Book Review - The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro

• Book One: The Path to Power, 1982

During the past couple years, the issue of government action and inaction arose very clearly and I spent time trying to understand it. During the 2020 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, our daily lives and daily conversations were ruled by questions around what the government did or failed to do. To learn why government can’t address the long list of compelling crises, I looked back into history and noted perhaps the most recent major figure spearheading a positive program was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Since Robert Caro’s definitive biography is heralded as a masterpiece of the genre, I jumped into it.

Overall, it seems to me that Lyndon Johnson’s life and career cannot serve as a how-to manual for legislating today - too large a portion of the conditions in his time and the quirks of his character are unique and not widely applicable. From time to time in my reading I would compare Johnson to the formidable Senate Majority Leader of my own time, Mitch McConnell, and I have to think a contemporary Johnson might be relatively similar. Both were big promoters of money in politics, but the major saving grace for Johnson is the slew of powerful legislation he delivered, all of which materially improved the daily lives of Americans, including poor and minority communities. My general impression is that Congress at that time, still in the paradigm of the New Deal Coalition, was much more willing to legislate than it is today. Johnson’s wiles, put to use in legislating in the 1960s, would likely be channeled to the direction of the obstructionism of McConnell. However, most of The Years of Lyndon Johnson is ahead of me, including The Master of the Senate, which may be the most relevant to this question. 

Lyndon Johnson as a man presents contradictions and difficulties. Johnson, called the first southern president in his time, would end up being perhaps the most helpful president to Black Americans in the 20th century. He grew up desperately poor and made every effort as a congressman to materially improve the lives of his Texas Hill Country neighbors. He did so through rural electrification that ran counter to the interests of the big monied interests in Texas such as the utilities trusts. But Johnson was in the pocket of big monied interests and brought money into politics at an unprecedented scale, and he engaged in nakedly corrupt poll-purchasing and bribery - although perhaps it should be reversed and said that Johnson had the lobbyists in his pocket all along. Johnson ran for the House and the Senate as a stand-in for Roosevelt and the New Deal, a position he privately disavowed to his reactionary financial backers until his public disavowal after Roosevelt’s death. He was emotionally abusive to his staff and very exploitative toward those loyal to him, pressing them to work for him at an inhuman pace. Some of his actions, considered crude at the time, would likely be considered sexual harassment today. He married for money with Lady Bird, misleading her about his cultured temperament during their courtship, only to reveal his total disinterest in the arts after their marriage and to subject her to then standard housewifery. And yet he also engaged in a long time affair with a women famous for her very cultured personality, socialite Alice Glass.

It seems that there were a few factors that contributed to Johnson’s success in accruing power. First, his personality included an ambitious and wholehearted embrace of the philosophy of transactional hierarchy. He was acutely domineering to those below him in the hierarchy and doting to those above him. Caro described how Johnson acted like a professional son towards the older men and women in positions of usefulness or of power. From his time in college, where he nurtured a close relationship to the college president, to his time in Congress, where he did the same with the Majority Leader and Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, Johnson was described by contemporaries as someone who showered his target with flattery and attention in a way that seemed authentic to the target. Johnson acted this way towards secretaries, assistants, bureaucracy figures, wives, etc in ways to extract a warm disposition from the target towards himself. These feelings would later prove useful in garnering favors or benefits, such as favored access to their bosses or other connections. But in building his organizations, political and otherwise, Johnson cultivated a group of men who followed his orders unquestioningly and were willing to work exceedingly hard for him, often to their own detriment in their lives or careers outside of Johnson’s orbit. Caro clearly shows how Johnson’s preferred traits in these workers was loyalty rather than intellect.

