Lyndon B. Johnson: Box 13, the Johnson Treatment, and the Great Society

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Lyndon B. Johnson was born in 1908 in a farmhouse on the Pedernales River in Texas and went without a first name for three months while his parents argued over it. Arriving in Washington in 1931 as secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg, he effectively ran the office and took over the Little Congress, a club for congressional aides, by organizing mailroom clerks, elevator operators and typists into a voting bloc and calling a snap election. In the 1948 Texas Democratic Senate primary he won by 87 votes amid allegations about Box 13 in Jim Wells County, where late ballots were reportedly added in alphabetical order in the same handwriting, earning him the nickname Landslide Lyndon.

In the Senate he rose quickly to majority whip and leader, cultivating Georgia's Richard Russell and using the Johnson treatment of flattery, pressure and physical closeness to win votes. After losing the 1960 nomination to John F. Kennedy he became a sidelined vice president, then took the oath aboard Air Force One after the 1963 assassination, sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, won a landslide that year, and launched the Great Society, while escalation in Vietnam produced a credibility gap, inflation and unrest. He withdrew from the 1968 race and died four years after leaving office.

• His mother insisted on the spelling L-Y-N-D-O-N when he was finally named after a local county lawyer.
• He branded his world with the initials LBJ, from Lady Bird and daughters Lynda and Luci to his dog Little Beagle Johnson.
• A scandal involving protege Bobby Baker fed 1963 rumors that Kennedy might drop him from the ticket.
• After signing the Civil Rights Act he told aide Bill Moyers the South would be lost to Democrats for a generation.
• On the flight home in January 1969 he lit his first cigarette since his 1955 heart attack.