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Because my local library has both I - "The Path to Power" - and III - "Master of the Senate", but not II - "Means of Ascent". Nonetheless, after finishing "The Path to Power" I could not wait and went straight to the Senate years. Caro's LBJ saga has that effect. Having just finished the third volume, I look at today's New York Times, and lo and behold, another article asking essentially why Obama can't be more like Lyndon B. Johnson. Quoth the NYT:
For better or worse, Johnson represented the high-water mark for American presidents pushing through sweeping legislation — not just the Civil Rights Act, but the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Housing Act and major measures on immigration, education, gun control and clean air and water. No president since has approached that level of legislative success (...).Still, few things irritate Mr. Obama and his team more than the comparison to Johnson, which they consider facile and unfair. The notion that Mr. Obama should exert more energy in cajoling, bargaining and even pressuring lawmakers is a common assessment on both sides of the aisle, but it remains unpersuasive in the Oval Office, despite Johnson’s successes.
Having read the two volumes indicated above, I can see both the critics' and Obama's pov. Leaving aside the difficulty of comparing very different eras in general, the LBJ method to gain power contains just about every unsavoury trait politicians were ever accused of, from the moment he invents campus politicis in San Marco, Texas, onwards. (Something he himself later proudly refered to as a "Hitlerian operation".) Sycophantic flattery for authority figures, bullying, blackmailing, shaming, breaking of people NOT in authority, ruthlessly cutting off allies and friends the moment they stop being useful, you name it, he did it. And that's before we get to the non-political vices like frequent cheating on his wife (once with the mistress and later wife of a best friend, thereby managing to cheat on two people at once), and constant verbal humiliation of said wife in public while she was steadfastly devoted and adoring. But, on the other hand: in between being appalled at LBJ, horrible human being, it's impossible not to be awfully impressed by LBJ, Ultimate Answer To Political Competence Kink, especially when it just so happens his interests and the public interests coincide. This starts when he's a 21 years old secretary for a Congressman in the midst of the Big Depression, with Hoover still President and thus nearly no government help for the poor available, except for young Lyndon getting support for WWI veterans anyway, kicks into high gear during the Roosevelt years when he's a Congressman getting electricity for the poorest regions in Texas and leaves one slackjawed when he's minority leader in the Senate and manages to look the just victorious Republicans who via Eisenhower conquered the White House and Congress look divided and unpatriotically backstabbing their own President, then, after the Democrats are the majority again and Johnson is hence majority leader, managing to get the first Civil Rights Bill since 83 years through the Senate without losing his Southern support and without anyone filibustering. In between, of course, he uses that competence to feed noble idealists like Leland Olds to his fnancial backers in Texas by destroying the man completely via using the anti Communist hysteria, wins the goold old boys network by being racist with them, and frames a dear mentor and fatherly friend as a traitor in order to become Roosevelt's point man in Texas instead. In sort, the ultimate Slytherin, though the people Caro interviewed, not having had the chance to read Harry Potter yet make a Dickens comparison (Uriah Heep, if, you know, Dickens had let Uriah win and also be socially popular with a great many people once he's past university; Caro presents ample quotes about how Johnson, when not bullying or flattering, would charm people and be a terrific raconteur).
(But leaving this larger-than-life-Slytherinness aside: One of the things that made Johnson the ultimate poltiical insider, who knew exactly where all the bodies were buried and where to apply pressure points, what inducements to offer and what trades, was that he worked his way up on the political ladder and that of course goes straight against the "I'm a noble outsider coming to clean up Washington" image and narrative which every recent presidential candidate from both parties tried to sell. So given Obama was a senator only a brief time, I don't see how he could apply the (in)famous Johnsonian "Treatment" to unwilling Senators to the same degree if he wanted to.) (Doesn't mean he couldn't try a modified version, of course.)
