The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Robert Caro, 2002

Robert Caro’s third book of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate is definitely the greatest of those I’ve read so far. It’s also the most acclaimed, having won both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Book three suffered very little from the occasional weaknesses of books one and two - that is, nearly every section of Master of the Senate is enthralling, entertaining, and feels necessary. There were stretches in the other books where the narrative got bogged down in the kinds of minutiae that concerned few others than the most diehard LBJ fan or PhD student. Master of the Senate is far more wheat than chaff. 

Master of the Senate starts with one of those patented Caro tangents - a history of the Senate as an institution from its inception leading up to Johnson’s entry in 1949. During the drafting of the US Constitution in the late 1780s, the Senate was designed to act as the primary check and balance on the rest of government and the public. The need for this check can be cast in a positive or negative light. 

In positive telling, the Senate would act as the farsighted, moderate counterbalance to the short-sighted, passionate House of Representatives and the potentially power-grabbing executive President. The House, whose entire membership was elected every two years, would reflect the fast changing currents and opinions of the American public.The President, elected every four years, would by construction be exposed to less short-term popular opinion, but the very nature of an office vested with so much concentrated authority and yet occupied by a single individual poses an array of risks, from demagoguery to autocracy.  In the opposite negative telling of the design, the Senate was always intended to be obstructionist, counter-majoritarian, and non-democratic. In either view, the Senate was designed to withstand any and all external pressures.

The details of the Senate’s design accomplished its founders' objectives. The Senate represented the US states as sovereign states, in some ways like today’s UN ambassadors. Senators were selected by state legislatures, not via the public through elections. Each state was equally represented by two Senators regardless of population. 

Each Senator served staggered six year terms, longer than Representatives and Presidents. Only one third of the Senate would be up for election in each Congress (i.e. every two years). Therefore, the Senate's membership persists beyond the shifting membership of the House and the White House. It was Senate tradition to claim that since the membership could never be reset all at once, the Senate remained the same body across all sessions of Congress, unlike the House which always changed. This continuity contributed to a priority being placed on longevity and seniority, which those qualities becoming the primary determinants of leadership. 

In addition to the constitutional structure of the Senate, its self determined rules contributed to its character. Not only would the Senate be able to check the rest of the government but a minority within the Senate would be able to check the full Senate. 

The Senate is much maligned for the filibuster which allows any Senator the right to unlimited debate and to effectively block movement on any bill. While the passage of a bill requires a simple majority, Senate rules require a three-fifths super majority to end debate - that is, to pass a cloture resolution on a filibuster. Without ending a filibuster, it is impossible to bring a bill to vote. Not only does a filibuster prevent action on the bill in question but it also preempts all other business and the Senate must grind to a halt, which is a powerful weapon when timed against legislative deadlines. In practice the cloture requirement is such a high bar that even the mere threat of filibuster can kill a bill. 

Like most legislatures and deliberative bodies, the Senate divides itself into committees that handle different specializations. The Senate’s committees historically operated as independent baronies under the authority of their Chairs who faced no oversight. As Committee review is the first step in the life of any bill falling under its jurisdiction, the committees and their Chairs decide whether to kill bills or let them proceed to the full Senate. Committees are headed by a Chair, a position selected by (1) majority party membership and (2) seniority in the Senate. Senators with the most seniority had the first choice of committee assignments and chair positions regardless of their abilities. Senate Leadership, such as membership in the Rules Committee, was reserved for the most important Committee Chairs and most senior senators, reinforcing the relatively unchecked power of the Senate barons. 

Caro describes an earlier more distinguished period of the Senate during which three major Senators dominated - John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, known as the “Great Triumvirate”. These three senators were significant political figures for the entire first half of the nineteenth century, serving in the House, Senate, and Presidential Cabinet. Caro describes this as a time of active, persuasive, and eloquent debate on the Senate floor by ambitious and talented individuals. There were no large staffs so Senators debated and forged compromises themselves, in public, serving the purpose of hosting the national dialogue as intended by many of the founders. 

