Sublime

“I remember hearing Lyndon say that this business of getting these people jobs is really the nucleus of a political organization for the future,” Russell Brown says. In his attempts to obtain patronage, he did not—the secretary to an obscure Congressman—have much ammunition to work with. So he could not afford to let any opening slip away.

He was college president until 1973; he ran for the Senate in 1976, aged seventy, becoming a Republican for the first time.

Willie Brown, the longest-serving speaker in the history of the California Assembly, two-time mayor of San Francisco, and one of the most powerful and effective figures in American politics, lost his first election for the Assembly and also lost the contest the first time he tried to become speaker.

It was the proposal of a fanatic.

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.

Then Stevenson’s lawyers turned to the 201 names listed after Soliz on the poll list of voters—200 of whom, the tally sheet said, had voted for Lyndon Johnson. Brownlee had taken nine of these names down during his brief look at the poll list, and the young lawyers had jotted down additional names. They asked each of these people if they had voted

Mann’s candidacy was a different story. The young Attorney General’s personal qualities attracted loyalty. The wording on the plaque he had hung on the wall behind his desk—“I sacrificed no principle to gain this office and I shall sacrifice no principle to keep it”—did not strike a false note with those who knew him, and neither did his habit of c

palisades,

Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982). Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002).