“He was smiling and deferential,” Tommy Corcoran, a keen observer of the Washington scene, was to say of Johnson, “but hell, lots of guys can be smiling and deferential. He had something else. No matter what someone thought, Lyndon would agree with him—would be there ahead of him, in fact. He could follow someone’s mind around—and figure out where it was going and beat it there.…” And he touched every base; leaving a bureaucrat’s office, he smiled and chatted with his assistants and his secretaries until, soon, he had entire bureaus, top to bottom, willing to help
