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aiteGcet, John B. Mills, Chairman of the Board Cecil Mills, President ASSOCIATED FEDERAL HOTELS LA CONCHASAN JUAN WESTWARD HOPHOENIX ARKING included with thiti2oktoacoW Enjoy Luxury at The GUNTER… Inexpensively Downtownsteps from all shopping, entertainment and all activities. Motor Lobby. Fine food around the. clock. 550 rooms with bath, air conditioning. Finest Convention Facilities for groups large or small. \(741k..j, -tiriter 1-1 c T E L, diave At# Lez, Te,zaz’PeariA0-a,nct ROBERT DRISCOLL I-lc:Y=1, THE 300 Air-Conditioned Rooms,’ Dining Room and all hotel facilities. Drive-In Entrance. Beautiful Swimming Pool and Cabanas. Yours for a Perfect Vacation! and Novak, it seems to me, needlessly hurt their book by putting down the Senate whose pressure, scholarship, and integrity mediators like Johnson would have been mediating between retrogression and nothing. Like most of the rest of the national press, Evang and Novak were mesmerized by Johnson’s magicianship. For instance, they relegate to a footnote the fact that the 1957 civil rights bill on voting, about which they establish that Johnson met Sen. Richard Russell’s terms, “was totally inadequate as a protection of the Southern Negro’s right to vote.” That this ‘should be a minor detail, a mere footnote, in a chapter entitled “The Miracle of ’57” and containing the authors’ remark that “the magnitude of Johnson’s performance transcended the details of the legislation” characterizes as clearly as anything the razzle-dazzle and the emptiness of Johnson’s majority leadership. T MUST BE INSISTED, such demurrers entered, that this is the best book on Johnson yet published, first, because Evans and Novak have organized it on the theme that Johnson is a power seeker and that his career is made understandable by this pervading insight, and second, because they reveal him as he has been in his private political relationships in Washington. They develop stories indicating, for instance, not only that Johnson was trying to become vice-president in 1952 \(as well, of course, as presiing he could not win the 1960 nomination, “the nomination for Vice-President was his secret goal.” They recount that’ when Cong. Joe Kilgore, flabbergasted that Johnson took the nomination for the vicepresidency, called Walter Jenkins about it, Jenkins told Kilgore, “This is what we’ve been waiting for all this time.” Obviously not telling all they know, Evans and Novak state that when Robert Kennedy suggested to Johnson that he might choose not to be the vice-presidential nominee, Johnson “indicated that he wanted very, very, very strongly to go on the ticket.” The authors tell in vivid detail of Johnson’s abstention from responsibility as vice-president, his feverish courting of Kennedy aides to stay on with him as President \(most of them now have eased economic and racial liberalism as the new President in 1964 and early 1965. The richness of this work anecdotally .can also be illustrated by some of Evans and Novak’s contributions to Texans’ understanding of their own politics. They for example report that: “[John] Connally shed his old Democratic loyalty in 1952 to support Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower for President.” \(This is at page 19; but at page 232, they write, “Connally . . . had refused to back Stevenson in 1952 and was thought to have voted for Eisenhower, though he made no public commitment.” In 1952, Johnson asked Gov. Allan Shivers if he would hurt himself introducing Adlai. Stevenson, and Shivers told him he had to do anything within reason Stevenson asked him to do in Texas. “Well, continued Johnson, would Shivers ‘protect’ him if Texas conservatives criticized him for his proximity to Stevenson? Shivers said: Yes, Lyndon, I’ll protect you.” In 1956, “Johnson and Shivers tentatively agreed on” Cong. Kilgore for Democratic national committeeman from Texas, but Speaker Sam Rayburn vetoed Kilgore because he had voted for Eisenhower in 1952. “Johnson deserted his liberal allies of the spring convention [in 1956] and lined up with Price Daniel . . . and the outgoing Shivers conservatives to humiliate Mrs. [R. D.] Randolph and the liberals. . . . Johnson had advised Daniel’s managers not to issue an invitation to Mrs. Randolph, the National Committeewoman, to attend the September Governor’s Convention.” Concerning the Johnson campaign’s tactic in 1960 of implying John Kennedy’s health was dangerously poor, “Johnson himself had no part in planning the smear campaign, but that did not stop his high command, led by John Connally.” Robert Kennedy vetoed Johnson’s nomination of Sarah T. Hughes for the federal bench solely because of her age, but she got the appointment after Rayburn told Robert Kennedy, concerning an anti-crime bill the attorney general wanted passed, “That bill of yours will pass as soon as Sarah Hughes becomes a federal judge.” Jerry Holleman, Texas AFL-CIO presi dent, was brought to Washington as assistant secretary of labor, Evans and Novak report, \( regrettably not giving their source, which in this instance would be sent but not at his recommendation.” After Holleman took the blame for a $1,000 contribution from Billy Sol Estes, thus having to leave the labor department and the President’s Equal Employment Committee, Johnson moved “gradualists” into the committee’s staff in place of the liberal activists Holleman had installed there. During the period when Johnson was discouraged by reports he might be dropped from the ticket in 1964, Bobby Baker suggested to Johnson that “perhaps he should run for the Senate in 1964 against Ralph Yarborough and spare himself another four years of frustration.” When, early in 1964, Johnson sided with Yarborough against Kilgore for senator, “Lady Bird Johnson was deeply upset to see her husband aligned against his old friend [Kilgore] and made her views known inside the White House. But Bill Moyers and other presidential assistants argued that Johnson simply could not afford to take part in a right-wing purge of Yarborough. The repercussions would be national and nasty.” During the 1964 campaign, a constant stream of advice poured into the White House from Connally. “His recommendation was clear. Johnson should sit tight in November 25, 1966 9