During twenty years of political alliance with Lyndon Johnson, Kilgore came to understand, he says, that Johnson could believe whatever he wanted to believe—could believe it with all his heart. “He could,” Kilgore says, in words that are echoed by the closest of Johnson’s associates, men like George Brown and John Connally and Edward Clark, “convince himself of anything, even something that wasn’t true.” It was that capacity of Lyndon Johnson’s that, when one assesses his influence on history, proves to be the single most significant implication of his war service.