As I mentioned in another entry, Caro is great with providing context. So in Volume I, you get first a lengthy description of the Hill Country in Texas, its history and its people, before baby Lyndon on page 66 of the paperback edition makes his appearance. And in Volume III, you get a history of the US Senate from the Founding Fathers onwards until page 105 before Our Antihero enters it. Said history, btw, made clear to this non-American that the current situation where nothing ever seems to get done isn't an anamoly due to the Republicans vowing to say no to each and every Obama-suggested bill, but the rule, whereas the situation during Johnson's years in the Senate where he shorted the time during which bills were discussed from an avarage of nine days before his time to sometimes not even a day and got those he wanted to get passed passed was the anomaly. All of which reads very suspenseful, whether it's Johnson's grandmother the frontierwoman hiding from Comanches with her baby's diaper pressed agains the baby's mouth to keep it silent or the Senate putting a reality check on General MacArthur in the Truman years. Something that makes the reader trust Caro as a biographer is that he presents quotes and sources when talking about that most tricky of elements in a non-fiction book, thoughts and emotions, instead of just stating without explanation that Johnson thought this or felt that. Occasionally he frames it as a rethorical question (a la "Did he feel that....?"), but he then does provide a witness for said assumption. When his narrative directly contrasts with a Johnson statement about his own life, he explains in detail and again with quotes why he disagrees. (For example: apparantly pre Caro all the Johnson biographies described him as popular at college. When first encountering a classmate who offered a negative description of college era Lyndan instead, Caro wrote it off as jealousy due to Johnson's later success, but then found not only a lot of other corroborating witnesses but also the yearbooks with their extremely unflattering descriptions.) He also devotes equal narrative space to Johnson wielding power in a destructive way (poor Leland Olds) to Johnson being a legislative mastermind, and keeps the supporting cast, so to speak, three dimensional as well: thus Richard Russell is a terrible for civil rights not least because with his dignified demeanour, he offers a seemingly benign facade to what is actually a horrifying set of racist beliefs (not to mention a brutal track record as governor of Georgia before the Senate), making them palpable to other Senators; but also a principled believer in the constitution and willing to take risks for it, as during the MacArthur episode. Lady Bird Johnson at times comes across as a second Faithful Griselda as a wife, taking just about any humiliation with a patient smile, but also is steely enough to be able to manage her husband's office at Congress when LBJ was doing his WWII military service. There are vivid characters like Helen Douglas, the liberal congresswoman Johnson had a longer affair with who'd end up unseated by Richard Nixon, or Sam Rayburn (that would be the fatherly congress mentor whom Johnson once framed in order to get in with Roosevelt but whom he managed to win back regardless, and whom he routinely greeted with a kiss and "Mr. Sam, my beloved".) Very importantly: Caro gets into detail about just how dreadful the situation for people of color was in the US and about the black civil rights movement, without which Johnson would never have had an incentive to change his tune, so any white saviour trope is avoided.
Considering that at the very start of the first volume that his goal with this was to describe just why it came to be that the Johnson presidency offered both the Great Society - all those marvellous laws that cemented Johnson's standing as, as the late Ted Kennedy, by no means an unconditional admirer, put it, the last progressive President and the greatest after Roosevelt - and the Vietnam War, with Johnson leaving the White House to the chants of "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", I get the impression that his main argument is Johnson's personality for both. The irony that Johnson, liberal user of the N-Word, whose first speech as a Senator starts with "We of the South" and reassures all the Dixiecrats he's completely on their side, ends up doing more for Black civil rights than any US President other than Lincoln, is possible because his racism isn't a matter of principle and deep conviction, so to speak, but of ruthless expediency, which meant he could shed it when it was no longer expedient for becoming President. But a personality - "unencumbered by philosophy or ideology" - also has no principles to restrain itself from an expanding war in order not to look weak.
Though this is speculation on my part; Caro hasn't reached the Vietnam War yet, and I haven't reached Johnson's Vice Presidential years, which are covered in the most recently published volume which I'll read next. While regretting ever more I'm unable to watch Bryan Cranston play Johnson on the stage. If ever an actor was made for such a part...
For better or worse, Johnson represented the high-water mark for American presidents pushing through sweeping legislation — not just the Civil Rights Act, but the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Housing Act and major measures on immigration, education, gun control and clean air and water. No president since has approached that level of legislative success (...).Still, few things irritate Mr. Obama and his team more than the comparison to Johnson, which they consider facile and unfair. The notion that Mr. Obama should exert more energy in cajoling, bargaining and even pressuring lawmakers is a common assessment on both sides of the aisle, but it remains unpersuasive in the Oval Office, despite Johnson’s successes.
Having read the two volumes indicated above, I can see both the critics' and Obama's pov. Leaving aside the difficulty of comparing very different eras in general, the LBJ method to gain power contains just about every unsavoury trait politicians were ever accused of, from the moment he invents campus politicis in San Marco, Texas, onwards. (Something he himself later proudly refered to as a "Hitlerian operation".) Sycophantic flattery for authority figures, bullying, blackmailing, shaming, breaking of people NOT in authority, ruthlessly cutting off allies and friends the moment they stop being useful, you name it, he did it. And that's before we get to the non-political vices like frequent cheating on his wife (once with the mistress and later wife of a best friend, thereby managing to cheat on two people at once), and constant verbal humiliation of said wife in public while she was steadfastly devoted and adoring. But, on the other hand: in between being appalled at LBJ, horrible human being, it's impossible not to be awfully impressed by LBJ, Ultimate Answer To Political Competence Kink, especially when it just so happens his interests and the public interests coincide. This starts when he's a 21 years old secretary for a Congressman in the midst of the Big Depression, with Hoover still President and thus nearly no government help for the poor available, except for young Lyndon getting support for WWI veterans anyway, kicks into high gear during the Roosevelt years when he's a Congressman getting electricity for the poorest regions in Texas and leaves one slackjawed when he's minority leader in the Senate and manages to look the just victorious Republicans who via Eisenhower conquered the White House and Congress look divided and unpatriotically backstabbing their own President, then, after the Democrats are the majority again and Johnson is hence majority leader, managing to get the first Civil Rights Bill since 83 years through the Senate without losing his Southern support and without anyone filibustering. In between, of course, he uses that competence to feed noble idealists like Leland Olds to his fnancial backers in Texas by destroying the man completely via using the anti Communist hysteria, wins the goold old boys network by being racist with them, and frames a dear mentor and fatherly friend as a traitor in order to become Roosevelt's point man in Texas instead. In sort, the ultimate Slytherin, though the people Caro interviewed, not having had the chance to read Harry Potter yet make a Dickens comparison (Uriah Heep, if, you know, Dickens had let Uriah win and also be socially popular with a great many people once he's past university; Caro presents ample quotes about how Johnson, when not bullying or flattering, would charm people and be a terrific raconteur).
