Sublime

Until 1957, in the Senate, as in the House, his record —by that time a twenty-year record—against civil rights had been consistent. And although in that year he oversaw the passage of a civil rights bill, many liberals had felt the compromises Johnson had engineered to get the bill through had gutted it of its effectiveness—a feeling that proved co

As a general rule (the most notable exceptions in these early years were John Connally and Horace Busby), the men he picked were not the brightest available, nor the men with the most initiative or ability. They were, rather, the men who had demonstrated the most unquestioning obedience—not merely a willingness but an eagerness to take orders, to b

When Jack told the group that “it looked as though Johnson would take it,” Lawrence, with a happy grin on his weathered old Irish face, reached out and grasped Kennedy’s hand in congratulation, to be met with a matching smile from the young candidate. Suddenly, in O’Donnell’s words, “all of them”—all the northern bosses who could count, and who had

Joe had financed all Jack’s campaigns, including the 1958 romp, when he spent an estimated $1.5 million to ensure the landslide that would help launch Jack’s presidential bid. As important, between 1958 and 1960, Joe became the campaign’s principal behind-the-scenes operator in the nomination fight. “You do what you think is right,” Joe told Jack a

During his eleven years as a Congressman, therefore, no national bill introduced by Lyndon Johnson that would have affected the people of the United States became a law of the United States.

Before his gubernatorial campaign, Robert Moses had been a hero because the public had seen him less as an individual than as a symbol of resistance to politicians and bureaucrats. His conduct during the campaign had, by forcing the public to see him as an individual, stripped him of that cause. But now he was once again basking in its aura—and he