In all the spade work I’d done over three months, this wasn’t anything I’d given any thought to nor addressed in any of my vetting memos. And yet I sensed he was on to something far more important than Gore’s views on the MX missile or noxious greenhouse gases. Looking back on my firsthand campaign experience with Gore, it occurred to me that I couldn’t recall a Billy Shore or a Warren Beatty around. And there certainly wasn’t the gaggle of friends like I’d seen already on the Clinton campaign—the famous “Friends of Bill”—who had rescued the rocky candidate during the New Hampshire primary by traveling to the state to personally reassure skittish voters of his character and integrity. Their continued efforts afterward were a key reason Clinton cited for his success in securing the nomination. Gore was different, but I wouldn’t say he was friendless. He certainly was friendly, as smart and earnest a politician as any I had dealt with in my nascent political career. Harry, however, couldn’t get past it, drawing on the years he had worked closely with LBJ. He had come to understand and value the importance of having a First Friend—and of not having one. On a daily basis, Johnson manifested the power of personality as central to the effective functioning of the presidency. No one could cajole, flatter, berate, or bludgeon another into capitulation as well as Lyndon Johnson. Using his hulking frame almost as a weapon, he would hover over his prey, lean in, and, alternating between whispers and shouts, eventually get his way.