A second personality trait that played a role was his high energy and intensity, particularly in the way that these traits contributed to his organizational prowess. In each phase of his career, he embodied his own quote, “if you do everything, you will win.” In 2020, Democrats lauded Stacey Abrams for her political organization and mobilization of Georgia voters to turn that state blue. This helped it dawn on me that what really matters for achieving a goal are exactly those; energetic and physical organization and mobilization of people, resources, and institutions. This runs somewhat counter to the perceived 2010s liberal penchant for directing political energy into media-based messaging. Johnson arrived at college and proceeded to organize a social group and political organization called the White Stars. The White Stars quickly wrested control of the Student Government away from popular athletes. Prior to this time, politics at Southwest Texas State Normal School was informal. Johnson created a patronage network for his friends and allies and exercised power at the college. Similarly, as a secretary to Representative Dick Kleberg in the Capitol, Johnson reformed the Little Congress (essentially a mock Congress for the assistants and secretaries on the hill) to simulate the real Congress, became the Speaker (probably through cheating), and parlayed that into influence with real Congressmen. In Kleberg’s office, Johnson also first displayed the “do everything” mantra by ramping up the level of communication that the Congressional office did with constituents and with notables throughout Texas, all of course in the name of currying favors and patronage opportunities. During the rollout of New Deal programs, despite his boss’s opposition (an perhaps his own), Johnson’s district got more benefit than maybe any other, primarily due to enormous outreach and effort by Johnson and the staff, pushing the constituents to request aid and pushing the federal bureaucracy to bestow it. The same energy was displayed in his own congressional and senate election campaigns, and during his time running a statewide New Deal program, the National Youth Administration in Texas. Johnson put forth incredible mental and physical energy and created a staff that did the same, all in the name of doing more of the job and doing it better, regardless of what that job was.

One more trait Caro described was an intuition for the personal political dimension in the legislative process. Johnson’s father was a legislator in the Texas State house and allowed his son to accompany him to Austin. Clearly, LBJ soaked up the environment from a young age and would later have a pulse for the voting landscape among members of Congress. Johnson displayed a near total lack of interest in proposing legislation, but as mentioned above he was very energetic in other avenues. In Congress now himself, he continued his work on constituent outreach and patronage networks that he began as an assistant to a Congressman, but on hyperdrive. He used his ability to generate friendships with older, more powerful figures to begin to exercise influence among his peers. These figures included Rayburn and then more significantly, then President Franklin Roosevelt, who made Johnson his political go-to for Texas. After that, Johnson convinced Roosevelt to support him as the major distributor of campaign finances alongside the DCCC in the 1940 election. When dozens of Congresspeople returned to Washington after that election and that financial support, they knew whose hand had been stretched outward towards them with lifesaving funding. And those who didn’t return knew whose hand had not extended their way.

There were certain systemic conditions that played a role in Johnson’s success. These are important to analyze because many of these conditions seem quite different from those that exist today. It would be interesting to see what methods Johnson would have used to attain power given that today’s conditions would present very different options. 

For one, Caro lays out the degree to which the patronage and spoils systems were top of mind and central to political realities at this time. This connects closely to the prominence of political machines in cities and counties at this time. As Caro describes it, it would be a very central component of a Congressman’s calculus to consider and control the distribution of jobs and contracts. A lot of legislation at the national level could involve votes secured through deals about patronage opportunities at a very local level for important voters in the congress. Caro described a fascinating case where due to redistricting in Texas, the designated jobs within each congressman’s patronage territory was in flux, including many “orphaned” patronage openings. The Vice President at the time, "Cactus Jack" Garner, who was also the head of the national Texas delegation, made a power grab to take over authority for the orphaned jobs. The rest of the Texas delegation fought back, from both the House and the Senate, all very concerned with keeping their ability to influence and hold power in their districts. Johnson himself created a network of people loyal to him in various Texas districts and in the federal government by disbursing these kinds of jobs to his people. He made excellent use of precious Depression-era New Deal jobs to create a state-level political machine in Texas. While the patronage or spoils system is well known as being a source of severe corruption and leading to a lack of a professional bureaucracy or civil service, it seems to have been replaced by fund-raising and national/ideological issues as the means for congresspeople to interact with their voters. It almost seems to me that the older way could lead to a congress composed of individuals much more tightly tied to the local conditions and people in their district rather than those tied to political positions. 

