Sublime

his human flock, and it was thus right and natural for his subjects to obey him

The compassion, though genuine, had taken a back seat to calculation; the Texas journalist Ronnie Dugger, who covered Johnson for many years, was to write, in an incisive phrase, of his “real, though expendable, compassion.” In Johnson’s unending, silent calculations about the best way to further his career, it was the Alvin Wirtzes and the Herman

Humphrey could see with his own eyes that Richard Russell also regarded Lyndon Johnson as his protégé, that the senators with whom Johnson was on the most intimate terms were the southerners, but Humphrey felt, after those talks with Johnson, that he understood that. “Johnson never was a captive of the southern bloc,” he says. “He was trying to be

The battle lines were now drawn: Eisenhower and Senate liberals against the conservative blocs in both parties. Lyndon Johnson, the Senate minority leader, held the key.

A number of younger senators had accumulated sufficient seniority to expect seats on major committees, seats for which they were well qualified—in some cases, extremely well qualified. But their committee assignments were not going to be made on the basis of seniority or of qualifications. Their assignments were going to be made on the basis of the