Whatever else he is, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is no Lyndon Johnson. If he were—if he had but a tenth of the personal force and political will L.B.J. had during his years in the Senate—the country already would have health-care legislation on the books. If history has judged Johnson a colossal failure as president for his escalation of the Vietnam War, his record and accomplishments in the Senate during the 1950s stand unbroken and unbowed. Johnson was, to use the words of his Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, Robert A. Caro, the “Master of the Senate” and by now he would have corralled all of the Senate’s Blue Dogs into some sort of kennel. L.B.J. would have cornered Sen. Ben Nelson (D-ne) on the couch in the Senate cloakroom. Around the back of the couch Johnson’s long arm would go and...
- 8/18/2009
- Vanity Fair
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