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Cowboy Mythology In National Politics: The Pre-Presidential Political Career Of Lyndon Johnson, Alyson Bujnoski

Senior Independent Study Theses

Lyndon Johnson represents an important shift in politics towards a strategy involving the conscious manipulation of imagery to achieve both local, statewide, and national electoral appeal. Most historians argue that Johnson's conscious and overt manipulation of cowboy and western mythology began after his election to the Senate in November of 1948. Using a close analysis of Johnson's pre-Presidential speeches, this work explores the ways in which Johnson began to manipulate frontier myth as early as in his election to the House of Representatives in 1937.