Lyndon Johnson Knew That Part of Wielding Power Is Knowing When to Let It Go

Sixty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act, a high point in one of the greatest runs of policymaking of any president in American history. The Johnson administration was sprinting for most of the president’s years in office, and as he approached the end of his first full term a few years later, he was exhausted and unhappy. In 1967, when Johnson was just 58 years old, he commissioned a secret actuarial study to try to determine how much longer he should expect to live. His father died at just 60, and Lyndon had had a heart attack in 1955. The study suggested he should expect to expire at 64. “I figured that with my history of heart…

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