Robert Caro's biography of LBJ: Four volumes and counting

Robert Caro wrote what is, to me, the best biography ever published. And he’s still writing it. His multi-volume history of Lyndon Johnson consumes four thick books and counting.

The entire project is “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” with the individual volumes titled “The Path to Power” (1982), “Means of Ascent,” (1990) “Master of the Senate,” (2002) and “The Passage of Power” (2012). The first volume, which I found the most compelling, begins with Johnson’s grandparents, who were pioneers in the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s as settlers discovered that what looked like lush, fertile land was only a couple of inches of topsoil that could not sustain agriculture. The book continues through the years when young Lyndon Johnson was determined to be somebody, to make his mark in a way that his poor father and grandfather had not. 

“The Passage of Power” ends in 1964. Lyndon Johnson is in the White House following the Kennedy Assassination, and he has coaxed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, perhaps the most significant legislation of the generation, into law.

Caro initially said he would write a conventional, one-volume biography, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Robert Moses. But he kept finding more and more facts about Johnson, so he wrote a second volume and a third and a fourth. The fifth volume is not finished yet, and there is no guarantee that it will be the final one.

Reading these books taught me more about Lyndon Johnson than I ever wanted to know. He was conniving, egotistical, stubborn, cruel and abusive at times, and focused on being the Great Man he had wanted to be since childhood. He cheated on his faithful, adoring wife, destroyed the lives of young men who worked on his staff in Congress and succeeded in part by callously using people who trusted him.

He was also probably the most effective legislator in American history. He could be persuasive, even charming, and if that didn’t work, he could be threatening, vindictive and backstabbing to get his way. His success in getting passage of civil rights bills is extraordinary. You can love him or hate him for that and for his “Great Society” programs, but you have to admit he changed this country.

The minute detail in these books is astonishing. Caro describes long-ago events in great detail. He uncovers episodes that had never been made public, including a hard-to-believe years-long affair between Johnson and a glamorous, wealthy member of Washington’s social elite.

            Caro wrote a long article for The New Yorker (Jan. 28, 2019, edition) that explains how he got so deep into the life of LBJ. He began his research in 1976 and has worked continuously on his expanded biography since then.

            The New Yorker article makes a good textbook for young historians or news reporters learning how to research and interview. Caro digs deep into files stashed away in libraries and archives to find facts he was looking for or facts he’d never considered. No mention is too insignificant for him to not follow up. Any name he sees is followed up with an interview or several interviews of the same person, peeling away the lies and the cover-ups until he gets to the bottom of the matter. I recommend the article to anyone doing historical research.

            Although I tend to be a slow, plodding, easily distracted reader, I dove into each of Caro’s LBJ volumes  (which average close to 1,000 pages) with excitement and eagerness. I’m looking forward to the fifth installment, but Caro is 84 and admits that his ambitions for this biography might exceed his mortality. I’m counting on that final volume.

Hal Tarleton was managing editor, editor and opinion editor of The Wilson Daily Times. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

This post originally appeared in The Wilson Times.

What we might learn from Nixon

I've recently watched PBS' "Presidents" series on John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Oh, the memories of the sixties and seventies! The JFK program affirmed my admiration for the man whose presidency and influence were cut tragically short. The LBJ series made me want to go back and re-read all four volumes of Robert Caro's extraordinary biography of Johnson, one of the most influential and tragic of presidents. I had commented in the past about what President Obama could learn from LBJ, who knew how to cajole members of Congress to pass his tectonic civil rights legislation.

The segment on Nixon brought back so many memories of the early 1970s, when I was working in Washington, Nixon was in the White House and the "plumbers" were in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. I've always thought that Nixon's problems as president were the result of his own paranoia, his distrust of everyone and his resentment of people born wealthier and luckier than he. The PBS segment bolsters that impression but also gives credit to Nixon's visionary foreign policy. Under Nixon there was a global strategy for building peace through alliances with other nations. His opening to China, his Middle East negotiations, and his arms accord with the Soviet Union were portions of an overall strategy to balance global interests and power for peaceful progress. Even his Vietnam strategy, although never successfully implemented, sought a peaceful, political exit from a military stalemate.

