Sublime

IN ALL THE REAMS of speculation that had been printed during the previous weeks and months about the eventual makeup of the Democratic ticket, there had been very little about the possibility that Lyndon Johnson would be in its second slot. Almost no one in the political world even suspected that the Majority Leader of the Senate would seriously co

Ultimately, Ike would appoint five justices to the court, including John Marshall Harlan and William Brennan.75 His appointees ushered in a judicial revolution in citizenship law, civil liberties, and civil rights.

Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982). Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002).

From his desk at the far end of the lowest arc, Lyndon Johnson watched the figures moving among the desks, coming up and down the center aisle, chatting together in the well. He watched which senators went over to other senators to chat with them—and which senators sat at their desks and let other senators come to them. He watched two senators talk

During the court fight over the contested election, Rauh recalls, “Corcoran called to get me on the defense team and said, ‘This wonderful congressman …’ In [Abe] Fortas’ office these people were talking about what a great man we were defending. I just sort of automatically assumed it.… But it soon became clear that Johnson was not the shining knig

At the beginning of 1957, the Senate still stood—as it had stood, with rare exceptions, since the founding of the Republic—as a defiant fortress barring the road to social justice.

In the Summer of 1957, however, Lyndon Johnson, in an abrupt and total reversal of his twenty-year record on civil rights, would push a civil rights bill, primarily a voting rights bill, through the Senate—would create the bill, really, so completely did he transform a confused and contradictory Administration measure that had no realistic chance o

Lyndon Johnson had looked for power in the Senate, and had found it—and now that he was Majority Leader, he was using it. During his first six years in the Senate, he had concealed certain aspects of his character, adapting his personality to the institutional personality of the Senate, but now, in the seventh year, he was forcing the Senate to ada