The more I read about Lyndon Johnson, the more I see how much one can do if heedless of needs for self-reflection, sleep, or a real friend.
Even as Robert A. Caro offers up some admiration for the man who would become the 37th President of the United States, as Johnson aligns himself to causes Caro holds dear, the author does not try to sugarcoat the fact LBJ was first and last a deeply-unpleasant SOB.
The third volume in Caro’s epic “The Years Of Lyndon Johnson,” and by far the longest, Master Of The Senate relates how Johnson became Senate Majority Leader in what was still just his freshman term, then channeled his energy to change Congress’s upper chamber from pit of chaos to personal fiefdom:
As senators hurried into the Chamber, many walked down to the well to talk with their colleagues. Standing at the edge of the well, towering over men in it, Lyndon Johnson would raise his long arm over them, making those big circles, like “an orchestra conductor” leading the United States Senate – the Senate that, for so long, had refused to be led.
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| As his party's Senate leader, LBJ towers over Democratic colleagues Hubert Humphrey and Richard Russell, respective avatars of the party's left and right wings. "If you liked politics, it was like sitting at the feet of a giant," Humphrey said of Johnson. Image from https://www.vnews.com/ballmer-5631095 |
This is the book where Caro shows why he devoted his life to Lyndon Johnson, because of how LBJ broke the mold. As President, sure, he had his Great Society, but other presidents did big things, too. As Senate Majority Leader from 1955 to 1961, Johnson was and remains a total original, whether it came in the form of tackling racial injustice or turning a branch of government into a one-man political machine.
Caro claims Johnson did more than anyone since Abraham Lincoln to improve the lot of black Americans, and moreover, did so at least in part because he really cared about them. Also, he wanted their votes. But mostly, he cared. Caro explains:
So Lyndon Johnson changed – and changed the course of American history. For at last this leader of men would be leading, fighting, not only for himself but for a great cause. This man who in the pursuit of his aims could be so utterly ruthless – who would let nothing stand in his way; who, in the pursuit, deceived, and betrayed and cheated – would be deceiving and betraying and cheating on behalf of something other than himself: specifically, on behalf of the sixteen million Americans whose skin were dark.
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| A trigger for civil rights legislation in 1957: A bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks (above) refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. Said LBJ: “I’d like to see a bill the country can live with and not get torn
apart.” Image from https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks |
Master Of The Senate is a very good book, and very, very long. It’s more than a hundred pages before we even meet Johnson, as Caro begins with a winding history of the Senate to explain just what LBJ was up against when it came to remaking the chamber for his purposes. Never before was the Senate led by one man; it was in fact designed to dampen power, a dam to protect liberties at the expense of action.
Caro offers multiple examples of Senate soft-pedaling, for good and ill as he sees it. His in-depth analysis makes its point and sets a tone for the rest of the book. If you thought Caro could be exhausting before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
For Caro, the great failing of the Senate was always its failure to act on progressive legislation. Basic civil rights, such as anti-lynching laws, were blocked throughout the early 20th century because of longtime Senate committee chairmen committed to Jim Crow policies.
The most effective of these senators, Georgia’s Richard Russell, was cunning and urbane as Caro presents him, but also deeply racist. “Any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy,” Caro quotes Russell saying.
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| LBJ saw Georgian Richard Russell (in dark jacket) as his key to gaining Senate power. Here, they attend a Washington Senators game, baseball being Russell's passion. John Connally, Johnson's longtime aide, told Caro: “I doubt that Lyndon Johnson had been to a baseball game in his life
until he heard that Dick Russell enjoyed the sport.” Image from https://erenow.net/biographies/master-of-the-senate-the-years-of-lyndon-johnson-3/45.php |
Russell was enormously enamored of his fellow Democrat Johnson, whom he understood to be not a supremist but sympathetic to his ideals. For one thing, Johnson talked the talk, peppering his conversation with N-bombs when chatting up other southerners. He also played the game, at least for a time, cottoning up to Russell every chance he got.
