Archive-based historical analysis brings a perspective to policy studies that is lacking in individual case studies. The recently opened Kennedy and Johnson archives facilitate an internal analysis of the evolution of education policy formulation in the 1960s from the perspective of the executive branch. The central thread of continuity for such an analysis is executive planning through presidential task forces, such as those coordinated in the mid-1960s by Bill Moyers and Joseph Califano. While task forcing was for Kennedy largely a one-shot campaign effort of dubious efficacy, it was crucial for Johnson's construction of the Great Society's programmatic base. Task forces provide both a window into the education policy processes of the 1960s and a point of entry into the surrounding political context. From the perspective of the 1980s, the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1966 and its budgetary consequences appear to mark a turning point away from Johnson's Great Society programs. Although the Kennedy-Johnson initiatives were overwhelmed by the social tides that flowed around them and did not successfully rescue the poor through education, they contributed to an interest in the quality of education that extends even into the Reagan era. (JBM)