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

He instructed Majority Leader Robinson to accept whatever changes were necessary. If a senator’s support could be obtained by adding his amendment, he said, add it. The resulting bill, said one Washington observer, “sought to legalize almost anything anybody could think up.”

Johnson accomplished this transformation not by the pronouncement or fiat or order that is the method of executive initiative, but out of the very nature and fabric of the legislative process itself. He was not only the youngest but the greatest Senate Leader in America’s history. His colleagues called him Leader.

Johnson turned a rather insubstantial service into a process through which power was exercised. By redefining the process, he had given power to himself.

‘Few expected greatness of her until she was nearly fifty.’ Even the few people who strongly believed in her abilities never imagined she might be Prime Minister, let alone a global stateswoman who would play a role in ending the Cold War.