Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson

No president in American history is more controversial than Lyndon Baines Johnson. To the neocons, LBJ is the embodiment of all that's wrong with government. To the liberals (yes, come on, you can say that word), he represents all that government can be.

Once, when an aide told Johnson that Civil Rights legislation would never pass Congress and he shouldn't waste his political capital on it, Johnson replied, "Hell, what's the Presidency for then?" LBJ wouldn't waste his time in power on doing the little things "“ he aimed big; after all, he was a Texan.

Few presidents have a more impressive record of accomplishment or (if you fear government involvement in our lives) a more damaging legacy of governmental interference.

The latest installment of Robert Caro's biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, covers the period from 1960 to 1963. It tells the story of how one of the most powerful Senators in American history gave up that office and agreed to take the most impotent job in government: the vice presidency.

Unlike most presidential biographers, Caro has no desire to write hagiography; in fact, Caro mines every piece of dirt he finds on LBJ, from questionable election returns to outright accusations of bribery. Along the way, Caro paints a portrait of a man in transition, constantly moving toward the center of power. This book Caro calls Passage of Power.

It begins when Johnson loses the Democratic presidential nomination to John F. Kennedy.

From master to has-been

Johnson did not take defeat lightly. After he was elected vice-president, he tried to retain the power he had gained as Senate majority leader. But even a Promethean figure like LBJ couldn't breathe life into the corpse that the VP's job was (at least until Dick Cheney filled it). Broken, sullen, politically castrated, Johnson went from Master of the Senate (Caro's title for the previous installment) to a has-been joke.

By 1963, Johnson's star had fallen so low that he was on the brink of being thrown off the Kennedy re-election ticket in 1964. Then an assassin's bullet changed history and rocketed him into an office that he had sought his entire life.

The story of this fall and rise is about as dramatic as history can be, with a cast of characters worthy of Shakespearean tragedy.

Jack Kennedy was a rich man's son whose Senate career was about as lackluster as any in history. But his father, Joseph Kennedy, had made millions in the stock market and, better still, anticipated the great Crash of 1929 by selling short. In 1960 he saw the opening that he longed for: a chance to put one of his sons in the White House. His eldest son and namesake, whom he had groomed for the job, had been killed in World War II. Now, Joe pinned his hopes on his second son.

JFK's hidden steel

Jack Kennedy was no Jack Kennedy when he started out "“ in fact, he was a sickly if charming lothario. His struggles with Addison's disease, a crippling illness that was a death sentence before the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals, and a degenerative spine disease that required multiple operations, would have deterred lesser men from getting out of bed, let alone running for political office.

In Caro's expert telling, as the toll of illnesses, exacerbated by ill-advised treatments, makes JFK teeter on the brink of permanent incapacity, we begin to discern the steel beneath the suntan of JFK's character. Nothing in JFK's professional career caused anyone "“ LBJ included "“ to think that he could win the Presidency. His personal battles and the way he handled them gave a clue to his eventual political success.

Kennedy demonstrated his grace under pressure in his campaign debates with a far more experienced politician and debater: Richard Nixon. As the youngest U.S. president ever elected, he showed it to the U.S. military and his intelligence leaders when he refused to send in the Marines in the wake of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. And he showed it to the world when nuclear holocaust was just a blink away— during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Bobby the hater

Joe Kennedy had another son: Robert Kennedy, the son most like his father. As Joe Kennedy himself said "“ "Bobby hates like me." And Robert Kennedy hated no one more than LBJ.

Like Jack, Bobby Kennedy was no Bobby Kennedy when he began his career. He was a communist hunter, a union buster, a man who never hesitated to kick a man when he was down. He ran Jack's presidential campaign in 1960 and went on to become his attorney general and closest advisor.

JFK offered the vice-presidency to Johnson after defeating him for the 1960 Democratic nomination. There are many versions of how and why this happened. Caro tries to tell everyone's side of this complicated story, but the truth is rarely found in repeating the lies that men have come to believe.

The dispute about what actually happened is between Kennedy's followers (Sorenson, Schlesinger, O'Donnell) and LBJ's men (Busby, Reedy and Moyers). The Kennedy faction wants history to reflect that JFK offered the vice-presidency to LBJ as a mere gesture, never expecting that he would accept it. Johnson's men say JFK made the offer and then Bobby tried to renege on it.

Who needed whom?

Caro concludes that JFK wanted and (more important) needed LBJ on the ticket to win in November. LBJ accepted the offer because he believed that, as a Southerner, he would never be elected president— and to more than one confidant, LBJ pointed out that, at that time, seven vice-presidents had succeeded to the presidency. Caro makes clear that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that LBJ had anything to do with Kennedy's assassination, but he also documents that LBJ was well aware of Kennedy's lengthy medical history.

