- This topic has 8 voices and 17 replies.
-
AuthorPosts
-
-
I’ve told several people that, with respect to thoroughness, when I grow up I want to be Robert Caro. He has done such a good job of writing about Lyndon Johnson (and other figures concurrent in history) that left, right and center have praised this and Caro’s other works on Johnson.
Most warts-and-all examinations of public figures lean either toward praise or damnation. Caro simply tells the story and lets the reader decide what to think about it.
Unlike Caro, I’m no liberal. But while I praise Caro for not shrinking from critical observations about his subject, even liberals who were present for cited events such as John Connally are on record as having praised this work (Connally would not be so upbeat about later Caro coverage of Johnson, however).
It’s perhaps Johnson’s special duality in the public “mind” that results in this: while many consider his efforts to pass Kennedy’s voting rights legislation to be worthy of inclusion on Mount Rushmore, these same people might join in condemnation of his prosecution of the Viet Nam war. While his ceaseless boosting of FDR may be laudable to some, his ballot-box-stuffing antics (later admitted by several LBJ employees interviewed on the record and quoted by Caro) would not be.
These dualities – and as the reader will see, multiple dualities – are present in Johnson to a degree that exists only in the most skilled of political operators. And Caro shows Johnson’s deftness in observation, negotiation and manipulation so well that the psychological uniqueness of LBJ renders “the years of Lyndon Johnson” far more interesting to me than they might normally be.
Many books take us into the sausage factory of contemporary politics. Few show us men and women moving history. This book does that. It’s only the second book that I’ve read in my life that I’ve considered re-reading solely because its reportage and argument were so hard to believe at first. . . but so plausible after the fact.
Here are just a few things Caro reports that were a surprise even to me, a person who lived during Johnson’s presidency and who hails from the state in which he based his operations.
LBJ’s early days as a congressman from Texas were marked by 7-day weeks and 18-hour days taken up sometimes solely by telephone calls to political figures, business figures and even individual voters asking – often begging – to know what he could do for them. This resulted in impressive and unprecedented financial contributions even when not solicited. He was so good at identifying with his listeners’ concerns that he easily took money from conservatives to fund new deal programs and the right wing didn’t find out for decades. Caro quotes one conservative as admitting in amazement, “We thought he was one of us!”
On this amazing effect, Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of CA: “He could talk so much and no one ever knew exactly where he stood.” Note that this is a colleague of Johnson’s talking now, and not just any Democrat but the one who ran against Dick Nixon in his first Senate race. Caro conveys how remarkable it was that Johnson experienced the level of success he did, in that he was a Democrat whom even Democrats frequently distrusted.
Caro will often return to the more respectable characteristics of the man, though, which reduce to one characteristic: productivity. LBJ had a work ethic that was titanic.
True, he was motivated by a poverty-stricken past and a competitive nature. But so were many in midcentury US politics. Where Johnson outdistanced the rest was in focus and resolve. He was goal-directed like few other national figures in American history.
He remembered a maxim of his father’s: “If you do Everything, you will win.” And Johnson won most contests in which he ran. He used underhanded tricks. He used a flair for public speaking. He used methods never before seen in contests for public office (these were the early days of heavy radio and newspaper political advertising). He even solicited support from the opposite party and sometimes got it. He hitched his wagon to rising stars (most obviously FDR). He exaggerated. He lied. He even told the truth. He identified where he wanted to go and headed straight for the target, methodology no object.
This, Caro’s first book about Lyndon Johnson, fits into a four-volume sequence so far:
The Path to Power (1982) – from his early life to the lost 1941 Senate campaign
Means of Ascent (1990) – from 1941 to his successful 1948 Senate election
Master of the Senate (2002) – the rise to Majority Leader and passing of the 1957 Civil Rights Act
The Passage of Power (2012) – from 1958 to the wake of the JFK assassinationCaro is now at work on a fifth volume that will cover the bulk of the LBJ administration and the few later years. Caro reportedly thought that this book would take three years to write, making this estimate in 2011. He is still writing, having completed over 600 pages as of 2021. At last notice he had made it up to the 1965 Viet Nam troop escalations.
I’ll continue my foraging into the story of LBJ as soon as time permits. There were giants in those days – good, bad, ugly. . . and sometimes unprecedented.
