A third of a century after Lyndon B. Johnson abandoned his five-year roller coaster as president; his attempts for the betterment of mankind were not always met with approval. Conservatives disdain his "Great Society", while liberals excoriate his Vietnam policy. Reganites group Johnson's tenure with the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations in a quartet of presidential failures that precipitated their "revolution" in the transformation of America and her people.

Yet Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of the great "Liberal nationalists" of the American century. In Congress, by crossing the views of Southern populism with the rapidly expanding Northern progressivism he harnessed federal power to modernize the South. As a president, he soothed a nation reeling from Kennedy's assassination, fathered civil rights legislation, and crusaded to "conquer poverty" in his fanciful attempt to become the "greatest presidential reformer in the country's history."

It was in his firs 15 months that Mr. Johnson best demonstrated the qualities for which he hoped to be remembered. By masterly managing the tr

He first spoke of the "Great Society" as the catch phrase with which he sought to identify his Administration-as the New deal did for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New frontier for Mr. Kennedy's. In 1965 he stood as the Democrat nominee for president and upon election he came out of the shadow of Kennedy, no more was LBJ and accidental president. But he used the tag less and less as the nation became embroiled in racial strife, civil disorders and the ruinous wars in Vietnam.

Progressively the budgets of his Administration were mortgaged to that war and it unpopularity drained his political strength. Moreover, the cities of America were ravaged by decay and racial dissension, and the Caucasian majority responded with anger, fear and vindictiveness. By the time he left office on Jan 20 1969, his nation's reputation for violence, far from having diminished had grown abroad to monstrous proportions. The name of LBJ, like that of the other three Democratic Presidents who served full terms in this century, had become inextricably linked with war and its consequences.

ansition of power from the slain president to himself, by restoring faith in the viability of the "American System" of divided legislature and executive powers, by proving the nation's capacity to withstand the horror of assassination and by persuading the world of the strength and continuity of America and her institutions.

Early in his Administration, the president declared what he called a "war on poverty." He made two trips to the distressed Appalachia area to dramatize the need for an antipov

Some common words found in the essay are:
Congress June, Johnson's Society, Johnson Liberal, Democratic Presidents, American System, Dominican Republic--allegedly, Johnson President, Vietnam American, Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy LBJ, civil rights, war poverty,
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