does "the slain president's successor"mean LBJ? what does "thrust into the background"mean? Even Lyndon Johnson was discordant. One surveyor of feeling among college students found that many reported "an immediate reaction of resentment against Johnson, partly because of his Texas background, partly because he seemed ('irrationally,' the students acknowledged) to be somehow usurping the presidential role." The transition was accepted in the way an unpleasant cathartic is accepted. Americans had learned the facts of succession—or, more precisely, the accepted version of those facts—as schoolchildren. They knew the thing had to be done, and were reconciled to it. But they didn't want to think about it. The slain President's successor was thrust into the background, behind his widow, his children, his parents, his brothers and sisters, and his chief aides, all of whom were more familiar than his relatively colorless Vice President.