Sublime

THE LESSON OF RICHARD RUSSELL’S DOOMED, quixotic campaign of 1952 was not lost on Lyndon Johnson, for whom it had the deepest implications. After all the acknowledgments that Russell was the best qualified candidate for the presidency—acknowledgments that had come from the North as well as the South—he had received virtually no northern votes at th

The image was summarized in Healy’s lead paragraph, which said that “the junior United States Senator from Texas maintains the most rigidly one-track mind in Washington. Johnson is entirely preoccupied with the science of politics, which for him is an exact science and one which he has mastered superlatively. Politics is, naturally, Topic A for mos

THE SOUTHERN MANIFESTO and Herbert Brownell’s civil rights bill menaced—from opposite sides—Lyndon Johnson’s master plan. Manifesto and bill both threatened to add kindling to the civil rights issue on Capitol Hill. Johnson’s strategy for winning his party’s presidential nomination—to hold his southern support while antagonizing northern liberals a

While Johnson had been watching his parade in the Imperial Suite Wednesday night, Russell had given him a warning. “Lyndon,” he said, “don’t ever let yourself become a sectional candidate for the presidency. That was what happened to me.” If you are labeled as a sectional—southern—candidate, Russell said, “You can’t win.” Although Johnson certainly

On November 8, 1960, Lyndon Johnson won election for both the vice presidency of the United States, on the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, and for a third term as Senator (he had had Texas law changed to allow him to run for both offices). When he won the vice presidency, he made arrangements to resign from the Senate, as he was required to do under federa

By February 10, when the civil rights bill arrived in the Senate, the most valuable hostage, the tax cut bill, was out of the South’s clutches, “locked and key” in the storm cellar of completed legislation, and so were the appropriations bills. And Johnson made sure that no other bills would wander onto the battlefield to be captured and held hosta

Johnson’s post-war record was nearly identical with his pre-war record. He introduced one bill that would have an effect outside his own district in 1945: a minor measure, never effectively implemented, to give veterans priority in purchasing certain surplus goods after the needs of the federal government were provided for. He did not introduce a s

Wilson’s academic writings suggested a highly theoretical approach to the daily cut and thrust of politics, yet this was belied by his stunning pragmatism as governor.21 He was not a man approached easily; he was concerned more with issues than personalities; yet his grasp of political reality was indisputable.

By this time, George Reedy says, “Russell was very determined to elect Johnson President of the United States.” And, Reedy says, “There was no question whatsoever that anybody that signed” such an inflammatory, anti–civil rights document “could never become President of the United States.” As Russell’s biographer, Gilbert C. Fite, wrote, “Russell w