By the 1850s, the Triumvirate and the nation hurtled towards confronting the key national issue that had been put off again and again, that of slavery. During the multiple nullification crisis in the 1830s, basic questions of federalism and states rights as well as the continued existence of the Union were debated and resolved, in no small part due to the work of the Triumvirs. As the nation expanded and admitted more states, the question of whether slavery should be expanded to new states was central. The course of action taken was to pursue balance between the slave and non-slave states, little more than a delay action. However, the Triumvirate was critical to maintaining the balance and managed to postpone the Civil War by a decade through the Compromise of 1850. In the end, the Triumvirate represented the kind of statesmanship and rhetoric to which Senators would aspire and provided institutional stability during the early period of the Republic. However, they were not able to solve the thorniest issue in politics at the time, leading to the possibly inevitable Civil War.   

Later Senate history can be characterized by condensed periods of action followed by long lumbering slogs of inaction. Many of these cycles correspond to crisis moments and their preceding build up phases, be it the Civil War, the World Wars, Depression, etc. One commonality among the fallow periods seemed to be the preeminence of wealth and special interests either in the person of senior senators or their commercial benefactors and the diminishment of Senators as debaters and compromise-makers. For example, the Gilded Age saw a “Big Four” of Republican Senators who promulgated a conservative, pro-business agenda until the 1901 ascension of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency and following reforms.

At the same time, there have been bursts of legislative accomplishment. There were typically wartime or post-war sessions during which the President and/or majority party was dominant and the opposition either totally nonexistent (as in the Reconstruction era when Southern Senators and Representatives were expelled from Congress) or severely beat down (as in the New Deal era). In these periods, powerful Presidents wielded the Congress like a rubber stamp to roll out their reform agendas. FDR spoke about the Senate with near contempt and directed them to pass his Administration-written bills with little or no time for even a cursory review. However, after some recovery, the Senate would regain its contrarian and resistant streak and kill the program. In the case of FDR, it was the proposed Court packing scheme that roused the senate back into its obstructionist/protective role, stymying the plan and effectively ending the series of New Deal legislation.

By the time LBJ joined the Senate in 1949, it had ossified into a perilous condition. The constitutional structure and rules of the Senate, designed to heavily bias the Senate in favor of inaction and the status quo, had become powerful tools in the hands of the Democratic Party Southern Caucus and were serving their intended roles in the least moral possible way.

The US South had been a steadfast Democratic Party stronghold since before the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, when US troops fully departed and sovereignty was restored to Southern state governments. The Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln, Emancipation, and Reconstruction - the party that opposed slavery and supported civil rights. With widespread opposition in the South to civil rights and racial equality, the Democratic party was supported there as the antithesis of the Republican Party. Furthermore, while Southern states were readmitted to the Union, the region remained somewhat apart and “sectional.” The Senate became the most prestigious and sought-after political office in the South by default, as Southern politicians could not dream of running for President - Northern and Western voters would not support Southern politicians who so explicitly defended segregation and fought against civil rights, but Southern voters would only support the politicians who did the same. In addition to the issue of race, the two parties were split primarily on economics. The Democratic party was the party of labor, while the Republican party was the party of big business.

As a result, the men elected to become Southern Democrat Senators were capable, influential, and popular in their home states, and most importantly, were reelected time and time again. These Southern Senators grew more senior with each reelection and therefore accumulated the crucial source of power in the senate - seniority. Senior Southern Senators held Chair posts in nearly all the significant committees, thereby determining the fate of bills. They also wielded the filibuster to powerful effect. 

The product was a US Senate that, from at least the early 1880s until the late 1950s, was dominated by senior Southerners. No civil rights bill was passed by the Senate for these eighty years despite repeated efforts by the House, President, and Senate Liberals. 

The Senate had been imbued with the power to check and prevent “rash” legislative action but instead had been co-opted to prevent the expansion of America’s founding principles - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - to all of its citizens.

