It did not help his mood that Goldwater pulled down so many other GOP candidates that Lyndon Johnson, one of the most skilled political tacticians ever to sit in the Oval Office, was able to gloat that the incoming Congress “could be better, but not [on] this side of heaven.”20 This Congress would pass everything from work-study programs to help students work their way through college to Medicare and Medicaid, a War on Poverty, and laws to ensure clean air and water. Its crowning achievement was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, designed to allow every American citizen, at last, to participate in
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