"Horace Busby was one of LBJ's most trusted advisers. In The Thirty-first of March he offers an indelible portrait of a president and a presidency at a time of crisis, spanning twenty years of a close working and personal relationship between the two men." "It was Busby's job to "put a little Churchill in it" whenever Johnson wanted to heighten his oratorical effects, and his skill as a speechwriter earned him a position of respect on Johnson's staff from the earliest days of LBJ's career as a congressman in Texas to the twilight of his presidency. From the aftereffects of the Kennedy assassination, when Busby was asked by the newly sworn-in president to sit by his bedside during his first troubled nights in office, to the concerns that defined the Great Society - civil rights, the economy, social legislation, housing, and the Vietnam War - Busby not only articulated and refined Johnson's political thinking, he also helped shape the most ambitious, far-reaching legislative agenda since FDR's New Deal." "Here is Johnson the politician, Johnson the schemer, Johnson advising against JFK's choice of an open limousine that fateful day in Dallas, Johnson playing host to "little Mrs. Kennedy" and Dwight D. Eisenhower - and Johnson the father, sickened by the deaths of young men fighting in Vietnam on his orders. A unique perspective on the inner sanctum of Johnson's presidency, The Thirty-first of March is a tantalizing account of both a man and his final days as president."--Jacket.

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