January 4 · This Day in America
At 9:04 p.m., for the first time, a president delivers the State of the Union in prime time, straight into the nation's living rooms. Lyndon Johnson — a year past Dallas, riding the largest electoral landslide in modern memory — does not ask Congress how much. He asks how good. He lays out a country that could exist: one where the elderly do not go broke getting sick, where a poor child gets a head start, where the right to vote is not negotiable by geography. "The Great Society asks not how much, but how good." From this single evening flow Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to schools, the Voting Rights Act, Head Start. Not all of it will hold; Vietnam is already a shadow in the same speech. But for one night the government of the United States stands up and describes a more decent country, out loud, and means to go build it.
Source: www.lbjlibrary.org
Also on this day · 1896
After nearly fifty years of being told no, the longest territorial wait of any state, Utah is admitted as the 45th. The celebration is, by one account, like the Fourth of July in winter: anvils, dynamite, whistles, and bells for hours. Written into its new constitution is something only two other states can claim — full voting rights for women. Utah enters the Union with its women already at the ballot box, decades ahead of the country.
Source: ilovehistory.utah.gov
“The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it.”Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965