PLAYWRIGHT ROBERT SCHENKKAN sat directly behind House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last month when she attended his new Broadway play about President Lyndon Johnson. According to Schenkkan, she laughed at all the political jokes.

Pelosi brought members of the Democratic National Committee to the play, All the Way, as part of a conference in New York, but perhaps also to remind them of how a skillful practitioner of presidential power goes about it. In an email from her Washington office, Pelosi told me that the “theater of politics” that Schenkkan recreated depicted the “legislative virtuosity” Johnson drew upon to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. To read more, click here