Reflection on The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume 4) by Robert Caro

               I think this might have been the best book in the series so far. In Volume 4 of TYOLJ, Caro covers the presidential race of 1960, the selection of Lyndon Johnson as Democratic VP, Johnson’s fall from power with his transition from Senate Majority Leader to Vice President, his rivalry with and mutual hatred of Robert Kennedy, the assassination of JFK, and Johnson’s transition, in which he took power and guided tax reform through congress along with a civil rights bill. At the end of the book, Johnson is in 1964, preparing for a new presidential campaign, another civil rights bill, and a potential buildup of a conflict in an otherwise obscure southeast Asian country called Vietnam.

               Lyndon Johnson’s path to the presidency surprised me because such a smart man made a big error. He went to the Senate. All his life, he would remark that he needed to stay in Washington, since, “that’s where the power is,” yet if he wanted to be President, the Senate was a bad steppingstone. In the history of the United States, Warren G. Harding was the only senator to go directly from the Senate to the Presidency. Kennedy would be the second and Obama the third. The first problem is that a senator will always be pissing someone off. You are forced to decide on national issues, making you friends and enemies. To rise high in politics, it is better to have few friends and few enemies than many of both. With many, you are locked in to a ceiling of popularity, if your views are unknown, you have a chance to shape future perception. I am reminded of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, who would usually sit out debates, rising only to comment on the absolute core of the issues, and only after many had already spoken. Secondly, Senators were not so powerful in the primary process- largely, senators followed the lead of the governor of their state, as it was he who commanded a state delegation at a party convention (if the governor was of the same party).

               Strangely enough, the Democratic Primary of 1960 came down to two senators, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) and John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). LBJ lost. It was for two reasons. Before the convention, he did too little, too late. For some reason, Johnson waffled about deciding to run. He tried to be aloof and wanted to be drafted in, taking extreme measures to cover up his candidacy. He was extremely fearful of losing and being humiliated, as had happened to him at the convention in 1956. He declared officially on July 5^th- six days before the convention. He was so committed to the “inside” route of running for president, using insider elites and smoke-filled rooms, but he had made no efforts on the “outside track.” He made no major speeches and had no presence outside of Washington elites. JFK, on the other hand, had been campaigning for most of two years, giving speeches, and meeting people from all over their country and asking for their votes. At the end of the day, if one candidate has asked for your vote and the other thought it would be beneath him to do so, you’ll probably give your vote to the first guy. The second reason LBJ lost was due to a debate at the convention. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a debate and stacked the room with Texans who would, of course, support LBJ. Kennedy, however, charmed them. He was funny, sharp, and on his game. They came away impressed and the debate had the reverse effect that Johnson wanted. Kennedy easily won at the convention.

               By 1960, the South was beginning to separate from the Democratic party. Democrats had nominated liberals supported by the northern faction at three conventions in a row with it being Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 56 and now Kennedy, a Catholic, in 1960. Southerners found themselves more strongly allied with conservative Republicans than their fellow Democrats. In 1960, Baptist ministers preached against Kennedy and the anti-Catholic feeling was very strong. Kennedy therefore needed Johnson as his VP candidate to bring the party together. RFK would later claim that Kennedy only offered the position to Johnson as a courtesy, but author Robert Caro gives convincing evidence in the text that this is untrue. Why Johnson took the post is more confusing. Why leave the position of Majority Leader of the Senate, where he had been the most powerful Democrat in Washington, to become the Vice President, a position with no real power? I think this is when LBJ realized the Senate would never get him to the presidency. Any more time there would have made him too controversial a figure. He overestimated his power in the Vice Presidency and erroneously thought that “power is where power goes,” thinking that he would continue to exercise influence on the Senate as VP. Johnson also knew that Vice Presidents often became presidents, though he must have not weighed this so heavily with such a young presidential candidate.

