The Making Of The President 1968 – Theodore H. White, 1969 ★★★★

There's a Riot Going On

That saying back in 1968, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” clearly didn’t apply where Theodore H. White was concerned. When it came to that year’s presidential election, he handed you the whole meteorological report.

White’s “Making Of The President” series was three books into its four-book run when this 1968 edition came out, at over 500 pages by far the fattest and most sprawling of them all. He goes on too long in several places, data maven that he was, but when he’s done filling you in on the election’s many twists and turns, you get a strong sense of living through one chaotic year, and of why it turned out the way it did.

Did the country really go through a period of dramatic leftist radicalization and come out of it electing Richard Nixon? Yes, and the two things were closely related. White, a genteel liberal himself, makes clear a candidate touting law and order had considerable appeal when cities were ablaze with riot and campuses under student siege.

The Making Of The President 1964 – Theodore H. White, 1965 ★★★

Over Before It Began

Theodore H. White lost more than a president and friend in 1963. He also lost a chance to follow up his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 U. S. Presidential election with something nearly as riveting.

It wasn’t a race in 1964 but a coronation. The question wasn’t if Lyndon Johnson would be re-elected president, but by how wide a margin. Johnson’s campaign themes of peace and prosperity resonated with voters. After the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy, Americans were not ready to have a third president in just over a year.

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Barry Goldwater was barely trying to win over the undecideds. He delivered instead a bold libertarian message in a tone White likens to an Old Testament prophet, adopting a slogan that seemed unconvinced by itself: “In your heart you know he’s right.”

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage Of Power – Robert A. Caro, 2012 ★★★★

Free at Last

It is amazing how each of Robert Caro’s four (so far) books on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson manages to create its own distinct identity, interlinked to the others yet separate.

In The Passage Of Power, LBJ’s story finally moves to the White House, where he is trapped for years as forlorn vice president playing stooge to the man who beat him for the Democrat nomination in 1960, only to win the office he craved for so long as the result of an assassin’s bullet and then do things with that office that would amaze detractors and allies alike.

Passage isn’t perfect, but it’s a fascinating, detailed account of and about flawed greatness.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: Master Of The Senate – Robert A. Caro, 2002 ★★★★

Breaking a Few Eggs

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 37^th 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 Years Of Lyndon Johnson: Means Of Ascent – Robert A. Caro, 1990 ★★★½

Snatching the Middle Rung

Means Of Ascent begins as a high-spirited adventure tale of a risk-taking politician gutting through a deadly illness and campaigning from an early-model helicopter. It ends as a whodunit, complete with menacing gunmen and courtroom misdirection ploys.

What connects the two parts is Lyndon Johnson, an 11-year member of the U. S. House of Representatives desperate to be where the action is in American politics – the Senate – and willing to do anything to get there.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power – Robert A. Caro, 1982 ★★★★★

Seeming a Saint While Playing the Devil

When it comes to DNA analysis, Robert A. Caro was way ahead of the field in 1982 when he identified a specific human genome for ruthlessness and dubbed it “the Bunton strain.”

A line of legendarily cold and selfish Texans, the Bunton family left a mark on their lineal descendent Lyndon Baines Johnson. Along with the unforgivingly harsh environment of the Lone Star State’s Hill Country, the Bunton strain formed LBJ in Caro’s telling to become one of the nastiest SOBs ever to win his nation’s highest office.

The Triumph & Tragedy Of Lyndon Johnson – Joseph A. Califano Jr., 1991 ★★

LBJ Agonistes

Was Lyndon Johnson both the hardest-working and unluckiest man ever to inhabit the White House? Joseph Califano would have you think so.

A senior domestic-policy aide through most of Johnson’s presidency, Califano observed the 36^th President of the United States in times sunny (reelected by 44 states and 61 percent of the popular vote in 1964) and bleak (losing in Vietnam). Let others have at the negative; Califano’s admiration for his former boss overtakes all else.