Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #2)

by Robert A. Caro

That tarnishing revolutionized politics and government in the United States. The shredding of the delicate yet crucial fabric of credence and faith between the people of the United States and the man they had placed in the White House occurred during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Until the day of Kennedy’s death—until, in other words, the day Johnson took office—the fabric was whole. By the time Johnson left office, the fabric was in shreds, destroyed by lies and duplicity that went beyond permissible political license, destroyed so thoroughly that Wicker could write that “The tragic irony of Lyndon Johnson is that the lowering of the presidency, not the Great Society of which he dreamed, is his most obvious legacy.”