Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Light in the East. That birth was described in a family history written four years ago by Johnson's mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson...
...Daddy Told Me." Small imperfections can upset Johnson terribly. His Sanka is always hot-but never quite hot enough. His staff, the hardest-working and most efficient on Capitol Hill, may reply to letters from 600 Texas constituents in a single day, leaving only 45 unanswered. Cries Johnson: "There's 45 people who didn't get the service they deserve today." When host at his LBJ Ranch near Johnson City, Texas, he often serves hamburgers cut to the shape of Texas. But an unavoidable symmetrical flaw seems to bother him. "Eat the Panhandle first," he urges his guests...
...daddy told me," says Lyndon Johnson, "that if I didn't want to get shot at, I should stay off the firing lines. This is politics." But Johnson hates to get shot at. He spends hours each day devouring everything written about himself in Texas weeklies, in all the major U.S. newspapers and magazines, in the Manchester Guardian and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ("These men writing for foreign papers seem to understand me better than the men writing at home...
Pressing the Flesh. Yet Lyndon Johnson, who worries constantly about being misunderstood, understands others. He is a student of people from the moment of introduction, when he goes through a process he calls "pressing the flesh and looking them in the eye." Says he: "When you extend a handshake to a fellow, you can sort of feel his pulse and evaluate him by the way his hand feels. If it's warm and if it has a firm clasp, then you know that he is affectionate and that he is direct. And if he looks...
...Johnson's evaluation of people is paramount to his Senate leadership. The Senate presently has 49 Democrats (ranging from Harry Byrd conservatives to Hubert Humphrey liberals) and 47 Republicans (ranging from Bill Jenner reactionaries to Jack Javits liberals). A straight party-line vote is almost unheard-of, and it is up to Lyndon Johnson, in pursuit of his Democratic line, to piece together a winning combination from the Senate's vastly disparate elements. He does it by knowing each Senator as well as that Senator knows himself. "Sam Rayburn once told me that an effective leader must sense...