Caro makes good use of the tapes of many White House conversations now available to the public. Both JFK and LBJ used a tape system that they"“ and no one else "“ could activate. So the tapes are somewhat selective (unlike the later tapes of Nixon, who had a more advanced and more revealing voice-activated system).

Those tapes confirm that during the Cuban missile crisis, JFK stood alone in holding out against those who advocated an immediate invasion of Cuba.

Bobby: Architect or messenger?

But Caro also buys into the Bobby Kennedy narrative in writing that Bobby advised his brother to make a deal rather than confront the Soviet Union with a choice between surrender and war. In fact, the tapes make clear that Bobby Kennedy was as hawkish as the rest of JFK's advisors.

The deal that JFK eventually agreed to "“ that the U.S. would remove its missiles from Turkey if the USSR removed its missiles from Cuba "“ was brokered by Bobby in discussions with the Soviet ambassador, but Jack used his bother to make that contact because he knew that the Russians would understand that Bobby, as the President's brother, was offering a credible deal. Bobby wasn't the architect of the deal, merely the messenger.

Johnson's role in the Cuban missile crisis, as in all other phases of JFK's administration, was as a spectator. He possessed no power, and neither JFK nor anyone else in his administration thought much of the man they referred to derogatorily as "Cornpone." JFK had gathered around him the "best and the brightest," and LBJ was painfully insecure in his ability to interact with these Ivy Leaguers "“ especially when he had no power.

After Dallas

The heart of Caro's "short" 736-page book (less than half the size of other volumes in this series) concerns the period following JFK's assassination. Caro relates how Johnson took control of the government and held it together while the nation mourned the loss of its leader and the world looked on in horror at this act of violence.

It wasn't easy to hold things together at such a turbulent time. Johnson desperately needed Kennedy's advisors to stay on to demonstrate to Americans and world leaders alike the continuity in the U.S. government. But even those on the Kennedy team who didn't dislike Johnson considered him a lightweight, incapable of assuming the presidency. Most of them just wanted to go home "“ they had come to Washington to serve with JFK, not some cowboy glad-hander who didn't know a Picasso from a Polaris.

Johnson went to work on them immediately, playing on what he knew was their widely held belief that he wasn't fit to be president. "I need you a lot more than Jack ever did," was the mantra that Johnson repeated endlessly in the days after the assassination.

When this tactic didn't work, he played on their patriotism: "If you want to honor his memory, help me pass his programs."

Courting Earl Warren

The other vital item on Johnson's agenda was his need to determine and disclose the facts of JFK's assassination. For this task Johnson needed the one person who was perceived as impartial and above politics: Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The problem was that Warren didn't want the job. As Johnson did so often, he refused to take Warren's "no" for a final answer. He reminded Warren that when his country needed him in World War I, Warren didn't hesitate to enlist and fight. Now, Johnson told him, his country needed him more than ever. Reluctantly, Warren agreed to serve.

Regretably, the Warren Commission raised more questions than it answered. But, at the time, Johnson's choice of Warren was widely praised.

"'One of them'

Finally, LBJ saw the opportunity to pass the social legislation that he had always believed was necessary to make America what it could be: a "Great Society" whose government protects the weak, helps the unfortunate and eliminates the scourge of racial prejudice.

Perhaps he was the only person in government capable of passing this agenda through a Congress dominated by segregationist Southern Democrats. That Johnson had been one of them and shared their backgrounds (if not their prejudices) was his great asset. Most important, he knew how to count votes, what it took to pass legislation, whom to push and pull.

Caro is effusive in his praise of the Lyndon Johnson who took control of the government in a moment of crisis. He praises Johnson's courage in walking out in the open on the days following the assassination, when no one knew whether more assassins lurked out there. He acknowledges that LBJ's will and intelligence were the main reasons a reluctant Congress passed a Civil Rights bill that guaranteed equal treatment to all Americans, regardless of race, as well as Medicare and a host of other laws that changed America forever, and for the better.

But just below the surface of Caro's praise is an underlying, fundamental belief that Johnson's demons outnumbered his angels. Caro constantly refers to the next volume of this work, the final volume, and we know that in spite of all that Johnson did to make America a better place, waiting there in the distance is LBJ's nemesis— more deadly than any high-powered rifle bullet, more divisive than any controversial legislation, more difficult to manage than even a War on Poverty: Vietnam.