Browsing by Subject "Senate Seniority System Overhaul"
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Item Glory's Prized Caress: Grand Strategy, Greatness, and the Political Life in the Career of Lyndon Johnson(2021-05) Khan, Shaheer; Stauffer, DevinIn this thesis, Shaheer Khan studies Lyndon Baines Johnson with a novel interdisciplinary framework. The originality of this approach consists of a synthesis of political philosophy and strategic studies. Political philosophy is a field that helps articulate (1) the ambitions that drove Johnson’s aspirations to leadership and (2) what shaped his behavior once he was a leader. Strategic studies supplies a powerful lens with which to uncover the sources of Johnson’s power as well as explaining its limitations. This synthetic framework is applied to a variety of situations: Johnson’s engineering of the Senate seniority system overhaul after the 1952 elections that eventually led him to becoming the most powerful Senate Majority Leader in history; his attempt to somehow escape the agonizing dilemma of Vietnam; his glorious vision for the Great Society that tried to fundamentally transform America for decades to come; and a wide ranging comparative assessment of Johnson to other leaders (including Ataturk, Jinnah, JFK, and Reagan). The value of this approach is that it allows multiple insights to be unlocked regarding strategy, ambition, and the conditions for political success (or failure). The ultimate aim is to illuminate what is necessary for the formation and actualization of effective leadership in modern times.