Update: I forgot to add this detail: Square Books in Oxford has signed copies of Caro’s book, Passage to Power.
It is often odd to read a review while one is in the middle of reading the book under review, and Garry Wills’s review of Robert Caro’s new installment in his never-ending biography of Lyndon Johnson is no exception.
Wills gets two things wrong, I think: He concludes that John Kennedy lied to his brother, Bobby, about whether he meant to have Johnson on the ticket as Vice President. Reading Caro’s account of the Democratic convention, it seems pretty clear that John was set on Johnson, and Bobby was freelancing and trying to get Johnson off the ticket because Bobby hated Lyndon Johnson. Another thing Wills gets wrong I think is a simple misreading. Caro has exchanges between Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson about when Johnson should take the oath occurring after Air Force One left Dallas. That’s not what Caro says.
But, having read about a third of Caro’s newest installment, I’ll say that Wills is right about the centrality of the blood feud between Johnson and Robert Kennedy. It makes for fascinating reading.
I’m now over something like 2500 pages into this series, and I want to tell folks it’s worth it. The first in the series is one of the best histories I’ve ever read. This ons one– the fourth– stands with it. Highly recommended.
Update: I wrote this post after a brutal day at work, and made a couple of name swaps, one noted in comments and one where I said “Caro” when I meant “Wills.” Both are corrected.
Heh…pretty funny….you said Robert Johnson. Those Great Society blues.
Yeah … I saw the Robert Johnson misstep. Chuckled. Still not as bad as “Hoobert Heever.”
I just started it and it’s fascinating (I have not read the 3 previous volumes). I like that it’s long but I may saw it into pieces for ease of handling.
Well, that’s fixed.
The first volume is still far and away my favorite, Jane, although this one is pretty great so far (I’m just short of half-way done).
my dog was innocently napping beside my desk and the Caro book slid off the desk and missed beaning him on the nose by an inch! Possible vet bills averted!
He then moved to nap in another part of the room. Just too dangerous where he was.
I think that Colorado bear may in fact have been killed by colliding with the Caro vol. 4, not a car. It’s big and silver, easy mistake for a rookie cop arriving on the scene to make.
Glad your dog got lucky.
Why did Bobby hate Lyndon?
Here’s one explanation.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/971026.26oshinkt.html
Thanks NMC. Didn’t know until your comment a few days ago that Caro had this volume out. I throughly enjoyed the first three and still count them as one of the best history series around, even though it has been years since volume 1 (agreed – by far the best of the series, and one of the best histories I ever read.) Looking forward to picking up a copy this weekend.
Jane can you give us the Readers Digest version? It’s behind a pay wall and I’m just not ready to accept pay walls.
If Oshinksy’s review is correct, Caro has dug out some new details about the feud since that book was written (in 97). Caro has the feud dating back to when Robert Kennedy was a senate staffer; he was pointedly rude to Johnson (who was the Majority Leader!) when they met in the Senate cafeteria in the 50s. Caro also makes clear why Johnson was on the ticket (electoral college math– Texas had to be there to win, and they needed a shot taking the south back) while the review says it’s not clear why Kennedy picked Johnson. Also, it’s pretty evident reading Caro’s account that Robert was freelancing when he went to ask Johnson to take back accepting the VP slot during the convention.
The Wills piece I linked in the post has some details.
Sorry. I did not realize it was behind a paywall. I could not live without my NYT subscription. Here’s a paragraph:
“The feud began in 1960, when Robert Kennedy directed his brother John’s successful campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The main competitor, Johnson, the Senate majority leader, raised not only the ”Catholic issue” but also the health problems of John F. Kennedy, who spent much of the 50′s recovering from delicate spinal surgery and who had Addison’s disease, an adrenal malfunction that required daily doses of cortisone. As the convention neared, Johnson described his now-robust opponent as a ”little scrawny fellow with rickets” and other unnamed maladies. The Kennedy camp whispered about the lingering effects of Johnson’s 1955 heart attack.”
Apparently Bobby took everything personally while his brother and everyone else were not so inclined.
WILLS’ review tells it all; however, I’ puzzled by his statement that Johnson “tried to ease (his problem as being perceived as a racist because he was from Texas) by getting the Senate to pass toothless civil rights bills in 1957 and 1960.” I don’t know about 1960, but the whole point of Caro’s vol 3 is that Johnson redeemed himself from the corruption detailed in vol 2 by masterminding the passage of the 57 act, the first rights legislation to pass the Senate since Reconstruction. Huh?
Yah, Wills is being ungenerous here. Like the woman preaching in Dr. Johnson’s mean little quip, the marvel isn’t the quality of the 1957 bill, but that it happened at all.
No one but LBJ could’ve gotten it through, is how I’ve always understood it (and I haven’t even read vol. 3 yet).
Up through 1956, Johnson had a 100% record voting against civil rights. In 1957, LBJ’s “allies in Washington told him bluntly what he already knew: that the crux of the North’s animosity to him was its belief that he was opposed to civil rights, and that the only way to dilute that animosity was to pass a civil rights bill.” The bill seemed headed for defeat and LBJ retreated to his Texas ranch but came back and bullied, threatened and cajoled the Senate into passing the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction. “By the time that Johnson had finished fashioning a compromise that the southerners would accept, provisions that would have enforced desegregation and banned racial segregation in housing, hotels, restaurants and other public places – provisions liberals considered essential – had been removed; only a single civil right, voting, remained, and the provisions for enforcing that lone right proved largely useless. But the mere fact of the bill’s passage – that after eighty-two years in which every civil rights bill that reached the Senate had died there, one had finally been passed – was of historic significance.”
From Caro’s “The Passage of Power” pp. 8-10.
Don’t have Passage yet, but now I can reconcile Wills’ review and vols 2and 3. Thanks.