Sublime

It was less than a month after the legislative hearings on the Longoria affair, in fact, that Lyndon Johnson took the field not with the friends of social justice but with its foes by delivering, as part of the southern battle against President Truman’s civil rights legislation, his “We of the South” maiden speech—the speech that Richard Russell

free society—that precarious balance between the conflicting principles of liberty and order—exists not through the rule of law alone, but through a system of education that allows every individual to internalize the law and thus become its master, not its slave.

He begins by supposing what he calls a “state of nature,” antecedent to all human government. In this state there is a “law of nature,” but the law of nature consists of divine commands, and is not imposed by any human legislator.

Roosevelt had asked Smith to campaign for him against Hoover, and Smith had done so. And when Roosevelt had won, Smith had told acquaintances flatly that a man did not feud with the President of his country; he gave him loyalty. He only hoped, he said, that Roosevelt would allow him to work for him. But Roosevelt, another young man of whom Smith

Running the White House was exclusively Eleanor’s domain, part of the balance of power she and FDR had achieved. And given her extensive public commitments, she was determined to have someone assist her who was loyal and trustworthy. Social awareness, an ability to cook, even a knowledge of food and wine were secondary. The assistant she chose was

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

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

“One of the wise, practical people around the table” urged Johnson not to press for civil rights in his first speech, because there was no chance of passage, and a President shouldn’t waste his power on lost causes—no matter how worthy the cause might be. “The presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it