Sublime

In the spring of 1941 Lucy and Franklin began to see each another again. She was given the code name “Mrs. Johnson” by the Secret Service, and her name appears frequently on the White House register.

“There never was perhaps a greater contrast between two characters than between those of the present president and his predecessor,” James Madison observed. “The one cool, considerate, and cautious, the other headlong and kindled into flame by every spark that lights on his passions.”28 For all his vast legislative experience, the temperamental Ada

The night before—and for so many months before that, ever since 1958, in fact—the Kennedy camp had been counting convention delegate votes, the votes necessary to win the nomination. As soon as the nomination was won, Kennedy had begun counting the Electoral College votes necessary to win the real prize, the presidency—and even a quick, preliminary

He had written on the statute books of New York such a sweep of social welfare statutes that Oscar Handlin could say that they “made the most difficult state the best-governed one in the Union…[and] awakened the conscience of the nation to the needs of the urban working people.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, as President, was to say that “practically all

The cloture motion was passed, by a 71–29 vote, on June 10, after a filibuster of fifty-seven days that was the longest in Senate history. Twenty-three Democrats voted against that motion; forty-four votes from the Democratic side was all it got. But, thanks to Dirksen, twenty-seven Republicans voted for it; only six, including Goldwater, remained

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.