How do I approach a question where I need to analyse the effectiveness of a 20th century leader like President Johnson's presidency?

You need to set out the leader in question's initial aims and whether these aims were met in their policies. Make sure that you set out a clear argument in your introduction and continue to develop this in the main body.

You want to provide examples of their policies.

A suggested way to handle this is to break up this leader (lets say President Johnson) into categories and analyse their success according to their initial aims.

Paragraph One:

Political abilities - e.g. (the 'Johnson Treatment', Was VP for 900 days following Kennedy's death, had the public mandate unlike President Truman).

Paragraph Two:

Economic Policies - List examples and Analyse

Paragraph Three:

Social Policies - Johnson's "Great Society" - He passes over 200 pieces of legislation, one of the largest numbers of legislation in 1 term.

Paragraph Four:

Civil Rights -  He triples the number of black voters in the southern states through by utilising JFK's death to pass legislation. Its good for Johnson and the democratic party(more aligned to what they want, education, healthcare etc.). However, dixiecrats stop voting for the democrats. "Johnson lost the southern vote of a generation" when this act was passed.

Paragraph One:

Foreign Policies( such as the Cold War) -

Conclude:

Round of all your above points and state your arguement. Do not introduce any new material here. 

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You MUST have Historiogprahy throughour your essay to validate your points and ensure that you are able to get a grade higher than a 5.

An example of this is:

Robert Dallek:

 “Johnson’s role in reaching out to America’s disadvantaged and combating racial segregation was perhaps his most important contribution to recent US history”

Johnson should have been remembered as the President who a century after the end of the Civil War had delivered political and social equality to all citizens but….

You should mention a historian's name and their view point to back up your assessment of this leader a few within the body of your essay.