Just as technocratic military planning by “the Best and the Brightest” made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Ironically, Shlaes argues, the costs of entitlement commitments made a half century ago preclude the very reforms that Americans will need in coming decades. What’s more, Johnson’s and Nixon’s programs shackled millions of families in permanent government dependence. Yet the targets of our idealism proved elusive. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon, the country chose the public sector. Then, too, we debated socialism and capitalism, public sector reform versus private sector advancement. In the 1960s, Americans sought the same goals many seek now: an end to poverty, higher standards of living for the middle class, a better environment and more access to health care and education. Many Americans are attracted to socialism and economic redistribution while opponents of those ideas argue for purer capitalism. Guelzo, Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, James Madison Program, Princeton UniversityĪ conversation on Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 2019). Amity Shlaes, Chairman, Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, with Allen C.
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