Secondly, regional and party allegiances were significant in a way that political ideology was apparently not. This seems to be the biggest difference between now and then. Lyndon Johnson was obviously part of the Texas delegation in Washington. This group included extreme reactionaries beholden to utilities, oil, or other business interests, as well as populists more concerned with the poor and the farmers. Texas at this time was described by Caro as a state where power was firmly in the grip of a reactionary wealthy elite but where the public was very liberal and in love with Roosevelt but still suspicious of government. In other words, there were liberals and conservatives representing Texas alongside each other. One would think today that these people would not work together, but at this time the regional and personal identities carried a lot more weight. For example, in 1940, Vice President Garner publicly split with Roosevelt, whom he personally greatly respected as the head of the Democratic party, over the New Deal policies that he hated and considered dangerous liaisons with communism. A man like Sam Rayburn, who ideologically was aligned with Roosevelt and worked diligently to pass New Deal legislation, nonetheless backed the Garner bid due to his personal friendship with Garner and their shared roots. Indeed, after Ganer’s bid was clearly doomed, Rayburn persisted in an effort to have the Texas delegates at the Democratic Party Convention vote for Garner in a symbolic “favorite son” vote while simultaneously endorsing Roosevelt’s platform, two clearly inconsistent positions. This soured Rayburn’s and Roosevelt’s relationship (which incidentally opened up more opportunities for Johnson to act as Roosevelt’s man in Texas rather than Rayburn). Furthermore, many of the reactionary financial backers from the big industries in Texas were willing to fund Johnson’s campaigns despite him running vociferously as little more than a symbolic stand-in for Roosevelt himself and his New Deal program. They knew that Johnson needed to run on that populist platform but would still help out the Texas elites - after all, if the government is going to spend flashy sums in the New Deal programs, why not make sure that you get your slice of it.

Thirdly, we must address the place of money in politics. Caro repeatedly and deeply characterizes the level to which Johnson’s campaigns relied on very ample campaign funds. In fact, one of the excellent tangents in the work describes how the Brown and Root contracting company, embroiled in a stymied dam-building project, bankrolled Johnson for Congress, despite there being superior choices, simply so that Johnson could unstuck the dam project for them once he was in Congress. Later, his contacts with contractors and lobbyists helped Johnson distribute funds in the 1940 House elections to maintain the Democratic majority. Johnson's 1941 failed Senate run was the largest expenditure ever by a Texas candidate, with rallies full of entertainment, cash giveaways, and lavish barbecues. And the money did not just go to legitimate ends. Plenty of bribery and vote-buying was needed, and it paid to have the biggest budget to do so. Caro is clear on this - Johnson, who married for money and sought friends with money, understood that money in politics gave him power as long as he had the money. Personal and ideological influence can wax and wane depending on prevailing opinions or the health of friends, but money allows for permanent power. McConnell also is well known for supporting money in politics, with legendary sparring with John McCain over this issue.

Finally, corruption at the ballot box. Writing this in the wake of the “Stop the Steal” movement perpetrated by Trump against Biden in an attempt to delegitimize Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election is a thought provoking exercise. It turns out that Johnson only lost the 1941 Senate election because he announced the vote totals from the areas of Texas where he controlled the vote too early - when the results were announced, it left him vulnerable to vote count manipulation elsewhere in the state where others controlled the vote. That is exactly what happened. But there is a detailed description of the southern Texas areas, predominantly Mexican American areas, each county controlled by bosses that required bribes and without whom no votes were to be had. Today there are allegations of corruption with respect to campaign donations, but there is clearly nothing that stoops to the level of ballot box stuffing and the like. 

As for the writing and the structure of the work itself, there are a few features of note. 

Caro’s decision to approach the subject at great length allows for some fabulous enlightening tangents that would have to be cut from a more circumscribed work. Some that stand out include: a lengthy introductory section on the general history of Texas and the Hill Country; a section on the onset of the Great Depression; character sketches of other important figures such as Sam Rayburn or LBJ’s benefactor Herman Brown; and most strikingly of all, a description of the exhausting daily working life of wives and mothers in the Texas Hill Country in order to really drive home to the reader of the prospective benefits for them of electrification.

At first brush, justifying this length for a work dedicated to a historical figure who in 2021 is somewhat obscure may seem difficult. But that justification is self-evident when one learns about the extent of what Johnson achieved and how its legacy today defines American expectations towards their own lives and their government. And furthermore, this length as mentioned above allows this to be not the history of the life of one figure but rather a more generalized history of the United States over a period of decades. I feel that a reader can feel as if they had lived and experienced these years alongside the subject of their reading.

I look forward to reading more of this series. I think it's a wonderful history of America over many decades and a fascinating profile of a curious man who ended up achieving immense power.