How liberal was Lyndon Johnson's presidency?

During the 1960s America underwent one of the largest social transformations it had every witnessed. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programme was Revolutionary in two senses. The first in that the nature of the social legislation he passed was in itself previously unheard of and a liberal transformation in its own right. The second in that he revolutionised people’s perceptions of what was expected from the federal government. Previously to the Great Society central government had not been responsible for welfare management and suddenly became responsible for a service-based welfare system to the most vulnerable in society. Healthcare, the elderly and the poor fell under federal government control. However, how far his programme went in being liberal requires some very clear definitions. The extent to which an expanded ‘liberalism’ occurred must be taken in context of the American state. Key tenets of the Great Society were in fact not in keeping with classical liberalism, fundamentally with its big government approach to legislation. However, whether or not the American central state was transformed by an expanded liberalism is to ask whether or not the American central state was transformed by a never before seen wave of liberal policy, which it very much was. Johnson’s reforms went even further than Roosevelt’s New Deal and thus did transform the central state. In this essay the working definition of the American central state will be the policy making body of the federal government and its actions, but also what was perceived as its duty by the American people. This essay will argue that both underwent a Liberal transformation in the 1960s. Although the 1960s encompassed two other Presidents than Lyndon Johnson, due to him carrying out the large part of the reform of the 1960s, as well as him encompassing American liberalism and essentially being the politician behind a lot of liberal legislation under the whole New Deal this essay will focus largely on the period 1963-1968 as the period of the 1960s where an argument for liberal transformation can be made.