fork and embarrassing him. And there was another dinner in Paris. Johnson decided, at the last minute, not to go. And Busby, who did go, recalled tha… - Robert A. Caro

To a staff member who, after talking with a senator, said he “thought” he knew which way the senator was going to vote, he snarled, “What the fuck good is thinking to me? Thinking isn’t good enough. Thinking is never good enough. I need to know!” Often, he didn’t know.

That campaign raises, in fact, one of the greatest issues invoked by the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson; the relationship between means and ends. Many of the ends of Lyndon Johnson’s life, civil rights, in particular, perhaps, but others too, were noble. Heroic advances in the cause of social justice....Those noble ends would not have been possible without the means, far from noble, that brought Johnson to power...To what extent are ends inseparable from means?

After he returned from Washington, Johnson came into Rowe’s room and said, “I agree with everything you said.” Perhaps he did agree — intellectually. But he didn’t take the advice. He couldn’t. He was beyond listening to warnings, as was demonstrated the next day, when the convention opened.