Russell became the third of what Caro dubs “the three Rs,” Democratic leaders who paved Johnson’s way to power. The first and second of them, Franklin Roosevelt and Sam Rayburn, are featured in Caro’s first LBJ book, The Path To Power. Both were big-government liberals; Russell was anything but. LBJ tacked hard to convince Russell he was on Team Crow. For his part, Russell supported Johnson while allowing LBJ to keep a certain visible distance from the southern camp.
“He was determined to elect a southerner president,” Johnson staffer George Reedy, who worked closely with Russell, told Caro. “And he could not see any other southerners that could be elected president except LBJ.”
Electability was a key concern for Johnson. Not to the Senate; being re-elected came easy for most Texas Democrats then. But he craved the White House, and quick. In 1956, he made his first bid for his party’s presidential nomination, summing up his opponent that year as follows: “He’s a nice fellow, Mother, but he won’t make it ‘cause he’s got too much lace on his drawers.”
Lacey or not, Adlai Stevenson beat LBJ handily that summer, if not Dwight Eisenhower in November. Johnson needed to do more.
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| An admission pass to the Senate visitors' gallery signed by LBJ. Like other senators, Johnson would give out passes like this to special guests and visiting constituents. Image from https://natedsanders.com/lyndon-b.-johnson-signed-senate-chamber-pass-from-his-days-as-''master-of-the-senate''-lot10703.aspx |
Caro focuses a lot of attention on the 1956 Democratic Convention, more than it merits. Sure, it featured a Johnson power play, but was atypical not only in its ineffectiveness but its passivity. Johnson waited for people to come to him in his hotel room while hoping former President Harry Truman would spoil Stevenson’s bid for the nomination. That didn’t happen, and neither did LBJ in 1956.
The other big story in Master Of The Senate, by far the biggest, was Johnson’s handling of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In a way, this followed directly from the 1956 convention, as Johnson saw how his identification with the South would hurt him on the national stage.
He realized he needed to correct that. Caro writes:
“I knew,” he said, “that if I failed to produce on this one, my leadership would be broken into a hundred pieces; everything I had built up over the years would be completely undone.”
It was not easy. Southerners like Russell held the power not only of committee chairmanships but of the filibuster, a time-honored way of holding back unfavorable votes. Liberals supporting civil rights had momentum on their side: from such atrocities as the murder of young Emmitt Till for whistling at a white woman in Mississippi; and from the Supreme Court, whose rulings in favor of desegregation found new support from Republicans both in the White House and Senate.
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| Johnson in 1956 with two Republican foils, Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator William Knowland. Caro records Nixon sneering at LBJ at one point during the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights bill, after realizing Johnson had the votes and he didn't. Image from https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/californias-william-knowland-enters-us-senate-aug-26-1945-227286 |
Caro suggests the Republicans were being cynical, and moreover, willing to push hard for civil rights so that it would trigger a southern filibuster, thus winning the GOP Northern black support for countless elections to come. [Caro doesn’t try to hide his dislike for Republicans at any point in this book; even Russell the racist gets more respect.] Johnson understood he needed to do something for civil rights, but in a way Russell and other Southern leaders wouldn’t filibuster.
The compromise was very nuanced, but centered on voting rights. Johnson could see Russell and other key Southern senators were less vigorous about denying blacks the right to vote then they were about integrating classrooms or lunch counters.
Suffrage was all that could be given in 1957, but LBJ knew it would be enough, as he explained to his more openly liberal fellow Senator, Hubert Humphrey:
“Yes, yes, Hubert, I want all those other things – buses, restaurants, all of that – but the right to vote with no ifs, ands or buts, that’s the key. When the Negroes get that, they’ll have every politician, north and south, east and west, kissing their ass, begging for their support.”
Caro relates the many twists and turns of the 1957 Civil Rights Act vote in vivid detail, making you feel you are on the floor with Johnson, checking off votes and calling the roll.
