GREAT SOCIETY

political slogan used by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson (served 1963-69) to identify his legislative program of national reform. In his first State of the Union message (Jan. 4, 1965) after election in his own right, the president proclaimed his vision of a "Great Society" and declared a "war on poverty." He called for an enormous program of social welfare legislation including federal support for education, medical care for the aged through an expanded Social Security Program, and federal legal protection for citizens deprived of the franchise by certain state registration laws. After a landslide victory for the Democratic Party in the elections of November 1964, a sympathetic Congress passed almost all the president's bills.