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Joey
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Re: The New and Improved Joey? thread
Reply #7704 - Jul 23rd, 2012 at 7:36am
" And tangled with and complicating the time factor -- and every other factor associated with the transition ; looming over every aspect of Johnson's ascension to the Presidency -- was one that made the ascension uniquely difficult , a complication that was not out of the new age but seemed rather as if it were out of an age long past , a complication that required to plumb its depths not a Reston but a Shakespeare . The President , the King , was dead , murdered , but the King had a brother , a brother who hated the new King . The dead King's men -- the Kennedy men , the Camelot men -- made up , in Shakespearean terms , a faction . And it was a faction that had a leader . An election was coming in less than a year , and a convention in nine months , but due to the faction and the brother , these were not the crucial dates . Because if the King's faction , and the King's brother , decided to contest Lyndon Johnson's right to the nomination , the crucial date would be the first of the party primaries which preceded the convention -- the New Hampshire Primary , on March 10th , less than four months off . Unprecedented shock and grief , and anxiety ; unprecedented danger to America and the human race . Unprecedented time pressure , and problems with staff and Cabinet made uniquely difficult by the brother factor . Even Truman's transition problems , Neustadt was to conclude , had been ' easier ' than Johnson's . " Johnson's situation was extreme . " Although seven Vice Presidents before him had suddenly been thrust into the White House by the President's death , Johnson's situation -- the problems that confronted him , and that would confront America should he fail to solve them -- were indeed in many ways without parallel in the transitions that had come before his . " 
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The New and Improved Joey? thread (Read 2,355,359 times)