No matter the institution that he met during his career, Lyndon Johnson had a history of finding where the power rested and investing in it and later using it. In the Senate of LBJ’s first term, power rested with senior Southern Committee Chairmen. As he did in the House with the childless bachelor Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, LBJ became close to an older man with substantial power in the Senate - Richard Russell, the childless bachelor Senator from Georgia. Russell was the unofficial leader of the Southern Caucus and therefore a dominant figure in the entire Senate. LBJ had been a “professional son” to the key figures in each stage of his life and successfully did so again. At the same time, LBJ identified a potential power position that had been neglected up to that point - Senate Party Leadership. 

In today’s Senate, Senate Party Leaders have emerged as the primary source of coordination, scheduling, vote counting, and more, while the Committee Chairs are less independent and less powerful. Party discipline behind the Leaders’ initiatives is emphasized and wielded by recent and contemporary figures like Mitch McConnell. Prior to LBJ’s term as Majority Leader, the position had few powers or privileges. Primarily the leaders had enjoyed the right to first recognition on the floor of the Senate but had no authority or visibility into the affairs of committees. Interestingly, there was a great disconnect between the actual power of the position and the external public perception of its power, and the holder of the position was typically targeted by derision and humiliation for the ineffectuality of the Senate. Caro demonstrates how the general public and liberal journalists apparently systematically misunderstood the importance of the Leader and blamed the Leader for the Senate’s inaction on key issues, including Civil Rights, when the responsibility really rested with the Southern Caucus and Committee Chairs. 

It was LBJ who transformed the role of Party Leadership into its current form by carefully accruing new authorities. These included appointing Senators to committees on grounds other than seniority, scheduling and coordinating the committees, orchestrating the Senate floor, and even going around Committee Chairs and directly meeting with Committee staff. Johnson also began to use parliamentary procedures to limit debate and create a more pro forma atmosphere on the Senate floor. Whereas previously the Senate had acted like a body of ambassadors from separate sovereign states and had debated and negotiated openly on the Senate floor, now Johnson acted as an arbiter and go-between, facilitating negotiations behind the scenes so that debate disappeared on the floor. Whereas previously legislative progress could easily become derailed and the Senate run into a logjam, Johnson instituted discipline and a steady pace of progress in the business of the Senate.  

The accrual of power by Johnson into his own hands and that of the position of Majority Leader came at the expense of the power of the Committee Chairmen, and therefore of the Southern Caucus. Recall, the Southern Senators used and relied on their power as Senior Chairs to prevent federal action on Civil Rights and other issues that would impact Southern states and had done so for decades. With Johnson, these same Senators allowed their own irreversible usurpation - but why? 

Richard Russell had an explosive rise in his career in state and federal politics, from being elected Governor of Georgia to Senator. However, when he ran for president, Russell ran into an impenetrable barrier - no Southerner who supported segregation would receive nominations and votes from the North or West, but could not win the South without that support and therefore would never win the presidency so long as progress on Civil Rights was prevented. Russell nonetheless was a patriot to the US as well as Dixie and held a strong conviction that, in order for the South to be fully readmitted to the Union and the wounds of the Civil War to be fully healed, it was necessary for a Southerner to be elected President. Caro extensively lays out a plan by Russell to propel Lyndon Johnson to become that Southern President. This ambition explains the motivation and justification for many of the compromises made by the Southern Caucus to increase Johnson’s power at their own expense. As we know now, this was an effective strategy, but it came at the expense of the Southern Caucus’s primary objective - preventing Civil Rights legislation. Russell’s failure in the 1952 presidential primary and LBJ’s repeat of the pattern in 1956 led to a clear goal for Johnson - earn a win on Civil Rights big enough to win over liberals but small enough not to lose the South.

To set himself up for the 1960 Democratic presidential race, Johnson decided to pass a Civil Rights Act in the 1957-58 session. It had to be the perfect bill for his purposes and the constraints that defined that were extremely narrow. Caro writes a thrilling story of the writing, debating, and eventual passage of this bill, whereby LBJ led the Senate to pass the first Civil Rights legislation in decades. It was not the kind of omnibus bill that the liberals of the time wanted - it had been strategically watered down by the influence of the Southern Caucus - but it was a real voting rights act, albeit one with a somewhat weak enforcement clause - violations of the act were subject to trial by local jury, which meant that Southern Whites could ensure that prosecuted Whites would either be acquitted or the jury hung. Nonetheless, the passage of the bill was the first breach in the Southern Senatorial fortress and which set the scene for the later Civil Rights acts. 

