Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III [Paperback]

Therefore Master of the Senate has a lot to live up to. Sadly it doesn't come close. Here's the flaws I see:

1. The long introductory section on the Senate is workaday stuff and not necessary. Johnson himself does not appear until after page 100, and even then Caro is still summarising the story so far.
2. Far too much emphasis is laid on the 1958 Civil Rights Act. Chapter after chapter is spent building up to one bill, and then Caro glosses over 1958-1960 in a few pages.
3. I think he also mis-interprets the 1958 bill. We find out afterwards that Johnson presided over a number of other civil rights bill in 58/59, some of which contradicted and over-wrote the 58 legislation.
4. Caro's editors have over-indulged him. The book could have done with a good pruning in places. This would have been an excellent 700 pager. Instead we get 1200 pages about just a few years in Johnson's life. Three tomes in, and we still haven't got to the 1960 convention. Going at the same pace, the last book will have to be over 2,000 pages.

It's not all negative. This is the definitive Johnson biography and we are watching one of the world's greatest biographers at work. I just think the project has come a little off the rails here and Master of the Senate will never be held in the same regard as its two predecessors. Let's hope Caro can somehow round off this magnum opus with a fitting Volume 4.

The problem with the book is that, even though it's 1000 pages long, it feels oddly unsatisfying. I read it through and found myself asking, "Wait, how did he get control of the Senate again?" When you really look at it, Caro tends to say things like, "If so-and-so senator couldn't be persuaded by money or by concessions [or whatever else], then Johnson would just use his power to get the vote." Caro seems to keep using this phrase - Johnson would just use his "power" - to explain things. But that doesn't explain anything, and when you dig down to see what it means, Caro doesn't have any more of an answer than anyone else. He fails to really convey the "why" of things - why no one would vote for Estes Kefauver to get one some committee, or why everyone followed Russell's word so closely, or why the Policy committee decided so much. Any attempt to explain it just hits up against some well-written but basically empty passage saying how "clever" or "feared" or "powerful" Johnson or Russell was.

The real reason for this failure is the basic exaggeration of Johnson's power. Caro makes him out to be the wisest, cleverest person since Solomon. But instead of being "Master of the Senate," Johnson is really just "Master of His Times." That is because Johnson, instead of imposing his will on the majority, like some seem to believe, really just shepherded the pre-existing will to passage. The heart of the book, the struggle over the 1957 Civil Rights bill, proves this. It passed not because Johnson singlehandedly made them do it, but because there was finally enough liberal support, coupled with Republican votes, to make it happen. Johnson may have insisted on making the deal, but any majority leader in office at the time could have done so as well.

So the book's main failure is one of emphasis. By devoting so much well-written copy to a great story (but re-telling it with Johnson as the prime mover), Caro gives too much credit to his subject, and his slippery definition of the exact source of Johnson's power is a symptom of this. Many future politicians will surely try to use this book to imitate Johnson's feats; too bad there really isn't anything particularly exceptional to learn from them.

The highlight of Johnson's Senate years came in 1957, when he shepherded, against almost insurmountable odds, passage of the first Federal civil rights bill since Reconstruction. The final bill was a greatly watered-down version of what was initially proposed and supported by liberals as well as Republican's looking to increase their share of the black vote. Johnson knew that majority support for a civil rights bill with any teeth meant little, since segregationist Southern Democrats would never let such a bill be voted on, using their time-honed practice of filibuster. So Part III of the law, outlawing segregation in public places, was removed, allowing only the voting rights section to remain. And even in the area of voting rights the inclusion of a jury trial amendment almost guaranteed limited enforcement in the south. But Johnson also recognized, as belatedly did much of the rest of the country, that however small a step the approved bill was, it was nevertheless a milestone-signifying that the southern Democrats hold on power could be broken. It also changed the perception of LBJ from a mouthpiece for Southern Democrats to a national politician who could break out of the mold of an archetypical southern segregationist to garner enough support to one day become president.

I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in the nature of political power in our democratic system-how it can be used to both corrupt but also to achieve positive change in our society.