When Lyndon Johnson came to believe in something, […] he came to believe in it totally, with absolute conviction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter, came to believe in it so absolutely that, George Reedy says, “I believe that he acted out of pure motives regardless of their origins. He had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held the principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the air of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who brought forth evidence that he had held other views in the past. It was not an act…. He had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the ‘truth’ which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies. He literally willed what was in his mind to become reality.”

Robert Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, New York, 2002, ch. 37