The Path to Power
Apr. 15th, 2010 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI just finished reading The Path to Power, the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. Fascinating reading; it covers up to the end of WWII, as Johnson prepared for his second, successful, bid for the Senate.
Two judgments stand out.
1) Lyndon Baines Johnson was a brass-plated sonuvabitch. He was a consummate liar, a bootlicker, and a backstabber from the word "go", and much of the corruption of the USAn electoral process can be laid squarely at his door. He knew no principle but power, and would stop at nothing to achieve it. Dante would have consigned him to the ninth circle for his betrayals of his benefactors - Charles Marsh, Sam Rayburn, Franklin Roosevelt....
2) Nonetheless: in the service of his ambition, he worked his butt off at every job he took in his adult life. Teaching illiterate Mexican-Americans in South Texas (until he got a better job), coaching an unheralded high school debate team to the brink of a state championship (only to leave them in the lurch when a new opportunity opened up), bringing electricity to the dirt-poor farmers of the Texas Hill Country (Caro's description of the harshness of their life is deeply moving) - what he did, he did damn well, so long as it served his purpose.
LBJ was a very complicated man, and (it begins to seem to me) one of the most consequential figures in 20th-century USAn politics. In the first half of the century, the Roosevelts and Wilson surpass him; in the second half, only Nixon and Reagan challenge his dominance, and I'm not sure either of them outranks him. I look forward to reading the remaining volumes.
Two judgments stand out.
1) Lyndon Baines Johnson was a brass-plated sonuvabitch. He was a consummate liar, a bootlicker, and a backstabber from the word "go", and much of the corruption of the USAn electoral process can be laid squarely at his door. He knew no principle but power, and would stop at nothing to achieve it. Dante would have consigned him to the ninth circle for his betrayals of his benefactors - Charles Marsh, Sam Rayburn, Franklin Roosevelt....
2) Nonetheless: in the service of his ambition, he worked his butt off at every job he took in his adult life. Teaching illiterate Mexican-Americans in South Texas (until he got a better job), coaching an unheralded high school debate team to the brink of a state championship (only to leave them in the lurch when a new opportunity opened up), bringing electricity to the dirt-poor farmers of the Texas Hill Country (Caro's description of the harshness of their life is deeply moving) - what he did, he did damn well, so long as it served his purpose.
LBJ was a very complicated man, and (it begins to seem to me) one of the most consequential figures in 20th-century USAn politics. In the first half of the century, the Roosevelts and Wilson surpass him; in the second half, only Nixon and Reagan challenge his dominance, and I'm not sure either of them outranks him. I look forward to reading the remaining volumes.