There’s an effect to which Rand refers sometimes, in which as we look further back into more individualistic times in history, we see people we can describe as “larger than life.” Previous, less collectivistic ages allowed for greater personal expression, action, achievement for good, ill or both. This is Caro’s perspective on Johnson (I don’t know whether or not Caro would agree with me). Some reviewers state that Caro didn’t like Johnson but thought he was progressive (in a positive sense) on many issues. I’m not sure that that perspective is true. What I get from Caro is a sort of time machine. His coverage of LBJ and the world he (and many of us) knew can bring us into the presence not only of major events, but of the major personalities often involved in those events. I’d say that this book series promises a rare cache of discoveries for those interested in the personalities of figures of the recent past who were experts in the wielding of political power.
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/25/23
I turned 19 on a Saturday in 1966. I had my reclassification to 1A in the mail on Monday, my orders to report for a physical on Wednesday and my induction notice on Friday.
I remember vividly Lyndon Johnson running for election. a close up, his little reading glasses down on his nose, peering steadfastly into the camera saying, come on now, in your best Texas drawl:
“I am NOT going to send American boys 8,000 miles away to fight a war that Asian boys should be fighting!”
This is how he put it in a speech in 1964:
we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON, speech at Akron University, October 21, 1964
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/25/23
Let me say that I regard honest historical research as a valuable contribution. I had a small taste of that in doing my graduate school thesis and I have always been happy that I chose the thesis option for finishing my program.
I had a front row seat at the Lyndon Johnson show and personally regard him as being in the Robert Stadler category of human being, or maybe a Floyd Ferris, and always will.
Future generations of Americans should know how and, more importantly why, things went so bad.
*sb
-
Re: Richard Ranville Jr.’s post 145320 of 3/26/23
Thanks very much for your comments. So far, Caro’s work looks quite valuable in taking us back to those times. It looks like the contexts he’s building can work well even for people too young to have been there originally. For me, he helps fill in blanks between what I did know and live through. And on the accent, there are in my experience, about four distinct Texas accents and his is the one peculiar to the central part of the state (colloquially called there “The Hill Country,” as Caro clearly specifies). Johnson’s variant was one used by one wing of my family — but not any of the others. People from that state can sense the accent variants and usually tell from what section of the state someone hails.
But yes, LBJ and his lieutenants are significant figures in policy and history who should be closely scrutinized.
(Edit: . . . and I’m pretty sure a few of you remember the lyrics “And it’s one, two, three. . .what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Viet Nam. . .”)
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/26/23
No, Johnson had no “work ethic” at all. Scrambling for power is not doing “work.” LBJ also should not be described as “productive”: the enlargement of state power to dictate to individuals is not “production.” And LBJ was not “larger than life”: my view of him, based on living through his rise and fall, was he was way smaller than life—a small-town ward-heeler propelled by an accident of history (the assassination of JFK) into an office where he simply did whatever the New York Times told him to do.
The expenditure of effort in an ego-less quest (to be a big shot in the eyes of others) is not admirable and not “goal-directed.”
I agree with Richard Ranville that LBJ was like a villain in Atlas (but not Stadler, a great man who betrayed his greatness.) This is a president who conducted an interview with a newsman while sitting on the toilet.
The term “duality” is a euphemism for “contradiction.” And I would say there was nothing puzzling or double-sided about LBJ, in the mind of the public or of the Left. LBJ was an arrangeur, a guy who, like a Mafia don, collected favors and pulled strings. So when JFK’s assassination put Johnson in the White Hourse, he took over the Leftist agenda, which JFK had not been able to get through Congress, and got it enacted. He likewise inherited the Vietnam war, rather than having some foreign policy goal of his own, and he used it to aid his defeat of Goldwater.
At a certain point (1966 or 1967), the New Left had grown strong enough that they had no further use of oldline pragmatists like LBJ, and they ramped up the anti-war movement (which was actually the anti-war-against-communism movement), so LBJ was like Keating at the end of The Fountainhead—out of fashion, left behind, useless. He, a sitting U.S. President, announced he would not run for re-election in 1968.
You can’t be goal-directed if your “goal” is power over others—particularly if you have no ideas of your own about what you want to do with that power. “My goal is to get into a position where I can achieve my goal”–what goal? “The goal of getting into a position where . . .”
Want a little psychologizing (and who doesn’t)? My guess is that LBJ was a man driven by an insatiable need to “prove himself” to someone, perhaps his father (since the review has him quoting his father on the need to “win”).
Incidentally, Hellen Gahagan Douglas was not just a woman who ran against Dick Nixon, she was openly a mistress of LBJ.
