TEXAS, 1967. LBJ AND THE SHOELESS SOCIETY!

President Lyndon Baines Johnson had pushed the Civil Rights Act, The Great Society, and expanded the war in Vietnam. And for his 1968 election bid he sought to give the American people his most ambitious dream to date — THE SHOELESS SOCIETY. As a boy in rural Texas, LBJ had watched rich kids come to school with shiny new shoes while he wore the same hand-me-down leather-laced saddlebags for years on end. Seeing barefoot hippies out on Pennsylvania Avenue, the astute pol saw an opportunity to end America's footwear caste system, the generation gap, and repave America with comfortable soft rubber sidewalks that made shoes irrelevant. Set to address the nation, LBJ saw his dream run over by the Tet offensive, which killed not only his election bid, but the greater dream of a soleless nation.