Master Of The Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate.
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years
At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.
It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.
Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.
Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years
At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.
It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.
Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.
Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.
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Community Reviews
I didn't enjoy volume 3 as much as the first two. Possibly because the narrator of this audiobook was different, possibly because this volume has so much detail about the inner workings of the senate.
So thoroughly well-researched and well-written covering much of the history of the US, not just LBJ.
If this book isn't perfect, I certainly do not have the ability to describe how it could be improved.
The book includes a powerful view of the civil rights movement, a broad and insightful history of the Senate, its culture and institutions, a captivating biography of Richard Russell, senate majority leader from Georgia, an inspiring and ultimately tragic story of Leland Olds, a brilliant Federal Power Commissioner who brought government control over the utilities only to be destroyed by Johnson, and finally a penetrating analysis of power as it was accumulated and disposed of by a political genius, something I wouldn't have even known how to define before reading this book.
Despite this range of topics, the book has a simple organizing thought that ties all the strings together: Lyndon Johnson used his unique political ability to dominate the senate, and we ought to look at why that doesn’t happen very often, how he actually did that, and grapple with what that means for this democracy we think that we have.
The book's most important point is simply: This is what power looks like. This is how people get it and use it in a Democracy. You thought you knew how that worked, but you didn't. These are the range of things that perhaps the greatest power getter and user did to get and use that power.
OK, now how do you draw a line between the good and bad parts of that? How do you even separate them? Can you have even have the good without the bad? Who are you to even try to make the distinction, anyway? Do you really know how any of this works? Personally, I do not.
Would you have Johnson destroy fewer people's lives if it meant he could not gain the power he needed to give the people of the Hill Country electricity, which helped thousands of people in countless profound ways? Is it even possible to have a Democratic form of government without people like Johnson coming to dominate it?
It's a question that sounds cliche, but it's not cliche when Robert Caro personifies the question in the form of a real, living human being whose thirst for power gave him control over countless people's lives. Power that he used to create Medicare, pass civil rights legislation, destroy the lives of countless men and women, steal numerous elections, and escalate the Vietnam war.
And that's probably the most important gift that Caro's gives us. Caro shows us the world as it really is. He does so in such detail and with such thorough analysis that we have no escape hatch left. He does not allow us to explain how we would like things to be and separate that from what we would like not to be. We must acknowledge that Caro has shown what we like and what we loathe are often inextricably bound. He has given us this gift and curse of understanding.
I was inclined to view people like Johnson as fundamentally bad before reading this book and feel that more strongly after reading that book. As an individual, I have the luxury of constructing a life in which I simply avoid them. This book's penetrating analysis has helped me understand what a good decision that has been.
However, it also challenges me to answer the question of how exactly I expect a Democratic society to work without these folks, or whether removing one would simply produce another. What on earth can actually be done, if you are someone who holds the views that I do? Well, at least now I know that I haven't the slightest idea.
The book includes a powerful view of the civil rights movement, a broad and insightful history of the Senate, its culture and institutions, a captivating biography of Richard Russell, senate majority leader from Georgia, an inspiring and ultimately tragic story of Leland Olds, a brilliant Federal Power Commissioner who brought government control over the utilities only to be destroyed by Johnson, and finally a penetrating analysis of power as it was accumulated and disposed of by a political genius, something I wouldn't have even known how to define before reading this book.
Despite this range of topics, the book has a simple organizing thought that ties all the strings together: Lyndon Johnson used his unique political ability to dominate the senate, and we ought to look at why that doesn’t happen very often, how he actually did that, and grapple with what that means for this democracy we think that we have.
The book's most important point is simply: This is what power looks like. This is how people get it and use it in a Democracy. You thought you knew how that worked, but you didn't. These are the range of things that perhaps the greatest power getter and user did to get and use that power.
OK, now how do you draw a line between the good and bad parts of that? How do you even separate them? Can you have even have the good without the bad? Who are you to even try to make the distinction, anyway? Do you really know how any of this works? Personally, I do not.
Would you have Johnson destroy fewer people's lives if it meant he could not gain the power he needed to give the people of the Hill Country electricity, which helped thousands of people in countless profound ways? Is it even possible to have a Democratic form of government without people like Johnson coming to dominate it?
It's a question that sounds cliche, but it's not cliche when Robert Caro personifies the question in the form of a real, living human being whose thirst for power gave him control over countless people's lives. Power that he used to create Medicare, pass civil rights legislation, destroy the lives of countless men and women, steal numerous elections, and escalate the Vietnam war.
And that's probably the most important gift that Caro's gives us. Caro shows us the world as it really is. He does so in such detail and with such thorough analysis that we have no escape hatch left. He does not allow us to explain how we would like things to be and separate that from what we would like not to be. We must acknowledge that Caro has shown what we like and what we loathe are often inextricably bound. He has given us this gift and curse of understanding.
I was inclined to view people like Johnson as fundamentally bad before reading this book and feel that more strongly after reading that book. As an individual, I have the luxury of constructing a life in which I simply avoid them. This book's penetrating analysis has helped me understand what a good decision that has been.
However, it also challenges me to answer the question of how exactly I expect a Democratic society to work without these folks, or whether removing one would simply produce another. What on earth can actually be done, if you are someone who holds the views that I do? Well, at least now I know that I haven't the slightest idea.
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