Kennedy’s name hung over his presidency; but did Johnson succeed where JFK failed?

Nov 22, 1963: One day between shock – and the will to power for the man, who unexpectedly took office that day: Lyndon B Johnson. He had run against Kennedy in the 1960-pre-election campaign and been named vice-president by Kennedy only a few months before the election; in order to win enough votes from the Southern States. Lyndon B Johnson is mostly known as the President who declared war on Vietnam. At the same time his policies succeeded in giving the American people more rights than Kennedy ever planned to, and whose Civil Rights and Voting act-policy paved the way for Barack Obama, first non-white President in the history of the United States. 50 years after the Kennedy assassination we focus on a president whose claim “What the hell’s the presidency for?” stands as a synonym for his offensive political style and whose political accomplishments range among the most important for the US of the 20th Century. There is a wealth of iconic as well as rarely seen archive material that documents Johnson’s presidency in the period of 1963 and 1969 as well as the time before that. Revisiting the original locations of events of the time and interviewing experts and contemporary witnesses, will further allow us to gain an insight into Lyndon B Johnson’s politics and into his being.