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Lyndon B. Johnson: Votes
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In 1941, Johnson entered another special election, this time for a Senate seat made vacant by a death. Texans were surprised by the campaign he launched by helicopter. Nearly every community watched the tall, smiling Johnson alight from his helicopter. In a bitter campaign Johnson lost by 1,311 votes to that bizarre political phenomenon Governor W. Lee ("Pass the Biscuits Pappy") O'Daniel.
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Democratic voters thought that Johnson had earned the support he received because of the deftness he had shown in enlarging Kennedy's constituency of four years earlier. Moreover, following so closely on the heels of the assassination, the victory may have revealed the voters' desire not to have another change of president so soon. Johnson took his triumph to mean that he had a blank check to go ahead with an extensive program of social legislation. The president concluded happily that the national unity he had asked for in the sad days of November 1963 had been achieved.
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The period from 1965 to 1967 saw Johnson at his peak. He achieved passage of a programme of social reform, dubbed the Great Society programme. Medicare was introduced, providing medical assistance to the elderly through the Social Security system. Extensive new programmes of federal aid to education, housing, and deprived areas were approved. The Voting Rights Act, providing for federal intervention to ensure black voting rights were enforced, was enacted in 1965. However, what looked like being one of the most successful and reforming presidencies of the twentieth century was soon in trouble.
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Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948 after he had captured the Democratic nomination by only 87 votes. He was 40 years old. He became the Senate Democratic leader in 1953. A heart attack in 1955 threatened to end his political career, but he recovered fully and resumed his duties.
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In leading a narrow majority, Johnson relied on his power of persuasion to keep the Democratic Conference united and round up additional votes among Republican senators. Reporters Rowland Evans and Robert Novak described the "Johnson Treatment" in their book Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (1966):
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