly subjective.

23.
James Sundquist, "Origins of the War on Poverty," in Sundquist, ed.,
On Fighting Poverty: Perspectives from Experience
(New York, 1969), 6–33; Sundquist,
Politics and Policy
, 111–54; Matusow,
Unraveling
, 97–107.

24.
Patterson,
American Struggle
, 126–54; Mark Gelfand, "The War on Poverty," in Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
, 126–54; Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward,
Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare
, 2d ed. (New York, 1993), 248–340.

25.
See
chapter 19
for community action after 1964.

26.
Daniel Moynihan,
Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War Against Poverty
(New York, 1969).

27.
Danziger and Weinberg, "Historical Record"; Patterson,
America's Struggle
, 78–82, 126–54.

28.
Harrington,
Other America
, 10, 15–18, 159.

29.
For writing on the "culture of poverty," see ibid., 15–18, 121–26; and Oscar Lewis, "The Culture of Poverty,"
Scientific American
, 215 (Oct. 1966), 19–25. Excellent evaluations of the concept are Charles Valentine,
Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counterproposals
(Chicago, 1968); and Eleanor Burke Leacock, ed.,
The Culture of Poverty: A Critique
(New York, 1971).

30.
A summary of such views is Charles Murray,
Losing Ground: American Social Policy
, 1950–1980 (New York, 1984). See also Martin Anderson,
Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States
(Stanford, 1978).

31.
Thomas Jackson, "The State, the Movement, and the Urban Poor: The War on Poverty and Political Mobilization in the 1960s," in Michael Katz, ed.,
The "Underclass" Debate:
Views
from History
(Princeton, 1993), 403–39.

32.
Richard Polenberg,
One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States Since
1938 (New York, 1980), 201.

33.
Patterson,
America's Struggle
, 126–41; John Schwarz,
America's Hidden Success: A Reassessment of Twenty Years of Public Policy
(New York, 1983), 20–78.

34.
Debate over the long-range effectiveness of Head Start programs, however, continued decades later. See Edward Zigler and Susan Muenchow,
Head Start: The Inside Story of America's Most Successful Educational Experiment
(New York, 1992); and Diane Ravitch,
The Troubled Crusade: American Education
, 1945–1980 (New York, 1983), 158–60.

35.
Conkin,
Big Daddy
, 214; Sundquist,
Politics and Policy
, 154.

36.
This percentage, a helpful measure of the role of federal spending in the overall economy, had peaked in 1945, thanks to the war, at 43.7 percent, before falling to 16 percent in 1950, and then rising to the figure of 18.3 in 1960. After 1970 it stabilized at around 20 percent until 1975, when it jumped to 22 percent. It remained between 22 and 24.4 percent between 1975 and 1994.

37.
Federal spending in current dollars rose rapidly after 1965—to $183.6 billion by fiscal 1969. Deficits also jumped: to $3.7 billion in 1966, $8.6 billion in 1967, and $25.1 billion in 1968 (after which a tax hike enacted in 1968 helped produce a surplus of $3.2 billion in fiscal 1969, the last federal government surplus in modern times). Much of this growth in spending, however, went for military purposes. Outlays for domestic goals also increased in these years but did not jump dramatically until after 1970. By fiscal 1975, federal spending had risen to $332 billion, causing a deficit in that year of $53.2 billion. Subsequent deficits led to a rise in per capita federal indebtedness from $4,036 in 1980 to more than $18,000 in mid-1995. (All numbers used here are in current dollars.) See
Statistical Abstract of the United States
, 1994 (Washington, 1994), 297, 330–33. Also chapters 21, 23, and 25.

38.
Gary Burtless, "Public Spending on the Poor: Historical Trends and Economic Limits," and Rebecca Blank, "The Employment Strategy: Public Policies to Increase Work and Earnings," in Danziger et al., eds.,
Confronting Poverty
, 51–84, 168–204; Charles Morris, A
Time of Passion: America, 1960–1980
(New York, 1984), 106.

39.
Hugh Heclo, "Poverty Policies," in Danziger et al., eds.,
Confronting Poverty
, 396–437.

40.
Dallek, "My Search," 88.

41.
Steven Lawson, "Civil Rights," in Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
, 99–100.

42.
Robert Weisbrot,
Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement
(New York, 1990), 91.

43.
Califano,
Triumph and Tragedy
, 54; Sundquist,
Politics and Policy
, 259–71, 515–18; Matusow,
Unraveling
, 92–96.

44.
Califano,
Triumph and Tragedy
, 54.

45.
James Findlay,
Church People in the Streets: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement
, 1950–1970 (New York, 1993).

46.
Weisbrot,
Freedom Bound
, 91.

47.
Sundquist,
Politics and Policy
, 270.

48.
Newsweek
, July 13, 1964, p. 17.