I would be interested to know what LBJ admired FDR for. I’m betting it was his charisma and talents at manipulation, not any ideological view. In general, even back then, most on the Left had little understanding of or interest in principles of political philosophy. The exception was the communists, who actually believed in the tenets of “Marxism-Leninism.”
But my main point is that we need to keep our concepts pure. Using terms like “goal-directed,” “productive,” “work-ethic,” for the lust for power is not valid.
/sb
-
Re: Harry Binswanger’s post 145327 of 3/27/23
But my main point is that we need to keep our concepts pure. Using terms like “goal-directed,” “productive,” “work-ethic,” for the lust for power is not valid.
Agreed. I here use positive terms ironically when observing craven pragmatism in action. As to why LBJ admired Roosevelt (and cultivated Sam Rayburn in order to get to FDR), Caro basically reports rather than explains. But the answer may lie in FDR’s boosting of government measures that Johnson considered sure-fire vote-getters since they would buy votes — such as rural electrification for counties full of poor farmers and civil rights bills for blacks. Also, LBJ and FDR were birds of a feather in that they both read and manipulated others very effectively — and recognized such abilities in each other. On this last, Caro does propose that.
Also, your suspicion of a need for Johnson to prove himself to someone or something in him is supported by Caro’s interviews and descriptions. And a power-lust impelling him to control as much as possible may also be a factor; I recall from a Caro interview I saw on YouTube about LBJ that at one point Johnson was choosing Vietnam bombing targets from the dining room table at the White House. . .
I don’t quite agree with the proposition that Johnson’s career as president was accidental. He worked for years to be able to manuver into a position close to such a possibility. But it certainly didn’t have to happen, and it’s correct to cast Johnson as a destroyer. Speaking of destroyers, Caro does touch on the point (looking forward to his next book’s subjects) that during the Watergate problems for Nixon, Dick’s first choice for VP (after Agnew was convicted of bribery charges) was John Connally (Lyndon’s second-in-command or hatchet man). Only Connally’s own legal problems resulted in Ford getting the nod. At least that instance of chance wasn’t as bad as some.
Edit: And on this point:
I would be interested to know what LBJ admired FDR for. I’m betting it was his charisma and talents at manipulation, not any ideological view.
Caro reports, citing at least two of Johnson’s lieutenants, a clear and total lack of ideology on Johnson’s part. He would never take sides, but always wanted to discover the position of his collegue or opponent. As to any positive position statements, Johnson simply told the other person whatever they wanted to hear. But he was described to Caro as having utterly no personal ideology.
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/25/23
Robert Caro’s books about President Johnson and his times are truly fantastic; they are regarded as the best biographies ever written. They have been awarded numerous prizes (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Mencken Award, and more). As far as I can see, they are also objective; Caro does not try to cover up the many flaws in Johnson’s character. They also describe an important part of US history.
I would also reccommend Caro’s book about Robert Moses. Moses was regarded as the most powerful man in New York for almost 40 years.
Wikipedia:
“Robert Moses (1888–1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded as one of the most powerful and influential individuals in the history of New York City and New York State. The grand scale of his infrastructural projects and his philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across the United States.”
Caro describes in great but always interesting detail the very destructive effects of Moses’ “urban planning.” Caro also shows how the political game really works.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394720245/ref=sr_1_1
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/25/23
I almost never find time to reply to the many interesting posts on HBL, but as it happens I have recently been reading Robert Caro’s LBJ biography because I have been teaching about Vietnam in my Middle School history classes. I agree that he is an objective historian and a stunningly clear writer. (I have rarely seen anything to match the bibliographic notes he provides on the source for every assertion – every interview, letter, and so on.)
Caro’s biography of Robert Moses dealt with a similar theme – the quest for power.
It is clear that Johnson was an expert at using his access to government power to produce goodies – not only for his constituents (which bought him votes), but also for his own personal advancement. One of the most fascinating stories is the tale of how he purchased a local radio station which was so mired in bureaucratic regulations that it was about to go bankrupt, and used his connections to purchase the station for a very low price and then get the rules changed so that it became a valuable asset. Once he had the station re-classified so that it had a better spot on the radio dial and was also allowed to broadcast in the evening, he cashed in by collecting advertising dollars from people who wished to purchase his influence. He started life with nothing, but when he became president I believe he was the wealthiest man to hold that office to date. This is where that money came from, yet it was in his wife’s name and he was allowed to keep the asset throughout his presidency.
