Sublime

On January 4, 1955, Lyndon Johnson was re-elected—by acclamation—to the leadership of the Senate Democrats. As he had become, at the age of forty-four, the youngest Minority Leader in the history of the United States, so he was now, at forty-six, the youngest Majority Leader in the history of the United States.

His analysis of a state job began to take into consideration not only whether the position was necessary for the betterment of mankind but also who had appointed the man who now held the position. He learned to weigh the governmental gains that might be achieved by the position’s elimination and by the use for worthier purposes of the salary alloca

Four hundred and thirty-five Congressional districts: among them districts represented by Congressmen of long seniority whose favor even a President had to court; among them districts represented by Congressmen who chaired powerful committees; among them districts represented by Congressmen who were allies of the New Deal; among them districts repr

The official totals for the major candidates showed Houghton Brownlee with 3,019 votes; C. N. Avery with 3,951; Stone with 4,048; Polk Shelton with 4,420; Merton Harris with 5,111—and Lyndon Johnson with 8,280, 3,000 votes more than his nearest opponent. “When I come back to Washington,” Johnson had vowed, “I’m coming back as a Congressman.” Now, l

From his desk at the far end of the lowest arc, Lyndon Johnson watched the figures moving among the desks, coming up and down the center aisle, chatting together in the well. He watched which senators went over to other senators to chat with them—and which senators sat at their desks and let other senators come to them. He watched two senators talk

Such a system would require the application of constitutional guarantees to education.

But free and open debate had not made his dreams come true. Instead, politicians had crushed them. And now he was going to make sure that, with the exception of Al Smith and Belle Moskowitz, no one—not citizenry, not press, not Legislature—was going to know what was in the bills dealing with parks that the Legislature was going to pass. The best bi

But both courts and Legislature understood the situation; before both courts and Legislature, Moses stood stripped of all defenses and, it seemed in February 1925, both courts and Legislature would now step in and rectify the situation, the courts by affording redress to the individuals injured by his actions, the Legislature by insuring that he ne