DEMOCRATS: A Man Who Takes His Time

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When Richard Kleberg, one of the owners of the fabled King Ranch, ran successfully for Congress, young Lyndon helped out in the campaign, went on to Washington as his secretary. He began to move swiftly and surely upward. He married Claudia Alta ("Lady Bird") Taylor, the pretty heiress of a Texas rancher, after an intensive, ten-week courtship. In 1938 Johnson won a seat in Congress, running on an all-out New Deal ticket (not a very popular stand in 1938) against nine more conservative opponents. Franklin Roosevelt, who was cruising in the Gulf at the time, invited the daring young man aboard the presidential yacht, liked his looks, and invited him to ride through Texas on the presidential train. It was the beginning of a fruitful friendship, and Johnson's political pace quickened. After ten years of grooming in the lower House (including seven months' duty as a World War II naval officer in the South Pacific), he was ready for the Senate, waged a threshing-machine campaign throughout Texas, and won by a suspicious 87-vote plurality out of a million ballots cast. He quickly impressed his elders with his finesse at getting things done, was minority leader before the end of his freshman term, and majority leader before his second term was well begun.

Princely Shades. When he steps into the Senate chamber, Lyndon Johnson walks with the assurance of a Bavarian landgrave stepping into his castle. Sitting slumped in his aisle seat, he can sense everything that is going on behind him without turning around. He is addicted to expensive suits, monogrammed silk shirts and solid-gold accessories, and at 51 he comes within a nose of being handsome. Johnson has redecorated the off-chamber office of the majority leader in princely shades of green and gold, and installed a lighting system that includes two overhead lamps that focus an impressive nimbus of golden light on his greying hair as he sits at his desk. In the Senate, Johnson is lord of all he surveys, and he knows it.