Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro Page B

your boys, helping to do that fighting.” He promised that “If Hitler makes this an all-out war, I shall vote in the Senate for war.… And when I cast my vote I shall tear up my draft number and join the boys picked to defend our homes and our God and our liberties. I shall never vote for war and then hide behind a Senate seat where bullets cannot reach me.” The promise to be “in the
     trenches” became almost the theme of his campaign. Printed on postcards, under the headline “ WE NEED COURAGE LIKE THIS ,” it was mailed to hundreds of thousands of Texans. Gearing up for the next campaign, he constantly referred to it; when a reporter asked if he would run in the July, 1942, primary, he said, “I may be scrubbing the deck of a battleship by next July.”
     And newspapers kept referring to it, too, friendly newspapers approvingly, hostile newspapers with considerably more skepticism, particularly in theHill Country, where Lyndon Johnson’s boyhoodand college acquaintances recalled instances—notable, in that rough society—of his physical cowardice. When, on October 7, 1941, Johnson stated that Roosevelt’s issuance of his “shoot-on-sight”
     order—authorizing American warships to fire on German submarines—meant that “the United States isalready in that war,” ColonelAlfred Petsch, publisher of the Hill Country’s largest newspaper, the
Fredericksburg Standard
, which circulated in Johnson’s own Pedernales Valley, noted that when the Congressman had originally made his pledge, “a number of
     persons … sarcastically characterized Mr. Johnson’s fighting intentions,” and added, in thinly veiled sarcasm of his own, that it was now time for the pledge to be redeemed:
    we still believe that Lyndon Johnson meant what he said during the campaign. We are confident that by his declaration of “being in the front lines, in the mud,” he meant just that; and that his army service would not find him dressed in shining boots and spurs, reclining in an easy chair behind a desk “nowhere near” the front.…
    The war being now at hand, according to Mr. Johnson’s own declaration, his conduct will demonstrate to his critics and defenders what his campaign promise is worth.… So we feel certain that Congressman Johnson will soon be an enrollee in the United States draft forces.… We believe the Congressman will live up to his often repeated promises. But of course we may be wrong and the Congressman’s disparagers may be right.
     It is up to Congressman Lyndon Johnson whether or not he will live up to his promise.…
    Nor was the skepticism confined to the Hill Country. An editorial in the
San Antonio Light
asked Johnson to enlist “some time ago.”
    “Trenches,” of course, had never been a serious possibility, unless the United States Navy were to drastically alter its methods of operation, for Johnson had enrolled as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve about two years before. But after he had sat in the House on December 8, the day afterPearl Harbor, and heard Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech—in which the President told the nation,
     “Today all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by the overriding public danger”—he andWarren Magnuson, a fellow member of the HouseNaval Affairs Committee who was also a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve, went to the office of Admiral Chester Nimitz, a Hill Country native with whom both Congressmen were acquainted, and had Nimitz sign forms placing them onactive
     duty. That evening, Johnsonwrote Welly Hopkins, “When you get back to Washington, I may be ‘somewhere on the Pacific’ Who can tell?”
    One of the two young Lieutenant Commanders did indeed go to the Pacific. When the Navy balked at assigning a Congressman, and one with little training, to a ship heading into combat, Magnuson appealed to Naval Affairs Committee ChairmanCarl Vinson, who “requested” that the Navy do so, saying that it