               As Vice President, Johnson was depressed. I won’t get into it right now, but his rivalry with JFK was real, though not too bad, and his hatred of Robert Kennedy was powerful. RFK hated him back and took pleasure in humiliating him while he was Attorney General and Johnson was Vice President. Johnson passed those three years with little to do, imagining that his shot at the presidency was over. Then, in Dallas, Texas, Johnson’s home state, Kennedy was killed. The chapters of the book that happen around this are extremely well-written and thrilling. Caro gives the reader a really good sense of how impactful the Kennedy Assassination was, what it was like to be there, and what it was like to be in Johnson’s shoes. During the four days from the shooting to the funeral to Jack Ruby’s shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, 166 million Americans in 51 million homes tuned in at some time to the news coverage. During that time, the average American family watched for a total of 31.6 hours, or almost EIGHT HOURS PER DAY.

               Johnson’s transition would be a challenge. Most of those serving in the White House, the Cabinet, and the Executive Branch had a strong loyalty to Kennedy, and often did not like Johnson. However, the power of the Constitution was unquestioned. Johnson was able to do a better job than Kenned at pushing bills through congress, specifically on civil rights and taxes. While being in the Senate could have hurt his ability to get elected, it was a boon to his ability to govern. Writes Caro (quoting a staffer), “Where Kennedy had been polite and sympathetic on all matters of basic principle, more often than not he had been evasive on action. Kennedy was not naïve, but as a legislator he was very green. He saw himself as being dry-eyed, realistic. In retrospect, I think that for all his talk about the art of the possible, he didn’t really know what was possible and what wasn’t in Congress.… When it came to dealing with Congress, Johnson knew exactly what was possible.… Johnson made it plain he wanted the whole bill. If we could find the votes, we would win. If we didn’t find the votes, we would lose, he said. The problem was as simple as that.” Johnson pushed through major legislation and put the government back to work. By April 1964, he was polling at 77 percent approval and 9 percent disapproval.

               Caro tells us that power often, but not always corrupts, what it always does is reveal. In that case, he argues, Johnson was not a racist. It had all been a ploy, and when he came to power, he immediately set about on civil rights legislation. It’s interesting. LBJ would claim at certain points in his life that as a young man, working on graveling roads, he had been doing “nigger work,” yet it seems like that only endeared him to the black experience. Though in many ways he showed himself to be a racist, the truth was more complicated. For me, the verdict is still out. He was very much a man who did many racist and anti-racist things, so it’s difficult to determine what he was (if he has to be one or the other).

               Like I said earlier, I think this book was the best of the Years of Lyndon Johnson series (so far- the fifth is still unreleased). It covers fascinating events and sets up RFK and JFK as fascinating foils to Johnson’s character. One criticism I have is that Martin Luther King Jr. is hardly mentioned, which I thought was strange since the book fell under 1000 pages. There would have been room. I imagine he’ll play a bigger role in the next book. I am very excited for the next book, which will cover the 1964 election against Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the War in Vietnam, the rise of the hippies, the RFK assassination, the end of Johnson’s presidency, and the last years of his life. You just know with history like that that it’s gonna be a good book. Johnson, however, may have already hit his peak in our story during that transition period. Caro writes on the final page of the book, ending it:

The story of the presidency of Lyndon Johnson will be different in tone from the story of the transition in part because the elements of his personality absent during the transition were shortly to reappear. Yet for a period of time, a brief but crucial moment in history, he had held these elements in check, had overcome them, had, in a way, conquered himself. And by doing so, by overcoming forces within him that were very difficult to overcome, he not only had held the country steady during a difficult time but had set it on a new course, a course toward social justice. In the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, this period stands out as different from the rest, as perhaps that life’s finest moment, as a moment not only masterful but, in its way, heroic.

If he had held in check these forces within him, had conquered himself, for a while, he wasn’t going to be able to do it for very long.

But he had done it long enough.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• The Vice President is not, under the Constitution, a subordinate to the President. The VP can only be impeached by Congress, not removed by the President.
• In October of 1963, Defense Secretary McNamara was already stating the need to withdraw from Vietnam.
• While Congress gave FDR a free hand in running the US war effort in World War Two, FDR did not pass a single piece of major domestic legislation after the 1937 Court fight (when he tried to pack the Supreme Court without even notifying the Senate or hist Vice President first).
• Johnson once went to  country club in Texas and integrated it himself, bringing a black woman with him.