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As a Congressman from 1937 to 1948, Johnson learned his politics from a couple of masters, Roosevelt and fellow Texan Sam Rayburn. Once, he wanted F.D.R.'s approval for an electrification project in his Tenth District, but found that every time he got into the oval office, Roosevelt dominated the conversation and waved him out before he had a chance to make his pitch. It is a technique that Johnson has since emulated with great success. In any case, Lyndon learned that Roosevelt was a sucker for photos of dams, brought along a batch of big glossy prints the next time he saw him. Sure enough, Roosevelt was entranced, picked up the phone while Johnson was still sitting there, and got the wheels moving. The resulting Pedernales Electric Cooperative became for a time the biggest in the nation, remains one of Johnson's proudest achievements.
Burning Bush. By the time he reached the Senate in 1948, after a run-off primary that he won by a bitterly disputed margin of 87 votes out of 988,295 cast, Johnson had polished his political talents to a high gloss. He was Democratic whip in two years, minority leader in four. When the G.O.P. lost both houses of Congress in the 1954 midterm election, he became, at 46, the youngest majority leader ever.
With his gift for compromise, his powers of persuasion, and his wizardry at counting noses-aided, from 1955 on, by ubiquitous little Senate Majority Secretary Bobby Baker-it was not long before Johnson was absolute monarch of the place. He was the most influential Democrat in the nation, stood second in power only to President Eisenhower. According to one of the gags current during that time, a Senate page asked a door attendant, "Have you seen Senator Johnson?" The reply: "I haven't seen anything but a burning bush."
Johnson, in short, became a sort of Washington institution. Part of the institution, of course, was Lady Bird, whom
Lyndon married less than three months after they first met. "I'm not the easiest man to live with," he admits, but Lady Bird has more than managed to live for three decades in the eye of the hurricane (they celebrated their 30th anniversary in November). Now 52, she is an extraordinarily versatile woman-wife, mother, business partner, campaigner, hostess-who can never utter the classic complaint of the American wife that her husband never tells her anything. Lyndon confides in her and admires her judgment enormously.
Inevitably, there was talk that Lyndon would one day be President-but he denied any such ambition. When, in 1960, he finally decided to go after the job, his Southern background proved his greatest handicap; no genuine Southerner had been elected to the White House since Zachary Taylor in 1848.*It was the geographical barrier that Jack Kennedy was talking about when he said, some time before his own nomination: "I know all the other candi dates pretty well, and I