After reading Master of the Senate there remains a bit of mystery and contradiction to this Faustian bargain. The Southerner Senators wholeheartedly believed that by getting LBJ into the White House, they would guarantee the most powerful friend to South and kill Civil Rights progress for at least another decade. Caro documents how years later, prominent Southern Senators admitted to strong feelings of betrayal after the LBJ presidency. Caro likewise documented Johnson’s lifelong tendency to say to people just what they wanted to hear, even when that led to him taking on the opposite positions with each side simultaneously. In other words, Johnson lied continuously and always avoided definite positions on controversial issues. This dynamic was in full effect on civil rights - Johnson assured Southern Senators that “together” they would prevent civil rights while simultaneously building a better reputation among liberals who were highly suspicious of him. It seems very possible that Johnson lied his way into the confidences of the powerful Southern Chairs in order to usurp their powers for himself.   

I think Russell’s plan to “end the Civil War” by electing a Southerner to the presidency was of mixed success because while that Southerner ended up being the instrument of transformation that Russell fought against all his career, the South has not been considered a sectional or distinct region for some time as of 2024. Race remains one of the top issues that the nation fails to resolve, but it is no longer considered a distinctly Southern issue. Legal segregation and the “Southern civilization” were abolished and much progress has been made, but I think much of today’s America tells itself that the problem was solved in the 1960s and doesn’t need to be worked on anymore. We have seen this idea implemented by the Supreme court in the early 2020s with decisions to limit the Voting Rights Act and roll back affirmative action, both times with a citation of this kind of idea. 

Caro writes extensively to probe the apparent contradictions in Lyndon Johnson and his attitudes and accomplishments on race and Civil Rights. The reader knows by the end of the Johnson story, which Caro also references, that Johnson accomplished the greatest advance for Civil Rights and racial equality in US history after Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction, and the post-Civil War constitutional amendments. But during the lead up to that time, while reading the Caro biography, that end result seems far from inevitable. Caro admits as much and interrogates Johnson’s racial attitudes and actions earlier in his life. They are far from anti-racist, but also far from the vehement and violent racism of his colleagues and donors. Johnson’s stint teaching at a Mexican American school and at the Texas NYA saw him focus on Mexican and Black constituencies, but not vociferously support them. Johnson employed Black servants and treated them poorly, although he did the same to his entire staff. Johnson grew up in the South of Hill Country, Texas, not the Deep South - there were hardly any Black residents in his area and not a historical tradition of plantations. I think it is likely the case that Johnson was a casual racist for much of his life and biased for his entire life, but nonetheless was a major advocate for Black progress. In my opinion, he should be celebrated for those accomplishments rather than derided for outmoded atitudes he held at times in his life. 

I am somewhat reminded of the recent Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, who had significant progressive achievements including expanding Medicaid but whose tenure was rocked by scandals stemming from old pictures of him in blackface and other similar insensitive racial issues from his past. There was a very significant debate in the Democratic party about whether Northam should have resigned. He did not do so, and since the Virginia governor is limited to a single term, there isn’t a clear referendum to see how the public viewed this issue. However, I think both Northam and Johnson show that there is a need to refrain from purity tests and that we should celebrate people who change and learn during the course of their lives. 

At the end of the day, Caro offers a simple calculation to encapsulate and solve the apparent contradiction - two lifelong powerful motivations for LBJ were compassion and ambition, but ambition always triumphed over compassion. During nearly the whole of his career, the most promising means to accrue power and satisfy his ambition rested with conservative senior politicians and wealthy businessmen donors from Texas and the South. Therefore, Johnson acted on the behalf of these parties and did so very successfully. There were a handful of episodes when his compassion and ambition were aligned, such as with the electrification of his home district in Texas and in these periods Johnson was highly effective at effecting progressive social change. The circumstances that led up to the 1957 Civil Rights Act perfectly demonstrate this.

