While some may hold that LBJ served well on some fronts — his bid for the "Great Society" — one shouldn't forget that he escalated the Vietnam war, and the draft was expanded dramatically under his administration, putting many family men and other unfortunates in harm's way in arguably the most detested and unethical war in the country's history.
No one will argue that there was anything positive about the Viet Nam war (the roots of which are in the Eisenhower administration) but it doesn't wipe the slate clean on the fact that LBJ did produce a lot of good legislation for America.
In addition to his "Great Society" legislation - which included laws upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, aid to education, and the abolition of poverty, President Johnson also:
...signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 outlawing most forms of racial segregation and providing equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin.
...passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawing discrimination in voting.
...signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Higher Education Act to improve funding to schools, especially those in poor districts.
...created programs to tackle poverty - such as Head Start, food stamps, Work Study, Medicare, and Medicaid.
...established the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to support humanists and artists.
...appointed Thurgood Marshall - the first African American justice on the Supreme Court.
To quote LBJ "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than passage of the Civil Rights Bill FOR WHICH HE FOUGHT SO HARD."
"The Medicare bill was lost, and he (Kennedy) went immediately on television to declare that this "most serious defeat for every American family" would be a key issue in the fall campaign."
See "JFK remarks at Amherst College October 1963" at Arts.gov, the website of the National Endowment of the Arts.
On June 11th, 1963, president John F. Kennedy issued Proclamation 3542, forcing Governor George Wallace to comply with federal court orders allowing African-American students to register for the summer session at University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and all persons acting in concert with him to cease and desist from obstructing justice.
President Kennedy initiated the planning for the "War on Poverty" [Great Society?] in 1963 after reading an article by Michael Harrington entitled "The Other America."
On the Audubon website, "Rachael Carson and JFK, an Environmental Tag Team."
After Thurgood Marshall was Chief Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund, JFK appointed him to the United States Court on f Apoeals for the Second Circuit. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when LBJ appointed him to Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court saying " It was the right thing to do."
Credit where credit is due. LBJ may not have been a brilliant thinker but he did finish the work of what would have been a second term in office for JFK and that is a good thing. Escalating the war in Vietnam Nam was his own bad judgement.
