Many programs that formed from the Great Society are still active today. For ten days before the attack, the U.S. military had focused its attention on relieving the siege of a marine outpost at Khe Sanh close to the demilitarized zone. Many people held protests against the costly war. As a Protestant Southerner and the consummate insider in Congress, Johnson balanced the ticket, helping Kennedy capture Texas, Louisiana and the Carolinas in his narrow defeat of Richard Nixon. The Johnson family had been in the area for generations, but Johnson's father had financial problems, and the future President grew up under difficult circumstances. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had all been participating in the Mississippi Freedom Summer efforts to register black voters in the state. Lyndon B Johnson was the President of the United States from 1963 to 1969. The Six Day War breaks out between Israel and several Arab nations. I Was There When Medicare Got Passed. Here's How it Happened. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to initiate negotiations. There he was, the leader of the free world, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, aboard Air Force One standing in front of reporters, naked as a jaybird. [CDATA[/* >