![]() presidential transitions had happened due to death rather than election, including three assassinations, no president had ever died so late in his term. history.Įverything changed on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Johnson’s challenge–assuming the office of president and running for reelection within the same year–was without precedent in U.S. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, Johnson was a member of the group convened to advise the president, but was excluded from the meeting at which the final decision about the American response was made. But Johnson’s influence was limited as vice president, as Kennedy’s advisers (especially his brother and attorney general Robert Kennedy) made sure to keep him on the sidelines. As a Protestant Southerner and the consummate insider in Congress, Johnson balanced the ticket, helping Kennedy capture Texas, Louisiana and the Carolinas in his narrow defeat of Richard Nixon. He was an outsider in the Kennedy White House.Īfter losing a bitter primary fight in 1960, Johnson shocked nearly everyone by signing on as running mate to Sen. In mid-1955, the 49-year-old suffered a severe heart attack he later described it as “the worst a man could have and still live.” Upon recovery, he quit smoking, lost weight and learned to delegate some responsibilities but he continued in tireless pursuit of his agendas, including civil rights and the U.S. ![]() Johnson excelled at forming the Senate Democrats into a united bloc, while charming, flattering and otherwise convincing colleagues from both sides of the aisle. In 1943, Johnson became Senate minority leader, and after Democrats regained control of the Senate two years later, he became majority leader. Johnson’s career took off in the Senate, but he almost died in the process. (At the time, there were so few Republicans in Texas that winning the primary basically meant getting elected.) In a race that was rife with voter fraud on both sides, Johnson won by a razor-thin margin, earning the derisive nickname “Landslide Lyndon.” 3. He tried again in 1948, squaring off against the popular Texas governor Coke Stevenson in the Democratic primary. Senate in another special election but lost. House of Representatives in 1937 when a congressman in his district died in office. Johnson worked hard and rose quickly, winning a special election to the U.S. Senate, Johnson won the Texas Democratic primary by just 87 votes, out of some 988,000 votes cast. Though Johnson would soon turn his attention to politics, heading to Washington as a congressional aide in 1931, his experience as a teacher left a lasting impression. During his time there, he taught in a largely Mexican-American school in the south Texas town of Cotulla, where he was known for his energy, dedication and encouragement of his underprivileged students. The young Johnson drifted for a few years after high school but enrolled at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1927. ![]() Though his father had served in the state legislature, he had lost money in cotton speculation, and the family often struggled to make ends meet. Johnson was born in 1908 in Stonewall, Texas, as the oldest of five children.
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