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... See moreRussell was for twenty-six years either Chairman or dominant member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversaw the battle readiness of the nation’s far-flung legions and armadas. As senators of Rome had insisted that, regardless of the cost, the legions must be kept at full complement because the peace and stability of the known world—th
Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson sprang to Ike’s defense. McCarthy’s proposal “placed a loaded gun at the President’s head,” said LBJ.6 Johnson immediately recognized the opportunity McCarthy had provided to put the Senate on record supporting Eisenhower and to embarrass the GOP’s Old Guard at the same time. With Senator George’s cooperation,
... See moreJean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
WHEN RICHARD RUSSELL congratulated him on his victory over Leland Olds, Johnson replied: “I’m young and impressionable, so I just tried to do what the Old Master, the junior senator from Georgia, taught me to do.” And his note to the master included the most potent of code words: “Cloture is where you find it, sir, and this man Olds was an advocate
... See moreRobert A. Caro • Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
For Lyndon Johnson, Monday was a day of applause. Whatever Truman’s feelings toward him had been before, Texas was indispensable to the President’s own election chances in 1948, and two of the men most important if he was to carry Texas were on the train with him: Sam Rayburn and Tom Clark. And, as Evans and Novak were to put it, “for all of his co
... See moreRobert A. Caro • Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II
During his first year in the Senate, Johnson had delivered two major speeches. The first, in March, had announced his enlistment in the ranks of the southerners who ran the Senate. The second had demonstrated that he could be an effective leader in their causes. “In the minds of many,” Lowell Mellett wrote, “the shame of the Senate, in the session
... See moreRobert A. Caro • Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
During his second year in the House, he wrote—himself, with no staff assistance—a bill embodying the old People’s Party dream of intensified government regulation of railroads, by giving the government authority over the issuance of new securities by the railroads. Happening, by chance, to see the bill, Louis D. Brandeis, then one of President Wils
... See moreRobert A. Caro • The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I
Johnson’s refusal to take a public stand against Garner even while he was peddling his story about the John L. Lewis episode in the right quarters, his success in keeping his name off the two telegrams to Rayburn (and out of the subsequent press coverage of those telegrams), the care taken to keep his name out of the entire 1940 Garner-Roosevelt fi
... See moreRobert A. Caro • The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I
THE SENATE HAD WON AGAIN. The citadel of the South, the dam against which so many liberal tides had broken in vain, was still standing, as impenetrable as ever. And it was standing thanks in substantial part to its Majority Leader. For years, the South had had a formidable general in Richard Russell. In 1956, as in 1955 and 1954 and 1953, it had ha
... See moreRobert A. Caro • Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III
Elmer M. Ellsworth, a special assistant to Governor Winship, was a member of this hand-picked jury.