I would
say the first book is better but this one has a really good finish. It is a lot
of time, especially at the beginning, of building up. This book covers the
seven years from Johnson’s 1941 loss in the Texas Senate special election to
his victory in 1948, when he committed fraud to steal the election from “Mr.
Texas,” Coke Stevenson. It starts slow. Until 1947, not much happens. Johnson
does very little in Congress and is depressed. He eventually gets FDR to
appoint him to be an observer in the Pacific (a short service with the Navy
that he would later exaggerate to credulous crowds in the 1948 campaign) but
returns depressed. Seeing that he had no future in the House, Johnson staked
his entire political career on getting into the Senate in 1948. It would be one
of the most famous elections of the century and also one of the most controversial.
In
Congress, Johnson had no power left. He was uninfluential and needed to leave.
The war couldn’t have come sooner. Unlike some congressmen, who joined to fight
at the front lines, Johnson became an observer, which meant several months
partying on the west coast and then a short tour of the Pacific Theater. He
flew in one mission and got very lucky not to be killed. He was originally slated
to go in one plane but went to the bathroom. When he returned, that bomber was filled,
and he went to another. The original was shot down and all the men aboard died.
Returning to DC, he was unhappy, would yell at his wife in public, and fell
into a depression. He spent seven years “in the wilderness,” and it was a rough
time for him.
Johnson
was to create in 1948 a completely different type of political campaign never
seen before in Texas. While in the past, candidates had commissioned polls
sparingly, Johnson would do them weekly. While in the past, candidates had
driven from town to town, giving speeches, Johnson would take a helicopter, the
first political candidate in history to ever do so. While radio had been used before
to deliver speeches, Johnson used his radio network and those of his allies to deliver
complete shows and programs advocating for his candidacy. While most candidates
raised small amounts of cash from loyal allies, Johnson pumped more money into
the campaign than had ever been seen before.
Despite
these dramatic changes, Johnson had a long lead to catch up to. Coke Stevenson
was the most popular politician in Texas history and Johnson started off very
far behind. Things got worse when kidney stones hospitalized him after he had
refused to see a doctor for weeks. In one dramatic moment, his assistant, Woodward,
saves his entire political career when Johnson tells him, delirious, to call
the media and tell them he’s dropping out. Woodward asks him to wait for his
wife to arrive and orders the doctors to allow no media members in to see him.
If Woodward had not done so, you have to imagine the United States without
Vietnam, without the Civil Rights Act, and without the Great Society.
In the
last weeks of the campaign, Johnson realized he was going to lose. They had
made up serious ground on Coke, but they had hit a wall. Despite wiretapping
their opponents, using a helicopter, and injecting tons of cash into the
election, Coke Stevenson was simply too popular. There was one last thing to
try.
The
politics of the border had always been corrupt throughout Texas’ history. It
was often delivered to candidates by “block voting,” where one candidate would
win 95% of the border counties’ votes. In 1948, the Johnson campaign, in coordination
with Judge/Boss George Parr and his deputy Luis Salas were going to bring the
corruption to a never-before-seen level. They bought tons and tons of votes,
spending more money than ever to have local sheriffs deliver their counties’ votes
to Johnson in a bold show of amorality. However it still wasn’t enough. The day
of the election showed that Johnson was still losing, though by margins of
under 500 or even 100 votes in an election of over one million votes. At that
point something mysterious happened. A ballot box (number 13) was found in Jim
Wells county that had 200 more votes for Johnson after the election had ended.
The votes were counted and Johnson won—by 87 votes.
It wasn’t
so suspicious. Upon further inspection by Coke Stevenson, those 200 votes were
listed by voters in alphabetical order, with many by people who were not in the
county that day, or others who were dead. By a 4-3 vote, the county Democratic
Party voted to disqualify them, but by a 29-28 vote the state party allowed
them. Then, one of the 29 decided to abstain, tying the vote! Johnson was in a
panic. At that moment, one of his assistants found in the bathroom one of the
voters, who had hid there to avoid voting. He dragged him out, where he voted
for Johnson, delivering the position in the Senate to him. Stevenson would
appeal in court, but Johnson, with the help of genius lawyer Abe Fortas would
re-appeal, win the appeal, and enter the Senate. He stole the election. Years
later, Luis Salas would reveal what had really happened, which was as many had
suspected, that Johnson had stolen the election. But by that time, Johnson was
dead and nothing could be changed. By the end of 1948, Johnson had stolen
elections in San Mateo Teaching College, The Little Congress of congressional
aides, and now the Senate. Once in the Senate, Johnson would begin a rise to
power that can surely be counted as one of the most rapid of all-time in
American politics.
Caro is
a great author and this book really confirmed it for me. Robert Caro is able to
make the drama feel so important and the characters so real that you feel like
this could be a great TV show or novel. I think that as a writer he is so good
at making you wonder “How is it gonna happen?” when you already know that the
ending will be Johnson’s victory. He also brings side characters and rivals to
life with long chapters devoted to their life stories and personalities. In
this book, Johnson’s antagonist is Coke Stevenson, also known as “Mr. Texas.” A
true cowboy, Coke was famous around the state for being a true idealist and
lover of democracy. He never ran for office so much as he was drafted and made
to stand for office due to recognition of his honor. In Volume 1, Caro makes
Sam Rayburn into the secondary figure of the book and in this one it’s Coke.
The chapters that focus on him are incredible and portray him as the perfect
foil to LBJ.
I want
to end with the last paragraph of the book, which sets up the next one and sounds
pretty exciting:
“Within just two years, in January,
1951, Lyndon Johnson would be a leader, his party’s whip—an assistant floor
leader who, moreover, very quickly began to invest that hitherto largely
titular role with new significance. Just two years later, in January, 1953, he
would be the Leader of his party, only Minority Leader since the Democrats had
lost control of the Senate, but nonetheless the youngest floor leader in the
history of the Senate. From that seat in the back row he had moved in only four
years to the Democratic Leader’s front-row, center-aisle seat, sitting at the
head of men who had served as many terms in that body as he had years there.
And within weeks of his election as Leader, he would begin to revolutionize
some of the Senate’s most sacrosanct traditions in order to concentrate the
barons’ prerogatives in his own hands. By 1955, with the barons’ power broken
and the Democrats back in the majority, Lyndon Johnson was the most powerful
Majority Leader in history.”
Miscellaneous Facts:
- Politicians use two hands to shake hands because if they don’t, multiple people will try to shake their hands at the same time.
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