Could John Kennedy Have Passed Lyndon Johnson's Laws?

Robert Caro says no. If John Kennedy had won in '60 and Lyndon Johnson had turned down the vice presidency and stayed majority leader, the laws Johnson later passed as president would not simply have arrived sooner. Kennedy did not have the overriding desire to change America.

John Kennedy was utterly charming. He was a good president, and he was good in foreign policy, where Johnson was not. What he lacked was Johnson's vision and the desire to change the country. Johnson came back from his year teaching poor kids determined to change the education system and to do more for poor people. The determination is what made him, at home, such a great president: the civil rights laws and the anti-poverty laws that would not have existed without him.

The tragedy is foreign policy. Johnson had an idealism about getting things done for people in America that Caro calls almost unique. When Johnson's attention turned to Vietnam, everything fell apart, the presidency was ruined, and the domestic work did not get finished the way he would have finished it. He had started, after the election, with the education laws and the anti-poverty bills. The turn to Vietnam is the great tragedy of Lyndon Johnson.