And of course the details of how he won the Senate race against Coke Stevenson are absolutely riveting. If anyone does not know about Ballot Box 13, they should certainly read about this. The tale is even more fascinating because Caro portrays Johnson’s opponent, from whom he steals the election, as an American hero that any Objectivist would admire, an individualist rancher who believed in limited government as a matter of principle. I thought about Stevenson for days afterward with deep sadness, and had to re-read the sections that describe how, after losing the race, he had a happy and fulfilling life on his ranch, raising his young daughter to appreciate the heroes of American history.
So I eagerly await the final volume of the book. Caro is in his 90’s, but says he takes care with his writing and cannot rush it. (He has just published a book, Working, about his writing methods.)
But dare I say that to read about LBJ’s ruthless tactics to obtain power has made me wonder about the old conspiracy theory that LBJ and his henchman Connally might have planned the events in Dallas. I can find no evidence that Caro is going to say so, but if you watch the sorts of things that you can find on YouTube, you will hear about their connections to Texas underworld figures and other possible murders that were in their political interest.
Does anyone have any information or opinions about this?
/sb
-
Re: Deborah Knapp’s post 145338 of 3/27/23
But dare I say that to read about LBJ’s ruthless tactics to obtain power has made me wonder about the old conspiracy theory that LBJ and his henchman Connally might have planned the events in Dallas. I can find no evidence that Caro is going to say so, but if you watch the sorts of things that you can find on YouTube, you will hear about their connections to Texas underworld figures and other possible murders that were in their political interest.
Does anyone have any information or opinions about this?
I have an opinion on possible LBJ involvement. I was very politically aware in those days; besides having a natural interest in events, I had a potentially life-and-death interest. My recollection is that LBJ ran against Kennedy for the nomination and agreed to accept the vice presidency when it became apparent he couldn’t get the top spot. The Kennedys — remember Bobby, a real intense character — had no respect for Johnson and the feelings were mutual; theirs was a totally political arrangement. Having watched and listened and read intensely in that period, I think it is very possible that someone in Washington arranged the hit and it might very well have been Johnson. I saw the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV that Sunday morning, Oswald in the hands of Texas authorities and if you haven’t seen it, it was almost comically easy for Jack Ruby to just step out and shoot Oswald. It’s hard to believe it wasn’t set up.
For what it’s worth, I think the highest probability is on the Castros; the Kennedys tried to kill Castro at least once. Think about it: US-China conciliation? US-Vietnam conciliation? And more. No American president until Obama would go near the Cubans. And, indulging in a little personal invective, Obama is no American at all.
But I would not be a bit surprised to find out it was a DC job and Lyndon was involved.
/sb
-
Re: Richard Ranville Jr.’s post 145340 of 3/27/23
Having watched and listened and read intensely in that period, I think it is very possible that someone in Washington arranged the hit and it might very well have been Johnson.
Caro found no evidence that suggested that LBJ was involved in – or knew in advance about – the assasination.
My view is that the lone-nut theory is the correct one, and Vincent Bugliosi wrote the definitive account that supports that theory.
https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-History-audiobook/dp/B000R51QZ6/ref=sr_1_5
/sb
-
Re: Deborah Knapp’s post 145338 of 3/27/23
First, you may or may not be aware that Johnson purchased and benefited from more than one radio station during his career – so I’m not sure whether you refer to KLBJ Austin or another one (or more) relatively nearby.
Second, I’m aware of no positive evidence of Johnson’s involvement in any JFK killing attempt. However, the least knowledge of Johnson’s tactics reveals that he always positioned himself to be able to take advantage of any situation. He cultivated people, he studied legislation, he pored over specifications, he either read laws or rules or found out who already knew about same and could explain them to him. And he used these discoveries to at least attempt to be a few steps ahead of any adversary.
*sb
-
Re: Vegard Martinsen’s post 145341 of 3/27/23
The lone-nut theory is also supported by Case Closed by Gerald Posner. It is an entertaining, much shorter read and takes you to the same place. https://tinyurl.com/mvfv9mjm
I have not read Reclaiming History, but from the reviews it appears that its length (over 1,600 pages) is due to painstakingly refuting each and every conspiracy theory. Case Closed does address conspiracy theories, but is mainly devoted to showing how the Warren Commission was right, not why the multitudes of conspiracy theories were wrong. I guess it depends on how deep in the weeds you want to get.
