(I know what the schedule says, but I didn’t finish chapter 13 yet; sorry!)

We are only a fraction of the way through The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and all the major themes of the series have now been established, including, I can only assume, the yet unpublished volumes.

Lyndon Johnson is lazy and petulant, but will pull himself together when it’s really necessary, when he has to teach for a year in Cotulla to have any hope of advancement or when he has his first serious health scare: “Once Lyndon Johnson fully understood the reality of his circumstances, he wouldn’t go on fighting them” (but not a moment before?).

Lyndon Johnson craves power beyond all else, even when he doesn’t really know what to do with it. This is true at Southwest Texas State Teachers College and it will, to some extent, be true in the House of Representatives and the Senate: “He had won believing in nothing—without a reform he wanted to make, without a principle or issue about which he truly cared.” Even when he finally has complete control over student politics at San Marcos, money-obsessed Lyndon Johnson will not give himself one of the best political jobs because they are too valuable as a political tool.

To attain power, Lyndon Johnson will often create it where none existed. He invented student politics at San Marcos, to no particular end beyond his own career: “If he hadn’t done the politicking and maneuvering, he couldn’t have been outstanding,” Edward Puis tells us.

Lyndon Johnson will steal elections.

Lyndon Johnson will relentlessly kiss the asses of more powerful men—Prexy Evans, Sam Rayburn, FDR, Richard Russell—and play the “professional son” to achieve his ends.

Lyndon Johnson will only have attained power when he has complete control over an institution.

It was a pretty vicious operation for a while. They lost everything I could have them lose. It was my first real big dictat——Hitlerized—operation, and I broke their back good. And it stayed broke for a good long time.

In my reading only Johnson’s liberalism is less than fully established at this point, even after the year in Cotulla. Did I miss anything?