The result was either one of the great moments of legislative liberalism or a cynical power play. A book ago, when describing Johnson as a consummate Machiavellian in Means Of Ascent, Caro would have presented this as more of the same.
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| Author Robert Caro signing thick paperback copies of his first three LBJ books at a Long Island, New York benefit in 2017. To his right is his other, earlier book, The Power Broker. Image by Sonia Moskowitz from https://www.npr.org/2019/04/08/708009321/in-working-writer-robert-caro-explains-his-process-and-what-drives-him |
But Master Of The Senate marks a turning point for Caro, who offers evidence of Johnson being a real liberal from the start, only biding his time for the moment he could have enough power to make a real difference and openly cast his lot with the poor and downtrodden.
He quotes Johnson explaining his shift to a Texas House member:
“The problem with you is that you don’t understand that the world is trying to turn to the left,” Lyndon Johnson said vehemently. “You can either get out in front and try to give some guidance, or you can continue to fight upstream, and be overwhelmed or be miserable.”
Whatever Johnson’s own motivations, the results were historic, if delayed. Johnson wound up taking much heat, not from Southerners – who didn’t pick up right away on Johnson’s subterfuge – but liberal Democrats, many of whom distrusted LBJ going back to when he destroyed Federal Power Commission chairman Leland Olds in 1949, shortly after Johnson’s first Senate election.
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| Because FPC chair Leland Olds (above) had been appointed by President Roosevelt, supporters thought his reappointment safe with a committee chaired by LBJ. They thought wrong. Image from https://www.walmart.com/ip/Leland-Olds-Defends-The-Tva-Before-Congress-History-24-x-18/337618532 |
The Olds hearing is almost the first LBJ episode recounted in Master Of The Senate. Caro’s retelling is viscerally one-sided, presenting Olds as a gentle and fair regulator done in by greedy oil barons and Johnson’s sliming him along Communist-witch-hunting lines (“Shall we have a commissioner or a commissar?”) Johnson’s lucrative acquiescence to the energy lobby is well documented by Caro already, but I was left to wonder what Olds did to make himself so unpopular with these plutocrats if every charge made against him was a lie.
Caro isn’t trying to be fair and balanced; he is telling a great story, and in the process setting the stage for Johnson’s surprise delayed metamorphosis into a progressive hero.
And the word “hero” is no exaggeration. At one point in Master Of The Senate, in July 1955, just as he manages to remake the Senate according to his will, Johnson is felled by a heart attack that nearly kills him. Immediately he faces his situation:
All his life, whenever courage had been needed, it was there. This, now – the pain in his chest, the heaviness in his arms, the words “heart attack” – was what he had always dreaded. But what was required now was calm. And, instantly, there was calm.
He even quits smoking, no small sacrifice for the chain-smoking LBJ.
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| LBJ, Majority Leader. George Reedy was asked if Johnson's near-fatal heart attack slowed his boss down: "It speeded him up if anything." Image from https://www.raabcollection.com/lyndon-b-johnson-autograph/signed-photograph-lyndon-johnson-senate-leader |
Another way Caro lets up on Johnson is in his account of Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird. In the prior volumes, much of the Lady Bird narrative centered on how cruelly LBJ treated her, bossing her around while openly pursuing affairs with more glamorous women. This time, we see more respect from Johnson for his spouse, especially after his heart attack. He even listens once when she tells him to shut up.
Rest assured, Johnson here is still Caro’s LBJ, who enjoys watching friend and foe alike squirm under his boot. Even though Caro seems reluctant to agree, I was left with the suspicion that Johnson changed his tune on civil rights not from sympathy but calculation. A change was going to come, and he wanted to be on the right side of it.
There
is also an imbalance in Caro’s focus, with certain periods of Johnson’s Senate
years garnering outsized attention. But the story he offers is a rare blend of
excitement and depth well worth your time.
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