Every hungry person would be fed, every ignorant child educated, every jobless man employed. —LYNDON JOHNSON Love Field Dallas November 22, 1963 Blood was everywhere. The dark, red liquid stained his waking thoughts and haunted him when he closed his eyes. It decorated the leather interior of the limousine that sped toward Parkland Memorial. It was on the gurney that carried his shattered friend. And it was splattered over the pink dress of the dazed woman who stood beside him. It was a baptism by blood. Like the state he loved, Lyndon Baines Johnson was large and imposing. His head, his ears, his hands, his voice—they all seemed to overwhelm those around him, traits that helped him make deals with timid, cowering colleagues. But now, in the two hours since he’d first heard those loud pops, the new president of the United States tried his very best to be small. At 2:28 P.M., aboard a hot and crowded compartment on Air Force One, Johnson raised his massive right hand, placed the other on a Bible, and swore “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
