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Robert Caro has written a tour de force.
At a thousand pages, this is a weighty book. Yet it reads with the ease of a great novel. A tribute not only to Caro's authorship, but also the material with which he worked. Lyndon Johnson has to be just about one of the most fascinating personalities to write about.
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This is a book about ambition and power. Covering the ten years of the 1950's, it looks at Johnson's Senate career. During that time, LBJ made the job of Majority Leader -- one that had been powerless and had in fact led to the defeat at the polls of two of his immediate
predecessors -- into a position of absolute authority. LBJ did the politically impossible in taming the United States Senate.
Caro's focus is on Johnson's methods, personal qualities and unique appreciation for power. As LBJ said himself, "I know where to find power and how to use it." He did indeed.
For Johnson, power was a tool to gain what he set his eyes on early -- the U.S. Presidency. LBJ didn't believe in much -- though Caro tries to make a case that some of LBJ's interest in the 1957 Civil Rights Act was
altruistic. He believed in LBJ and his right to control the Senate and ultimately the presidency. Freed from ideology, LBJ was pure politics. This was perhaps useful in passing our nation's first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, Eisenhower's Civil Rights Act of 1957. LBJ was able to convince some liberals that he was really with them and almost all of the southern segregationists that he was with them. A crucial fact that persuaded the segregationist block of senators to not use the
filibuster was their desire to see a southerner in the White House. That southerner for which they were willing to relax their 80 year
stranglehold on civil rights was LBJ.
LBJ became their lodestar because of his relationship with Richard Russell -- southern and segregationist icon who commanded obedience from southern senators and respect from the entire body. Russell became LBJ's champion and guide and
wielded the southern block to first create and solidify LBJ's power as majority leader and then to create legislative opportunities that had previously been impossible.
LBJ's capture of Russell followed his life long pattern in creating power. He always discovered who was the person who could help him the most and than worked slavishly to ingratiate himself to that person. It worked with FDR, Sam Rayburn and Dick Russell. His charming of these tough men -- creating almost father/son relationships (though not as close with FDR), turned these men into his agents of advancement.
Of course LBJ used his powers for nefarious purposes also. Caro spends a lot of time focusing on LBJ's demolishing of Leland Old's at his reconfirmation hearing -- displaying LBJ's power on behalf of natural gas producers and his willingness to utterly destroy a good man and fine public servant when it suited his purposes.
This is a wonderful case study on legislative power and politics. Any legislative leader, or legislator, would learn from reading this. The general public will be fascinated by the utterly gripping and unforgettable portrait of a man who truly was the "Master of the Senate."
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