In fact that’s the word that was sometimes used to me in Washington: Lyndon Johnson’s vote-counting ability was almost “supernatural.” Yet because of my trip to the Johnson Ranch with Ava, I felt that Lyndon Johnson’s genius for vote-counting was in some ways the very opposite of supernatural—that to some extent “natural” would be the best word to describe it. Rooted in nature. A product of the place, created in the place, that Lyndon Johnson was from: that Texas Hill Country. It was the Hill Country that taught him how terrible could be the consequences of a single mistake. When
