Robert Caro is stuck on Lyndon Johnson. For at least 40 years, the oft-honored historian has been researching and writing a definitive biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
In 1974, Caro published an award-winning biography of Robert Moses, the titan who almost singlehandedly designed the infrastructure which today allows New Yorkers to move about their densely packed city. He turned his sights next to the 36th president of the US, a man whose life and times seemed to embody so many themes of our country in the mid-twentieth century, from 1925-75. I suppose Caro thought he could crank this out in a few years, as he had with Moses.
But somewhere along the way to his first volume, of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (The Path to Power), he must have realized he needed both more space and time; he predicted he would be finished in 3 volumes. Now, with the 4th, The Passage of Power, he takes us to early 1964, ending with Johnson’s signing of that year’s landmark civil rights legislation, which finally opened public accommodations such as trains, buses, restaurants, hotels, and even water fountains and restrooms, equally to all Americans. Caro hopes to finish with one more gigantic effort, taking us to the end of Johnson’s administration, focusing on Medicare and the Vietnam War. Good luck, I say.
When I first read excerpts from The Path to Power, in the late 70s/early 80s, in The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, I was mesmerized by the tale of Johnson as a youth, growing up in the Hill Country west of Austin. Despite living in Johnson City, Lyndon’s family had fallen on hard times after his father, Sam, lost not only his state legislative seat, but also the family ranch. Johnson clawed his way into a local state teachers’ college, and from there into politics, finally succeeding in winning a seat in the US House after knocking on seemingly every single door in his district. And once in office, he spent most of his time responding to constituent concerns, attempting to build a solid base so he would never have to worry about re-election.
He also began honing two key precocious and preternatural skills. He could be devastatingly persuasive one-on-one, never afraid to use both a carrot and a stick to bend men to his will. And, he unhesitatingly earned avuncular or even paternal interest from powerful older men, starting with Sam Rayburn, the legendary Speaker from Texas, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Caro’s skills as a biographer are uncanny. Apparently, he talked to almost everyone who was still alive, and had ever spent time with Johnson. Since he started this work in the early 70’s, he had a chance to get close to people who had grown up with LBJ, who had watched him as he stole his first election, for Student Body President at his college, and of course all the subsequent aides, colleagues, journalists, and others who had any knowledge of the detailed inner workings of the man’s life. From there, Caro read everything he could, both public and private documents. As public papers and transcriptions were released, he studied those as well. Next, instead of simply trying to write a chronological summary of Johnson’s activities, Caro has chosen to first identify the main themes and personality traits driving LBJ’s life and career, and then weave a series of vignettes, which include not only Johnson’s life, but also the world in which he lived. So we see the poverty of the Mexican Americans and blacks where he grew up. We learn about the inner workings and parliamentary maneuverings of the Senate, the intricate arcana of New Deal programs, the nature of combat missions over the South Pacific in WW II (where Johnson spent 15 minutes total in a plane under fire), and anything else which touched on the grand canvas of Johnson’s life.
But finally – and this is the reason why you should read this book – the man can write. He can deftly provide a detailed character sketch in a word or a phrase, he can summon up a clear mental picture of Johnson’s thought and personality through the detailed descriptions of meetings and events, provided by others (and a few interviews with the man himself before his death), and, bottom line, he knows how to tell a story. The book is simply a page-turner. I don’t know of any other author who could get me to breathlessly stay with him for 50 pages while he tells the story of Thursday, July 14th, the day Kennedy selected Johnson as his Vice-President. In excruciating detail, from a variety of contemporary perspectives, Caro lays out the intrigue among LBJ, JFK, Robert Kennedy, Kennedy’s aides, and the key Democratic constituencies, the “liberals” (such as Hubert Humphrey), the labor unions, and others. It’s done as dramatically as any political thriller, except that it’s all real, and we know the actors so well from their other roles in history.
This volume, which includes that “back stairs” drama, covers the time from 1958 through early 1964, when Johnson campaigned for, then lost the Democratic presidential nomination, became vice-president and thus a forgotten man (after his triumphal years as Senate Majority Leader, detailed in the third volume), and is finally, suddenly and violently, thrust into the most visible and powerful role on earth within a few hours on a sunny Dallas day. (Caro devotes 3 chapters and 70 pages to that day alone.) The rest of the book, Caro documents how Johnson, who despite his consummate skill as a legislator who could get things done, had been shut out of the inner power corridors of the White House for three years. Then, after becoming president, he was able within the space of six weeks to negotiate not only the delicate transition into power while the nation was in shock, but also, to accomplish what the Kennedy team had not been able to do in nearly 3 years, getting a tax cut and key civil rights legislation passed.
Caro, throughout his work, never spares the truth about Johnson as a man and a politician. The second volume, Means of Ascent, includes as its centerpiece, devastating background and detail about how votes were fabricated in the 1948 Texas Senatorial election, enough votes to provide the barest of winning margins to Johnson, who subsequently became disparagingly known as “Landslide Lyndon”.
In this fourth volume, Caro documents the quite probably illegal means used by Johnson to grow his fortune, primarily by suspect campaign contributions and trading political favors for purchase of ads on his TV and radio stations (which were also obtained under questionable circumstances.) And those of us of a certain age remember the name “Bobby Baker”, a key aide to Johnson, who became embroiled in a whole series of cash for favors scandals, the Jack Abramoff of his day. Except he worked for the Majority Leader/Vice-President.
Unlike most biographies of historically important figures, Caro provides not only the facts of LBJ’s life, but also enough emotional and personal context to produce a human picture of the man. Within the first few chapters of the first volume, I could see the man breathing, hear him thinking, watch him sweat, and follow his eyebrows as he schemed and cajoled his way through the halls of power in Washington DC.
One of the more enlightening scenes, though, reveals the best side of Lyndon Baines Johnson. As a Texan, an unlettered one at that, someone whom the Harvard grads of the Kennedy administration gave the nickname, “Cornpone”, one imagines he would have stood steadfast with the other Dixiecrats in keeping Jim Crow laws in place. And for many years, he did just that in the Senate. But once he became President, and sat down with those same aides in the first weeks after JFK’s death, the question of the proposed civil rights legislation was presented to him. All advised him not to proceed, that the power of the South in the Senate would never let it pass. Johnson, who knew more than anyone how to turn that power against itself, nonetheless pressed on to get that bill’s passage, in a complex chess game of legislative mastery. He had never forgotten the poverty he came from, and the discrimination he saw among the young Hispanic students in his first job as a teacher in a rural school district. When asked why he was so adamant about this, he said, “Well, hell, if we can’t do this, then what’s the Presidency for, anyway?” This scene foreshadows the even more audacious work he did in the next two years, gaining passage of Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, and kick starting the War on Poverty. Caro reminds us that LBJ was not only the man who escalated the war in Vietnam, but also the man who arguably did as much or more than anyone since Lincoln to provide inclusion in the fruits of America for all its citizens, and as much as anyone since FDR to provide economic safety and security for Americans at risk.
The best part of this book, should you take my advice and read it, is that you don’t need to slog through the first three volumes. Caro provides enough recursion to past episodes, and repeats enough key quotes and concepts, that a complete picture emerges, not just a snapshot of the 5 years covered here. As someone who grew up in the sixties, and may very well have chanted, “Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” I never could have imagined that someone would write a book which could make me want to follow the course of that man’s life. But Robert Caro turned that trick.