AP Photo

One wall of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas celebrates "the thousand laws" Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, and a showcase proudly displays legions of pens, row upon row, which he used to sign the various measures. Many of the laws were nation-changing in their sweep and impact — for example, the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to education, and Medicare. Some others, full-hearted in intent, were flawed in execution: the War on Poverty was underfunded from the start, starved by the war in Vietnam, and then discarded by Richard Nixon.

On balance, the record is a prodigious catalogue of achievement, at least in the legislative arena, meriting what LBJ always yearned for: comparison with FDR.