Seeing the huge, cheering crowd in which, Smathers recalls, “there had to be at least a thousand signs, ‘Kennedy/Johnson, Kennedy/Johnson.’ ” Smathers thought “we were doing great”—until Johnson “jumped like he was shot,” whirled on him, and said, “ ‘Look at that son of a bitch! Look at that sign there!’ There was one [unfavorable] sign! It wasn’t a foot high. There were thousands of signs, and that was the one he picked out. ‘Goddammit it! Look at that sign!’ I thought, this is the damndest fellow I had ever seen in my life, here we had all this, and all he could see was [that one sign]. But
...more
Ridiculously high standards
