and he learned that when Johnson gave an assignment, no excuses were accepted. “He used to say, ‘I want only can do people.’ That was one of his favo… - Robert A. Caro

It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. (…) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow’s argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining.

He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood,” one student had said. “He was only interested in himself and what could help himself.” The feeling in Washington was the same.

Russell called the move “a lynching of orderly procedure in the Senate.” Johnson’s angry response — that “this was the only kind of lynching he had ever heard Russell object to” — was blurted out only in private,