Sublime

No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive.

The transition between the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth presidencies of the United States, the period that had begun at the moment on November 22, 1963, when Ken O’Donnell had said of the thirty-fifth President, “He’s gone,” had been brought to an end with Lyndon Johnson’s speech on January 8, 1964. It had lasted forty-seven days, just short of

When Johnson took a fresh swipe at Kennedy on foreign affairs, declaring that “the forces of evil… will have no mercy for innocence, no gallantry for inexperience,” they prepared a fact sheet on Lyndon Johnson’s limited understanding of foreign affairs compared to Kennedy’s travels, knowledge, and experience. Kennedy volunteers took up a vigil over

The dawn had just broken in Boston, and after a long, tense night, young John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just learned that he had defeated Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., when he got a call and Kennedy aide Lawrence F. O’Brien heard him say, “Well, thank you, Senator, thank you very much.” Putting down the phone, he told O’Brien, with what O’Brien described as

As the Congressional Digest put it, “It is a case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, epitome of the New Deal, … against John Nance Garner, to whom much of the New Deal is anathema.” Discussing possible candidates with Jim Farley at Hyde Park, Roosevelt said: “To begin with, there’s Garner, he’s just impossible.” Although other names would continually be