What propels the book is a relentless narrative that repeatedly pits LBJ's bottomless ambition against the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his path. The depths of LBJ's ambition (or desperation; in Johnson, the two feelings are one) are epic. Caro describes in poignant terms the young LBJ's shame at his family's poverty; for example, his father, Sam Johnson, served five terms in the Texas legislature, but was reduced to road construction when money grew scarce -- on a road that had been built under a law he himself had passed. No less intense was LBJ's need to be somebody, to dominate not just a conversation (however trivial) but state and then national politics. And that advancement had to come fast, to avoid the early deaths of nearly every male in his family, who at best survived to their early 60s.
If LBJ's ambitions were large, the obstacles against him were monumental. Johnson's opponent in his second Senate race, for instance, was Coke Stevenson, who was not just a former Texas governor -- he was the single greatest vote-getter in Texas history, at one point carrying all 254 of the state's counties during the Democratic gubernatorial primary. When Johnson finally did reach the Senate, he confronted a tradition-bound institution that fetishized seniority over merit, and that thus demanded decades of service to acquire power -- unacceptable for a man who did not believe he had decades left to live.
LBJ did not overcome every obstacle. But he got through enough to eventually become President of the United States. And Caro gives absolutely riveting accounts of every battle -- in particular, LBJ's thrilling Senate race against Coke Stevenson, which consumes the bulk of Means of Ascent, and which involves helicopters, pistoleros, and Justice Hugo Black.
But Caro also sets up a deeper narrative that takes on ever greater dimensions as LBJ's story proceeds. What we see of LBJ through the end of Master of the Senate can be described in a word: ruthlessness. And this ruthlessness was not just amoral but vicious, as is starkly apparent from LBJ's role in the battle over the nomination of Leland Olds as the chairman of the Federal Power Commission in 1949. As Caro tells it, Olds was not just a decent family man and a patriot, but also an enormously gifted administrator whose talents led to a golden age for the Commission. But because Olds's reconfirmation could hinder LBJ's political future, LBJ applied himself relentlessly to defeating Olds, and the resulting battle destroyed the unwitting target, both professionally and personally.
The story is a tragedy: avarice killing decency. But it is also not the whole story. As Caro reminds us, the very same LBJ that had shattered Leland Olds would be responsible for some of the greatest acts in American history, including the passage of landmark civil rights bills and the establishment of the Great Society. This fundamental contradiction -- between self-serving ruthlessness and (seemingly) selfless principle -- is the central mystery at the heart of Lyndon Johnson's life. And Caro does not hide from this mystery; it is no coincidence that Means of Ascent, which ends in another act of supreme political cynicism (Johnson's stolen Senate race), begins with a moving description of President Johnson's famous "We Shall Overcome" speech before Congress.
The amount of research that Caro has done for this biography is staggering. Along with his wife, Ina -- who has been his only "research assistant," ever -- Caro has apparently read every scrap of paper in several presidential libraries; talked to every living person who ever interacted with LBJ or his family or associates; and actually lived in every location where LBJ set foot. And this research goes well beyond the already expansive confines of LBJ's life; sprinkled throughout the books are wonderfully detailed mini-biographies of other significant politicians, such as Coke Stevenson, Sam Rayburn, and Richard Russell. What is especially remarkable about the Caros' research is not just its scope, but its accuracy. For instance, as a lawyer, I'm especially sensitive to non-lawyers' inadvertent mischaracterizations of legal matters. But Caro's description of the legal battle over LBJ's Senate election is scrupulously correct, even on the most technical procedural matters, as is (to give another example) his more abbreviated description of executive agreements.
As a result of the attention that Caro has lavished on this work, The Years of Lyndon Johnson achieves a richness of detail that reads almost like contemporaneous coverage. That sensation becomes particularly acute when episodes that Caro describes take on startlingly modern tones. I'm writing this review during one of the worst economic downturns in American history. And I could not help reading Caro's phenomenal description of the Great Depression with sick fascination at the parallels to today -- including (and here I show my partisan colors) the Democrats' election of an inspiring leader, and the Republicans' hysterics that Roosevelt's recovery plans were "socialist." (As a side note, however: it was very surprising to me to discover that the Republicans had a sterling opportunity in the 1950s to become the party of civil rights -- and they in fact made major moves toward this transformation, in part due to principle, and in part due to the political calculation of adding millions of black votes.)
I have only a few extremely mild criticisms -- maybe "comments" would be a better word -- about The Years of Lyndon Johnson. There are some gaps that I wish Caro could have filled. For example, one of LBJ's major character traits was his ability to charm older (and usually unmarried or childless) men by serving as a "professional son." Caro does not stint on details about what LBJ would do to kiss up. But he doesn't explain why Johnson's efforts were so successful, when so many of his peers saw straight through his brown-nosing and despised him for it; were these older men, some of whom were the great politicians of their day, so easily bamboozled? Caro also does not comment on another odd disparity. In Johnson's early political life, Texans elected two governors to office: the laconic, iron-principled Stevenson; and Pappy O'Daniel, a popular radio host who was essentially a clown. What led Texans to support -- in enormous numbers -- such wildly disparate candidates?
Caro's slow publication rate may also have led to another, more methodological problem. Caro does not hide his personal view of Lyndon Johnson; if anything, his opinion only sharpened over time. (In Means of Ascent, for instance, Caro writes that Johnson used "amoral" means to steal his first Senate victory; but, tellingly, the exact same sentence, in Master of the Senate, instead describes Johnson's methods as "immoral.") To his credit, Caro both acknowledges his viewpoint and scrupulously defends himself against charges of bias -- primarily, it seems, by getting an absurd number of sources to back up every controversial point that he makes. But some of those sources spoke to Caro only after he began publishing, and it is not clear to me whether their awareness of Caro's work shaped their own recollections. (Most notably, John Connally, a close aide of LBJ who later became Governor of Texas, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of the Treasury, only agreed to talk to Caro after reading The Path to Power, where Caro's viewpoint was already clear.)
But these are just quibbles. My only real concern is whether Caro can finish his biography of LBJ. Caro has promised one more volume to cover the rest of LBJ's life. But Caro is an old man, and his output is "slow -- too slow," as LBJ would say. The first volume of the biography, The Path to Power, was published one year after I was born; the third volume, Master of the Senate, came out the year I graduated from college. At this rate, the last volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson won't be published until at earliest 2012, when Caro will be almost 80 years old.
I hope he makes it.
Copyright © 2009 Steven Wu 