otherwise, in a state in which not a few isolated rural precincts were
“for sale,” beating it would be all too easy. With a steadily widening lead feeding his overconfidence, Johnson had loftily told the South Texas bosses they could report their vote whenever they pleased. They reported immediately, and late that evening, even as headlines were proclaiming his victory and his supporters were parading him on their shoulders in triumph as he whooped and shouted in wild celebration,
O’Daniel’s strategists were making quiet arrangements. The next day, sitting at a telephone with his face turning ashen at the news, Lyndon Johnson found out that he had not won but lost. After ten years of victories, in this, his most important campaign, there was not victory but defeat.
Now Johnson had to go back to Washington, had to go back not as the youngest Senator, not as perhaps the brightest star in the new galaxy that in 1941 was rising over the political horizon, but as merely the Congressman he had been before. He had had the aura of the winner. Now he was going back a loser. So going back was hard.
And going back was made harder by the unusually powerful hereditary strain, famous in the TexasHill Country, that ran through Lyndon Johnson’s family, the Buntons. Generation after generation, the “Bunton strain” had produced dark-haired men well over six feet tall, all of whomhad strikingly similar, and dramatic, features: a long nose that jutted far out of the face, a sharp jaw that
jutted almost as far, huge ears with very long lobes. Their eyes, vividly set off by milky, “magnolia white” skin, were so dark a brown that they seemed black, so bright that they glittered, so piercing that they often appeared to be glaring. And the “Bunton eye” was no better known for its fierceness than were the Bunton pride and ambition: the phrases that Hill Country ranchers used about young Lyndon—that something “born in him,”
bred in him, “demanded” that he always be “in the forefront,” “at the head of the ring”—were the same phrases that had been used about his forebears. Buntons possessed also a “commanding presence” and an “eloquent tongue” that led them to try, at an early age, to realize their ambition through politics. Lyndon Johnson, born on August 27, 1908, had been elected to Congress at the age of twenty-eight, the same
age at which his grandfather had won
his
first elective office; Johnson’s father had won his at twenty-seven. And going back was hard in part because of the poignant circumstances of Lyndon Johnson’s youth. When he was thirteen, his father’s sudden financial failure had hurled his family, in what seemed like an instant, from a respected position in the isolated little town of Johnson City to what Lyndon was to call “the bottom of the heap.”
The boy was condemned to live out the remainderof his youth in a continual insecurity that made him dread, month after month, that his family would lose the modest home that was all they possessed. Where once he had been able to charge more in stores than other children, now he could charge nothing at all, and had to stand watching while his friends bought candy because their parents had credit. The boy who, in the words of his favorite cousin, Ava Johnson, who
grew up with him and loved him, “had to be the leader in everything he did, just
had
to, just could not
stand
not to be, had to win,” was now the son of a man who “owed everybody in town,” a member of a family held in contempt. He heard his father’s acquaintances whisper as he passed on the street, “He’ll never amount to anything. Too much like Sam.” And going back was hard
because the insecurity and humiliation aggravated the already powerful inherited strain that formed the base of his complex personality: he had to “be somebody,” he had to be successful and appear successful; he had to win and be perceived as a winner. It was the
“for sale,” beating it would be all too easy. With a steadily widening lead feeding his overconfidence, Johnson had loftily told the South Texas bosses they could report their vote whenever they pleased. They reported immediately, and late that evening, even as headlines were proclaiming his victory and his supporters were parading him on their shoulders in triumph as he whooped and shouted in wild celebration,
O’Daniel’s strategists were making quiet arrangements. The next day, sitting at a telephone with his face turning ashen at the news, Lyndon Johnson found out that he had not won but lost. After ten years of victories, in this, his most important campaign, there was not victory but defeat.
Now Johnson had to go back to Washington, had to go back not as the youngest Senator, not as perhaps the brightest star in the new galaxy that in 1941 was rising over the political horizon, but as merely the Congressman he had been before. He had had the aura of the winner. Now he was going back a loser. So going back was hard.
And going back was made harder by the unusually powerful hereditary strain, famous in the TexasHill Country, that ran through Lyndon Johnson’s family, the Buntons. Generation after generation, the “Bunton strain” had produced dark-haired men well over six feet tall, all of whomhad strikingly similar, and dramatic, features: a long nose that jutted far out of the face, a sharp jaw that
jutted almost as far, huge ears with very long lobes. Their eyes, vividly set off by milky, “magnolia white” skin, were so dark a brown that they seemed black, so bright that they glittered, so piercing that they often appeared to be glaring. And the “Bunton eye” was no better known for its fierceness than were the Bunton pride and ambition: the phrases that Hill Country ranchers used about young Lyndon—that something “born in him,”
bred in him, “demanded” that he always be “in the forefront,” “at the head of the ring”—were the same phrases that had been used about his forebears. Buntons possessed also a “commanding presence” and an “eloquent tongue” that led them to try, at an early age, to realize their ambition through politics. Lyndon Johnson, born on August 27, 1908, had been elected to Congress at the age of twenty-eight, the same
age at which his grandfather had won
his
first elective office; Johnson’s father had won his at twenty-seven. And going back was hard in part because of the poignant circumstances of Lyndon Johnson’s youth. When he was thirteen, his father’s sudden financial failure had hurled his family, in what seemed like an instant, from a respected position in the isolated little town of Johnson City to what Lyndon was to call “the bottom of the heap.”
The boy was condemned to live out the remainderof his youth in a continual insecurity that made him dread, month after month, that his family would lose the modest home that was all they possessed. Where once he had been able to charge more in stores than other children, now he could charge nothing at all, and had to stand watching while his friends bought candy because their parents had credit. The boy who, in the words of his favorite cousin, Ava Johnson, who
grew up with him and loved him, “had to be the leader in everything he did, just
had
to, just could not
stand
not to be, had to win,” was now the son of a man who “owed everybody in town,” a member of a family held in contempt. He heard his father’s acquaintances whisper as he passed on the street, “He’ll never amount to anything. Too much like Sam.” And going back was hard
because the insecurity and humiliation aggravated the already powerful inherited strain that formed the base of his complex personality: he had to “be somebody,” he had to be successful and appear successful; he had to win and be perceived as a winner. It was the
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