I highly recommend two other books by Vincent Bugliosi: Helter Skelter which covers the Manson Family murders; and Outrage on the O.J. Simpson travesty.
/sb
-
Re: Gregory Turza’s post 145347 of 3/27/23
The lone-nut theory is also supported by Case Closed by Gerald Posner. It is an entertaining, much shorter read and takes you to the same place. https://tinyurl.com/mvfv9mjm
On several points, Posner is more than a bit inaccurate. He does not present a convincing case aganist Oswald.
I highly recommend two other books by Vincent Bugliosi: Helter Skelter which covers the Manson Family murders . . .
Helter Skelter is a good book, but credible people have criticized Bugliosi’s theory of what happened. Here is an article about a more credible theory:
/sb
-
Re: Pete Jamison’s post 103691 of 3/25/23
I have always thought that the death of JFK and the resultant negative effects on this country have been given far too little attention. I believe that it’s entirely probable that the US would have been much better off in Objectivist terms had JFK lived.
Teddy Roosevelt and FDR laid the foundation for the country’s socialist/fascist era. Then LBJ built a statist- collectivist edifice that appears to be unbreakable. If JFK had lived, I don’t believe that he would have allowed Vietnam to become the major war that it was. (JFK just wasn’t built that way.) This alone would have had a huge positive impact on the country.
Secondly, the massive socialist group of programs known as the “Great Society” would not have existed—or at least not in the 1960s. When JFK was president, the whole Federal budget was around $100 billion per year—-and it was balanced! Now we’re spending upwards of $100 billion per week!!! And, more importantly, the “Great Society” era put the final nails in the coffin of freedom, individual rights and limited government. No longer could anyone argue that a given expenditure was “wrong” or “too much.” How could any program be wrong when it was “helping people”?
Separately, I wonder how Mr. Caro could spend years and years and years and thousands of pages writing about LBJ. One could certainly argue that it’s a benefit to historians and the public to have an accurate detailed record of one of our presidents. But what a massive waste of time from Mr. Caro’s point of view. One could surely capture the disgusting nature of LBJ and the nightmare he created in 400-500 pages.
/sb
-
Re: Mike Murdoch’s post 145360 of 3/29/23
. . . how could Mr. Caro spend years and years and years and thousands of pages writing about LBJ. One could certainly argue that it’s a benefit to historians and the public to have an accurate detailed record of one of our presidents. . .
Yes, but the books are also about politics/the political game, about how a superb and ruthless player (LBJ) could exploit it – and they are also about American history.
I found the books utterly fascinating.
/sb
-
Re: Deborah Knapp’s post 145338 of 3/27/23
He started life with nothing, but when he became president I believe he was the wealthiest man to hold that office to date.
Not likely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_net_worth
This list is according to peak net worth, so only approximates net worth upon assuming office.
However, I doubt Johnson was the wealthiest upon assuming office.
Nonetheless, I recognize the validity of Deborah Knapp’s underlying point: Johnson became incredibly wealthy. I had no idea!
It’s interesting how wealthy George Washington was. That’s something I didn’t learn in school.
*sb
-
Thank you to Pete Jamison for the detailed account.
Re: Mike Murdoch’s post 145360 of 3/29/23
And, more importantly, the “Great Society” era put the final nails in the coffin of freedom, individual rights and limited government.
When I think of the most destructive U.S. presidents, I usually think of FDR and Wilson. I’m now considering whether LBJ was also one of the absolute worst.
I guess this hinges upon whether the Great Society programs would have come about under any Democrat president, vs. whether Johnson should be considered specifically responsible for them.
*sb
-
Re: Mac Mollison’s post 145368 of 3/30/23
Thanks for the thanks. I think all here “get” my intention in raising the subject of Caro’s coverage of LBJ, which is to encourage more scrutiny of a politician who, though later famous, often operated totally behind the scenes in his early development and was maniacal in his efforts. I think this helps remind us that some destroyers never sleep. On your last point, the Great Society programs I think would probably have surfaced in some other form given the Teddy Roosevelt progressive influence, the FDR federal takeovers and with weak resistance of better representatives. JFK’s poor performance at the Khrushchev summit of 1961 and the reliance of many conservatives on religious underpinnings would be examples of such.
Leonard Peikoff once said that he’d disappointed Rand by mentioning that he enjoyed horror movies (and that she’d suggested that they might be too malevolent-universe). Perhaps I here have a similar staring-at-car-wrecks tendency in following Caro on Johnson.
*sb
-
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.