will feel, think, and do in the future, and powerful aids in explaining why. In the realm of politics, psychologists have recently demonstrated how fundamental features of human personality—such as extroversion and narcissism—shaped the distinctive leadership styles of past U.S. presidents, and the decisions they made.”
No one could accuse Johnson of neglecting himself. Early in All the Way, director Jay Roach (Trumbo, HBO’s Recount and Game Change) delivers a tour de force scene in which the president strides around the Oval Office like a king, dispatching various problems as his tailor trails after him.
“Not too tight in the bunghole, Manny,” the president cautions him. “Leave me some slack for my nutsack.” Johnson’s vulgarity is a way of dominating people; at one point he sits down on the toilet with the bathroom door open and summons a grimacing Humphrey over for a conference. (Naturally the encounter ends with a lightbulb moment in which LBJ figures out how to get his stalled legislation out of committee.) The president had to put his initials on everything around him, like a brand: Lady Bird Johnson, his daughters Lynda Bird Johnson and Luci Baines Johnson, even Little Beagle Johnson.
There’s no question that grandiose narcissists can be extraordinarily effective politicians. When Johnson gives legislators the treatment, he often calls up in them the same lust for greatness that he knows so well in himself. “We’re making history here, Everett,” he tells Sen. Dirksen of Illinois (Ray Wise), who controls the liberal Republican votes needed to compensate for the unreachable Dixiecrats. “You have to decide how you want history to remember you—as a great man, a man who changed the course of this country, or somebody who just liked to hear himself talk.” Americans today yearn for a leader who will use the presidency for what is right, and who will change the course of the country. Those are open questions where Donald Trump is concerned, though at this point we can all agree that he likes to hear himself talk.