Caro describes a type of political power which is relatively rare in comparison to executive and judicial power - legislative power. It has commonalities with other types of coercive power where the currency of power is the ability to give and withhold privileges or favors. It also involves the currency of information, as well as administrative skills like organizational and coordination effectiveness. These are the hard facets of legislative power, but it also involves a softer more artful aspect which relates to the nature of compromise - finding it, waiting for the perfect timing, and creating space for it to be possible. Johnson was a master of legislative power. Johnson was like a supercomputer or symphonic maestro capable of juggling and orchestrating under so many constraints and with so many competing objectives with interlocking and interdependent moving parts. A great example was his first round of committee assignments, where he was able to satisfy his own goals and senators’ ambitions by making more than a dozen swaps. But the ability to feel the rhythm of the legislative process, to speed it up or slow it down based on the necessity of gaining or keeping additional votes seemed like an innate feeling.

Johnson wielded a large set of legislative tools both parliamentary and personal in nature. He read people closely in the run up to each vote - LBJ was the best vote counter in Washington. But not only did he count votes, he worked to flip them. There is the famous “Johnson treatment” by which he would cajole, convince, threaten, intimidate, and compromise with people to get the necessary votes and often a few extra in reserve. Sometimes he would be more subtle than flip a vote, he might have a Senator withhold a vote or be absent. This power is very much a form of inside baseball and probably would not be clear to the public until much later if it were happening at the time. 

Johnson also extended his dominance of his staff to some other Senators, more often using men like tools rather than partners. One of the most intriguing relationships was the one he had with Hubert Humphrey, his eventual Vice President and a leader of the Liberal wing of the Democrats. Humphrey served as a bridge between Johnson and the liberals after Johnson helped Humphrey come out of the cold during the early years of Humphrey’s Senate career, when Humphrey had made enemies of the senior Old Bulls by speaking out of turn and criticizing the leaders. Despite Humphrey’s undeniable charisma and rhetorical prowess, he nonetheless fell under the influence of LBJ and became all the more effective as a tool in Johnson’s toolset. Johnson also began to ignore senatorial dignity and respect, becoming willing to black ball or shun Senators who didn’t agree to be part of his team and vote as he demanded. He successfully stymied the careers of senators who wouldn't work with him. This way Johnosn extended the legislative power of influence and coercion. 

Caro also described several examples in which Johnson found a path to compromise on issues that seemed impossible, often by linking previously unlinked issues. This was perhaps the greatest example of genius - this ability to get out of a logjam by finding the single possible path or imagining one when none existed. This was certainly the case for the 1957 Civil Rights act and during some of the filibuster fights. 

When I consider the Senate sessions of my lifetime, it seems difficult to identify masters of legislative power, particularly any who wielded it to bring major new legislation and progress. McConnell is cited as a powerful recent Majority Leader, but his career harkens back to the Russells and Lodges of Senate history - those immovable objects in the face of apparently but not always ultimately unstoppable forces of reform. I believe that the US government is facing a legitimacy crisis during the 2020s and one of the major sources of this crisis is the inability of the government to make tangible progress on certain key bread and butter, household economic issues for Americans. These include the basics, such as housing, elder and child care, and more. If some of these were tackled today by a figure of legislative genius such as Johnson, I believe much of the political instability would be relieved. 

I also think it is worthwhile to point out that Johnson was an institutionalist and not a revolutionary. Many might make the case that there are greater historical figures than Johnson who more dramatically brought on change by disrupting or even overthrowing the system, peacefully or perhaps violently. But with the kind of reform brought by Johnson working within the institution of the Senate, which is so resolute and difficult to move, the progress that is won is all the more durable. At the same time, the institution is revitalized and legitimized anew, creating a very positive cycle. There may be some arguments such as Jefferson’s for the need to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, but Johnson’s work presents a kind of compelling counterexample.