“I wear the chain I forged in life,” Marley’s ghost admits to Ebenezer Scrooge. “I made it link by link.” During the early months of 1960, Lyndon Johnson was forging, link by link, his own chain, and it was a heavy one. “Humiliation” had always been what he most feared; during these months, again and again, through his own actions, he was bringing upon himself what he most feared.