In an election year, it would be comforting to think that our presidential candidates have a grand strategy for balancing trade, military power and national interest. I'm not hearing that from either national candidate this year, so we might well stumble into another war or a disastrous series of protective tariffs that cripple world trade and the global economy.

Campaigning is not the same as governing

It has been said before — American elections put the emphasis on campaigning skills and not on governing skills. We tend to elect the best campaigners, not the best managers or administrators or legislators.

Barack Obama is making himself a classic example of this flaw in the system. Obama presided over an exceptional 2008 presidential campaign, and he won again in 2012, despite having a lot of odds stacked against him. But his legislative or governing achievements are slim, with the exception of the Affordable Care Act, which seems to be slipping deeper and deeper into trouble.

Obama's instinct for addressing every governmental problem is to hit the campaign trail. He is doing it now to try to beat down the complaints about the problems with the launch of health care exchanges. After the tragic mass shooting in Connecticut a year ago, Obama pushed strengthening gun laws by, once again, hitting the campaign trail. A former neighborhood organizer, Obama seems to see every problem as a call for grassroots organizing and marshaling public opinion against or in favor of a particular issue.

I've said it before, that Obama should read Robert Caro's fourth volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, "The Passage of Power." LBJ was the consummate legislator, able to wheel and deal on the Senate floor and willing to manipulate people and issues to achieve his legislative goals. Johnson had his repellent qualities, but he got things done. He got legislation passed — the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, Medicare, etc. — when more skilled campaigners (the adored John F. Kennedy) could not.

President Obama could take a lesson from LBJ, who was vice president when Obama was born, and concentrate on the 100 voters in the Senate and the 435 voters in the House instead of appealing to the millions of voters in 50 states to pass legislation.

It's a budget negotiation, not a political campaign

On Friday, the law of the land says sequestration begins, imposing across-the-board cuts on federal spending (while leaving some spending categories untouched). Just how bad the consequences will be is being debated by the talking heads of the Democratic and Republican parties, but both parties seem to agree that sequestration is a painful remedy for Congress' inability to match its spending "wants" with its taxation "needs."

Despite this looming deadline, which some economists and President Obama say could be horrific, there is little movement on Capitol Hill to avoid sequestration. Inter-party talks appear to be non-existent. Voices of reason and negotiation are drowned out by partisan rants.

President Obama has been talking a lot about the hazards of sequestration this month, but he's talking to the wrong people. Obama is treating sequestration — and, by extension, the federal budget — as a political issue, not a fiscal responsibility or budgeting issue. He's flying around the country (5,000 miles by one critic's count) urging voters to complain to their congressional representatives. His tactic of trying to shame Congress into action does not appear to be working.

Obama is known to admire President Lincoln and has sometimes invited comparisons to John F. Kennedy. But perhaps he should look to another president, who was skilled at getting things done on Capitol Hill, even if he wasn't as charismatic as Kennedy or as eloquent as Lincoln. Lyndon B. Johnson was the Master of the Senate, who could push legislation through the often paralyzed "World's Greatest Deliberative Body." As majority leader, Johnson enjoyed unparalleled success in controlling the flow of legislation and ensuring that the party's legislative agenda was carried through to success. As president, he worked behind the scenes to persuade members of Congress to approve the legislation he supported.

Johnson realized that popular support is nice to have, but what you really need is 51 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House. Obama would do better if he would leave the campaign soapbox and sit down with congressional leaders to work a deal that will meet the approval of both sides.

I've been reading Robert Caro's magnificent four-volume (with a fifth volume yet to come) biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro's books are not likely to turn the reader into a Johnson fan, but you cannot help but marvel at his legislative skills. Perhaps the books would be good reading for President Obama.