Sublime

Democrats, led by Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, now saw an opportunity to break his hold on the country. McCarthy is “the sorriest senator up here,” LBJ had told Senate secretary Bobby Baker. “Can’t tie his goddamn shoes. But he’s riding high now, he’s got people scared to death some Communist will strangle ’em in their sleep, and anybo

During his prewar years as a congressman, he had, in a monumental feat of ingenuity and resolve, brought electricity to his isolated district, in a single stroke bringing the farmers and ranchers of the Hill Country into the twentieth century. And he had maximized the effect within it of so many New Deal programs that he had been called “the best c

The suspicions of the press, which would normally have been aroused by the rumors of “deals” and involvement by high-level politicians in a program calling for a vast write-down by the taxpayers, were lulled by the fact that this program was being run by apolitical Robert Moses; his legend draped over Title I a comforting, concealing cloak.

For concentrating economic power in motor transportation within the city in one man would give that man a voice in all transportation policies within the city at least equal to that of the city itself.

We learn from history that time does little to alter the psychology of dictatorship. The effect of power on the mind of the man who possesses it, especially when he has gained it by successful aggression, tends to be remarkably similar in every age and in every country.

palisades,