Reflection on Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume 3 by Robert Caro

               So this was the longest book I’ve ever read, and I have officially crossed the halfway point in Robert Caro’s series on Lyndon Johnson This book covers the period from 1949 (LBJ’s election to the Senate) to 1960 (his election to the Vice Presidency) but mainly focuses on the time up to 1957 (when LBJ passed a Civil Rights compromise bill that was the first Civil Rights bill passed by the Senate in over 80 years.

               The book begins with a pretty long history of the senate that could really be its own book, hitting around 200 pages. It’s interesting to see the growth and evolution of the institution, especially before and after the Civil War. Caro points out that the Senate really only worked during the time of Webster, Calhoun, and Clay (The Triumvirate), when Senators argued and convinced each other on the floor. With the Civil War, the Senate got a lot done under purely Republican rule, but when Democrats rejoined after the war, filibustering became a common way to hijack debate. The South similarly conquered the Senate by becoming a one-party region, so that Democrats would never face serious challenges and would achieve the crucial committee chairmanships through seniority, which was first established in 1845, when party caucuses took over appointments within the Senate. However, during this time the Senate became weaker, partly due to filibustering and partly due to the “Imperial Presidency” that began to grow steadily in power from the beginning of the 20^th century. When Theodore Roosevelt “took” the Panama Canal Zone. The Senate couldn’t keep up. Writes Caro, “During the decades since 1890, when the Senate had authorized a staff of three persons for its Foreign Relations Committee, the United States had become a global power, with interests in a hundred foreign countries. In 1939, the staff… was still three” and only one staff member was full-time.

               When Lyndon Johnson arrived in the Senate, the Senate floor had ceased to be the center of drama. By 1949, Senators would come to give a speech for the record, some business would be settled, and reporters would cycle in and out with no more than 2-3 Senators on the floor at a time except for on crucial bills. Lyndon Johnson chose to remain there, watching the Senate, observing, and learning. Johnson changed his attitude from his days in the House. In his early years as a Senator, he chose not to grab lapels and put his arms around Senators and be otherwise rough with them. Instead, he was mild-mannered in the way of the Senate. In his early years as a Senator, he had three major accomplishments that enhanced his reputation. First was a speech against civil rights legislation and defending the filibuster in 1949, which earned him the trust of the South, and most importantly, Richard Russell, who Johnson had correctly determined was the most powerful man in the Senate. He would soon cultivate Russell like he did Rayburn in the House. Then, he led the ambush against Leland Olds, who was considered to left-wing to head the Federal Power Commission, further bolstering Johnson’s standing with conservatives. Finally, he led the Korean War Preparedness Subcommittee (under the auspices of Russell’s Armed Forces Committee), which was modeled off of a similar committee formed in World War Two that brought fame to Harry Truman for cutting government waste. Johnson was not as successful as Truman, but he was successful at releasing reports that excited the media and got his name out there.

Johnson was famous for his colorful language. Here’s a quote from the book: A special interest group—organized labor in Texas, say—was never merely weak, it was “not much stronger than a popcorn fart.” In the Johnsonian lexicon, a House-Senate joint committee was not merely a meaningless legislative exercise; “Hell,” he would say, “a joint committee’s as useless as tits on a bull.” About a Republican senator expounding on NATO, he said, “He doesn’t know any more about NATO than an old maid does about fucking.” He would say that one man was “as wise as a tree full of owls,” that another was “as  busy as a man with one hoe and two rattlesnakes.” Glancing out the window of 231, he would say, “It’s raining as hard as a cat pissing on a flat rock.” Ridiculing a Republican senator who thought he was making a national reputation with his expertise on economics, he said, “Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It may seem hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.”

I still do not like LBJ after this book. Even though he’s revealed to be on the side of Civil Rights, he is still racist by any modern standard or the standards of his time. In addition, he is a cruel husband. To quote a passage from the book: Johnson was driving, with Lady Bird in the front seat at the window and the friend sitting between them. Leaning over the front seat to ask a question, Busby saw that Johnson had his hand “under the woman’s skirt and was having a big time, right there in front of Lady Bird.” (Busby says that “Lady Bird didn’t say a word,” but “after a while” the woman “slapped his hand.”)

