Sublime

In the Senate, Lyndon Johnson, at forty-six, became the youngest majority leader in Senate history, and as Robert Caro explains, was soon the Master of the Senate.39

One day, Rayburn invited Johnson down for a drink after the session. Thereafter, leaving the floor at the end of the day, the Leader would frequently growl to Johnson: “Come on down.” Behind the hideaway’s tall, narrow door, the twenty-eight-year-old freshman was drinking with Speaker Bankhead, and Minority Whip McCormack, and Rules Committee Chair

By August 15, two weeks after the Preparedness Subcommittee had held its first organizational meeting, the subcommittee’s staff—lawyers, accountants, researchers, stenographers, investigators—numbered twenty-five, three times as many as the staff of Tydings’ parent committee. Lyndon Johnson, still in his second year in the Senate, had assembled a s

He and FDR became lifelong friends, and their partnership endured until Roosevelt’s death. The president often used O’Connor to transmit messages he did not wish to entrust to political associates—a confidential conduit he knew he could rely on.