Season 4

LBJ's public career began in 1938 with his election to Congress, placing him among the youngest congressmen in history. He advanced to the Senate in 1948 amid lingering suspicions, winning by a razor-thin margin of 87 votes. When the Democrats seized control of the Senate in 1954, he became the youngest Senate majority leader ever at age 46. In 1957, he engineered passage of the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, but the bill carried numerous compromises and lacked teeth. By 1960, LBJ believed he was ready for the presidency, but John Kennedy arrived there first and subsequently selected LBJ as his vice president.