Lady Bird, we hardly knew ye.
We knew Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson as the long-suffering wife of the 36th president, the graceful presence in a White House led by a man of force and fury, the advocate of highway beautification, the curator of wildflowers. But we did not know her as a shrewd political analyst, a canny strategist, the sharp eyes of an administration that, for all its farsightedness on poverty and race, was blind to protest and shortsighted about Cold War strife.
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