(But leaving this larger-than-life-Slytherinness aside: One of the things that made Johnson the ultimate poltiical insider, who knew exactly where all the bodies were buried and where to apply pressure points, what inducements to offer and what trades, was that he worked his way up on the political ladder and that of course goes straight against the "I'm a noble outsider coming to clean up Washington" image and narrative which every recent presidential candidate from both parties tried to sell. So given Obama was a senator only a brief time, I don't see how he could apply the (in)famous Johnsonian "Treatment" to unwilling Senators to the same degree if he wanted to.) (Doesn't mean he couldn't try a modified version, of course.)
As I mentioned in another entry, Caro is great with providing context. So in Volume I, you get first a lengthy description of the Hill Country in Texas, its history and its people, before baby Lyndon on page 66 of the paperback edition makes his appearance. And in Volume III, you get a history of the US Senate from the Founding Fathers onwards until page 105 before Our Antihero enters it. Said history, btw, made clear to this non-American that the current situation where nothing ever seems to get done isn't an anamoly due to the Republicans vowing to say no to each and every Obama-suggested bill, but the rule, whereas the situation during Johnson's years in the Senate where he shorted the time during which bills were discussed from an avarage of nine days before his time to sometimes not even a day and got those he wanted to get passed passed was the anomaly. All of which reads very suspenseful, whether it's Johnson's grandmother the frontierwoman hiding from Comanches with her baby's diaper pressed agains the baby's mouth to keep it silent or the Senate putting a reality check on General MacArthur in the Truman years. Something that makes the reader trust Caro as a biographer is that he presents quotes and sources when talking about that most tricky of elements in a non-fiction book, thoughts and emotions, instead of just stating without explanation that Johnson thought this or felt that. Occasionally he frames it as a rethorical question (a la "Did he feel that....?"), but he then does provide a witness for said assumption. When his narrative directly contrasts with a Johnson statement about his own life, he explains in detail and again with quotes why he disagrees. (For example: apparantly pre Caro all the Johnson biographies described him as popular at college. When first encountering a classmate who offered a negative description of college era Lyndan instead, Caro wrote it off as jealousy due to Johnson's later success, but then found not only a lot of other corroborating witnesses but also the yearbooks with their extremely unflattering descriptions.) He also devotes equal narrative space to Johnson wielding power in a destructive way (poor Leland Olds) to Johnson being a legislative mastermind, and keeps the supporting cast, so to speak, three dimensional as well: thus Richard Russell is a terrible for civil rights not least because with his dignified demeanour, he offers a seemingly benign facade to what is actually a horrifying set of racist beliefs (not to mention a brutal track record as governor of Georgia before the Senate), making them palpable to other Senators; but also a principled believer in the constitution and willing to take risks for it, as during the MacArthur episode. Lady Bird Johnson at times comes across as a second Faithful Griselda as a wife, taking just about any humiliation with a patient smile, but also is steely enough to be able to manage her husband's office at Congress when LBJ was doing his WWII military service. There are vivid characters like Helen Douglas, the liberal congresswoman Johnson had a longer affair with who'd end up unseated by Richard Nixon, or Sam Rayburn (that would be the fatherly congress mentor whom Johnson once framed in order to get in with Roosevelt but whom he managed to win back regardless, and whom he routinely greeted with a kiss and "Mr. Sam, my beloved".) Very importantly: Caro gets into detail about just how dreadful the situation for people of color was in the US and about the black civil rights movement, without which Johnson would never have had an incentive to change his tune, so any white saviour trope is avoided.
Considering that at the very start of the first volume that his goal with this was to describe just why it came to be that the Johnson presidency offered both the Great Society - all those marvellous laws that cemented Johnson's standing as, as the late Ted Kennedy, by no means an unconditional admirer, put it, the last progressive President and the greatest after Roosevelt - and the Vietnam War, with Johnson leaving the White House to the chants of "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?", I get the impression that his main argument is Johnson's personality for both. The irony that Johnson, liberal user of the N-Word, whose first speech as a Senator starts with "We of the South" and reassures all the Dixiecrats he's completely on their side, ends up doing more for Black civil rights than any US President other than Lincoln, is possible because his racism isn't a matter of principle and deep conviction, so to speak, but of ruthless expediency, which meant he could shed it when it was no longer expedient for becoming President. But a personality - "unencumbered by philosophy or ideology" - also has no principles to restrain itself from an expanding war in order not to look weak.
Though this is speculation on my part; Caro hasn't reached the Vietnam War yet, and I haven't reached Johnson's Vice Presidential years, which are covered in the most recently published volume which I'll read next. While regretting ever more I'm unable to watch Bryan Cranston play Johnson on the stage. If ever an actor was made for such a part...
