Johnson was only finishing what Kennedy had already started, Kennedy would have passed the Civil Rights Act had he not been assassinated and won re-election in 1964. Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty were mostly carryovers and ideas from Kennedy as well. Literally the only reason Johnson gets the credit and not Kennedy was because Kennedy was assassinated before he could pass it. What’s more, Kennedy would most likely have not escalated Vietnam to the point of drafting men to fight over there, although we would have still been militarily involved over there.