               Johnson would become the Senate Majority Whip in 1951. The position, like the Majority and Minority Leadership at the time, was weak. Senators were used to doing what they want and didn’t have bosses. It was not nearly as easy to control them as the Representatives of the House, as Senators were considered to be almost like ambassadors from their states. As Majority Whip, however, Johnson was very effective in his role, working on the behalf of individual senators to gain their support and trust. Johnson, throughout his time as Whip, worked on behalf of Richard Russell, and his loyalty paid off. In 1953, Johnsons became Senate Minority Leader (the Democrats had lost the Senate). How was it possible to rise to such a high post so quickly? Well it wasn’t such a high post until LBJ made it that way. While today, the Minority and Majority Leaders of the Senate are the leaders of the Senate, back then they had hardly any power at all. The last two Democratic Leaders were humiliated and Johnson was risking the same since he, like them, had very little leverage with which to sway Senators.  

               Johnson, however, changed the game. He wheeled and dealed and managed to convince, not force, Senators to give up certain positions in favor of others. Before anyone knew it, he had destroyed the seniority system, putting people into committees that he wanted them in. They would have him to thank, not the seniority system, putting them in his debt. He proved to be an excellent Leader as he tried to position himself between the liberals and conservatives of the Democratic Party. He was doing well, though the limits of his power and influence were shown in 1956, when he completely failed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for president to Adlai Stevenson, a liberal. Southerners, Richard Russell most of all, were desperate for a southerner to be president for the first time in over a hundred years. Russell had determined that LBJ had the best shot at doing that and southerners lined up to support him as he became the presumed nominee of the south in 1960. But before that, in 1957, Johnson was to face the most difficult legislative battle of his career- the 1957 Civil Rights bill.

               In 1940, only 2% of black people of voting age in the South cast votes. Through legal maneuvers and straight-up intimidation, it was completely impossible for blacks to vote in many states and districts, utterly destroying their political power in the 80 years after the end of Reconstruction. As a result, black people were largely moving to the Republican party in the 1950s, hurting Democrats in cities in the North (generally more liberal) who wanted to empower blacks to regain their votes. Southern Democrats, on the other hand, absolutely would not allow any attempt to do so and promised to filibuster. The situation was absolutely shameful and unamerican, yet every attempt to rectify it was defeated by southerners in the senate. However, with Lyndon Johnson as the Majority Leader in 1957, things changed.

               You’ve gotta understand that it was absolutely crucial to this fight that Richard Russell, the most powerful man in the South, had already decided he wanted Lyndon to be President. Speaking to a staffer, Russell once said of Johnson, “George, we’re going to get that man elected President. But we can never make him President unless the Senate first disposes of civil rights.” Russell was a tremendous racist, but he needed a way to get a southerner into a powerful office and he knew that northerners would oppose a southern opponent of civil rights for the Democratic nomination. By using his technique of listening to what people didn’t say, Johnson determined that southerners were very against the newly proposed civil rights legislation in 1957, with the exception of the voting rights clause. They hardly mentioned that in their statements of opposition. So Johnson used all of his legislative abilities to amend the bill to weaken it, so that it would only protect voting rights, which ended up being passable, as southerners were willing to follow Johnson since he had Russell’s support. The actual fight as portrayed in the book was kind of confusing but certainly an interesting look at the inner workings of the Senate.

               Something crucial I learned from reading about the civil rights fight of 1957 is why African Americans tend to vote Democrat today. In the 1950’s, as they were moving towards the Republican party, southern Democrats were clearly opposed to black people’s interests, yet Republicans, specifically President Eisenhower, did little to help them either. However, the movement to the Republicans was staunched by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and would later be completely reversed when Johnson was President with the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. It would end up being southern Whites who switched to the Republican Party at the end of the fight.

               In the end, this was a very good book and might be the best book of the series so far. It is the first one to end not with an election, but with a legislative fight, and the first to explore the fundamental conflict in who Johnson is. Is he a conservative, a reactionary, a racist? Or is he a liberal, a radical, a New-Dealer, a civil rights fighter? It would seem that this book reveals that while he was still a racist, who was fine with calling black people “niggers” or “nigras” to their face, he was also an idealist. He felt that blacks were inferior to whites. However, this was largely due to, in his opinion, their treatment by whites, and that they could be educated to be better. I would still call him a racist, but there is a clear difference between him and the other southern Senators of the time. The best quote of the book is when Caro writes, “Power, Lord Acton said, corrupts. Not always. What power always does is reveal.”