OF THE UNITED STATES Lyndon B. Johnson Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 Price $6.25 FOREWORD THE PUBLIC statements of a President occupy a unique place in history. Every President speaks, of necessity, to his own time. His first audience is the citizens of his own day. For it is they who must confront the challenges, make the sacrifices, and support the decisions of the man whom they have entrusted with the Nation's leadership. Yet the words and deeds of any President, serving as spokesman and Chief Executive for his own contemporaries, also reach to future generations. Each generation of Americans studies the words of bygone Presidents, seeking clues to actions which helped to shape their own contemporary world. Thus, the remarks, addresses, and messages with which a President tries to guide the Nation safely forward become landmarks for posterity. Future readers of this volume will find here an unusual number of Presidential messages to the Congress. They will find an equally large number of formal statements commemorating moments when I was privileged to sign the resulting legislation into law. I commend these communications to the readers' special attention. They are more than guideposts to our times: they are also monuments to what I believe has been one of the greatest sessions of Congress in American history. Other Congresses have produced outstanding and distinguished records: the 59th under Theodore Roosevelt, the 63d under Woodrow Wilson, the 73d under Franklin Roosevelt, to name just a few. But none has equalled the 89th Congress whose achievements are reflected in these pages. From this Congress has come the greatest outpouring of creative legislation ever witnessed during a single legislative session. If future readers of this volume live in a world at peace; if they reside in a cleaner, stronger, more beautiful America; they will look back in |