Sublime

After the campaign, Moses himself would say that Lehman “was essentially a cautious, dependable citizen of the old school” who “carried on the work of Smith and Roosevelt without basic innovation” but who was “enormously conscientious and hard-working…. I would classify him as a distinguished Governor.” Herbert Lehman, Robert Moses would say after

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,

President Eisenhower numbered many titans of the oil industry among his friends. He was as indebted to the industry for past campaign contributions as was Johnson—and, as he prepared for his re-election campaign, he was as hopeful of future contributions. He was philosophically committed to reducing, not increasing, government regulation of industr

Edward VII ruled the British Empire with a slightly pudgy cigar-stained hand, assuring his subjects that duty was important but so too was fun. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” he said, “so long as you don’t frighten the horses.”

Churchill, Eden, and British public sentiment strongly supported Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement as the rallying point for France’s liberation.

LYNDON JOHNSON had seen combat, had been in combat, under fire, if only as an observer. The next day, he headed home, at five-thirty a.m., boarding the B-17 that would carry the two Generals and other highranking officers as well as himself and his surviving fellow observer, Sam Anderson, back to Australia—first to Darwin, and then on the long flig

Unlike Lincoln, who was prone to error until he found Grant in 1863, FDR was exceptionally able at selecting military commanders (Marshall, MacArthur, Leahy, King), and he believed Ike would be a good fit to head the cross-Channel attack.

With Eisenhower in the White House, Sam Rayburn as Speaker, and Lyndon Johnson as majority leader, the country was in the hands of skilled professionals.

Many of the state’s conservative business leaders had, once the excitement of the campaign had faded, reached the same conclusion as Busby, and realized they had been unjust to Stevenson, and they asked him to run—ample financing assured—for Tom Connally’s Senate seat in 1952; he would, after all, be only sixty-four years old, they pointed out. He