Sublime

The little group of which Johnson was a part was an unusual group. Two of its members—Douglas and Fortas—would sit on the highest court in the country. Others—Corcoran and Rowe—would be part (as, indeed, Douglas and Fortas, too, would be part) for decades to come of the nation’s highest political councils. In the years immediately after Johnson cam

Not getting the Democratic presidential nomination that year had proven to be something of a blessing: the election results had convincingly reaffirmed that no one could have beaten Eisenhower. But the lesson he had had pounded into him in Chicago—that you couldn’t win the nomination as the “southern candidate,” that you had to have substantial nor

The 1948 campaign would, therefore, be a dramatic contrast—on the one hand, a lone campaigner traveling from town to town by auto, speaking on Courthouse lawns to small audiences; on the other hand, a candidate whose words would be brought several times each day into homes throughout Texas.

Suddenly, Stevenson was leading by a bare handful of votes. And then, at this crucial point, Duval announced that it now had its returns ready. The vote it had reported on Saturday night had been 4,195 for Johnson, 38 for Stevenson. Now Duval election officials said there had been 427 previously unreported votes in that “uncounted” precinct. Steven

In 1941, his campaigning was as strikingly cold and mechanical as it had been strikingly warm and individual four years before; indeed at times his manner was almost contemptuous, making it clear that the individual to whom he was speaking simply didn’t matter.

“Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy’s sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life.”

obloquy

With the raising of the jury issue, the civil rights battle at once became even more complicated—a tangle now not only of legal and parliamentary complications but of moral complications as well. No longer was all the right clearly on the side of the liberals. Even Hubert Humphrey, who was to stand fast against the amendment because “you could not

To whatever extent Johnson in 1957 was already planning, at least in outline, the things he would do if he ever became President, he was planning to betray, and to betray on a very large scale, the men, some of them very clever men, who were, for years, not only his most loyal but his most important supporters. “Civil rights didn’t get accomplished