The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert Caro
There are books that speak to you; they become how you view the world. One cannot understand the nuances through which “I” see the world until they have read these foundational pieces. That’s what makes a great book (consequently, the same for a great thought or great art). LBJ’s biography is one of these, because it shows the how and where political power belongs in America. I read a Dwarkesh Patel blog about the volumes on LBJ. Later in the same summer, my boss recommended me to read this book and said it was his favorite. I convinced Arham to start reading it, and he referenced it as "simultaneously a modern prince and a great bio."
Observe the book reviews and the esteem at which this book is held within circles I look up to and the top comment is less about LBJ and more about Robert Caro as perhaps the best biographer to have ever existed. 40+ years after releasing this first volume, Caro is still working on the 5th one. I picked up his memoir as my next book.
My notes and quotes from the book:
The type of respect LBJ earned was gained when he held power (and a level of fear) over people. Their submission was when they asked him a favor. A favor he wanted them to ask him, a favor he would and wanted to do for them, but only upon them asking. When dealing with people who did not view him with affection, he would at least win their respect. “If there was still disdain there was at least a leavening of respect.”
“Even some students who didn't like him, respected him now. The respect was grudging — in Ella So Relle's words, it was the respect "you'd give a politician who won a political office you knew he didn't really deserve" but it was respect nonetheless; Ella herself, for example, campaigned for Lyndon Johnson some years after college. ("Why? Because I also felt that he was very capable, had a lot of energy, and had the ambition to do things that other people didn't.")” (Page 195, White Stars and Black Stars)
Having energy and ambition that others can feel and see is a competitive edge. Just like how execution for a founder is a true moat.
A form of power he held over others was that of consequence. By the time he achieved the power to delegate jobs, people would instinctively have to ask themselves: could saying or doing this hurt me?
Politics was about manipulating information and people. Influence. How could he gear someone towards an action, while also being the quietest person in the room where the actual decisions were made. This required secrecy at multiple layers. First around the “fraternity” (White Stars), so that the other students would never know that there was an organized collusion against the Black Stars. Second, around his own plans to influence the individual white stars.
A great leader is powerful (holds influence to shift votes to his favor) and has authenticity. LBJ had a natural disposition to power, but perhaps because of the failures of his father and mothers’ ideals, he never valued or gained authenticity.
He asked all the older boys about all the ins and outs of how to get things done in Washington. He wouldn’t believe in luck — any bad answers he’d start arguing to bring out every possible answer to hid arguments. He wanted to be sure he knew the answers.
The mystique of the mail went beyond the political. “If you did just absolutely everything you could do, you would succeed,” he tried to perform perfectly even minor tasks that no one else bothered with.
After the typing came the retyping. Johnson would read every one to ensure perfection (page 234)
Johnson made Gene Latimer and L.E. Jones work with such franticness because they had such respect for him. “Every problem had a solution…” and he was contagious with working harder than even them. They were willing to work long hours because they did not work alone; their boss trudged right alongside them.
Brilliance and hard work were not the crucial qualifications for working with Johnson. It was subservience and losing your pride. Those who stayed would be devoured and know who’s boss, sometimes via humiliation (going into the toilet with Johnson to take notes).
“"He was smiling and deferential," Tommy Corcoran, a keen observer of the Washington scene, was to say of Johnson, "but hell, lots of guys can be smiling and deferential. He had something else. No matter what someone thought, Lyndon would agree with him--would be there ahead of him, in fact. He could follow someone's mind around and figure out where it was going and beat it there." And he touched every base; leaving a bureaucrat's office, he smiled and chatted with his assistants and his secretaries until, soon, he had entire bureaus, top to bottom, willing to help him.” (Page 256)
Johnson helped make crops that hadn’t been planted yet as collateral. Mortgage companies would get their current interest payments + arrears. He also convinced the Federal Land Bank to take soil productivity into account when deciding how much to lend on a farm, which helped the black loam rich Gulf Coast get considerably more… enough to pay their mortgage arrears. Essentially: farmers agreed to give 1/3 of their crop; govt promised to speed and liberalize mortgage refinancing; mortgage holders agreed to accept letters and the promises and to take down foreclosure notices.
“Boss of the Little Congress.” LBJ found a game and learned each and every rule. He knew his goal and that special “path to power.” He would exploit any and all rules to win on the technicalities. Doing so requires the lawyers brain — to go through every fine point in a system and ask: how can I use this to achieve my end. The case example of how LBJ won Little Congress shows this best. He found a technicality and expanded voters beyond just congressional secretaries, including postmen and elevator men. Once he achieved the speakership, he saw how the system could be useful for the more powerful, the real representatives in Congress. They’d understand how actual congress would vote, to gain publicity, and to prepare them for the real debate. “When we had a debate, members of Congress would show up.” He then brought lots of press in and attached his name to major decisions: his personal invite would be received warmly for people to speak in the events and being who he was, those powerful people remembered him. He appointed half a dozen of his own loyal squad to positions (and those loyal to him would always be dominated by him). Those allies would telephone other congressional aides about how to vote; Johnson never campaigned publicly or for a second role in the speakership. Members who didn’t follow his suggestions would stop receiving invitations to speak.
Shakespeare had a quote: "but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing." LBJ was the type who could never be truly eased — he was always insecure about “being nothing.”
Johnson politically beating the VP (Garner) as a congressional assistant to Kleberg
With men who had power, LBJ was a professional son. "In talking with these guys, Lyndon was very much a young man, very starry-eyed, very boyish. It was very much junior to senior. Their fondness of him had strong paternal overtones."
LBJ would only discuss political tactics, never issues (philosophy, principles, ideals). He would turn them away saying he hadn’t made up his mind or with a Texas anecdote or joke. “Lyndon goes which way the wind blows.”
“First he fills himself up with knowledge, and then he pours out enthusiasm around him, and you can’t stop him. I mean there’s no way… he just overwhelms you.”
“If he drove men, he led them, too. Once, a long-awaited WA certification of children whose families were on relief and who were therefore eligible for NYA employment arrived late on Friday afternoon. There were 8,000 names on the list, and Johnson told Deason and Morgan that he wanted those 8,000 teen-agers at work- on Monday morning. Morgan's first reaction was despair; the teenagers couldn't be contacted by mail over the weekend, and the NYA had already found that many teenagers didn't respond to letters, anyway. Morgan, whose assignment at the time was nothing larger than supervising a roadside park on which about twenty youths were employed, recalls that his first reaction was incredulity. But Johnson told him to take the twenty youths, divide up the 8,000 names among them, and have them spend the weekend going directly to the teen-agers' homes to speak to them in person. "I got the kids in, and stayed there almost until morning, dividing up the names among them, by streets; I'd shout out an address on Guadalupe, and the kid who had Guadalupe would write it down. And Saturday morning, we hit the streets. We didn't contact all of them, but on Monday morning, we had 5,600 of them down there, and we put them to work. That's the kind of assignments he'd give you that would seem nearly impossible. But he taught you you could do them."”
“As Dick Kleberg's secretary, Johnson had cached men in bureaucratic nooks and crannies in Washington and all across Texas. His NYA post allowed him to bring these men together under his leadership. Now he could observe them at work, in action; could assess precisely not only personalities but potentialities. He could dispense with those not suited to his purposes.”
Anytime the government is responsible for employing people, the jobs get primarily rewarded based on political affiliation and personal friendships. Perhaps stricter civil service requirements have their usefulness? (curious as to what the 2nd order consequences of these are). Even if the government just has contracts to give out to private companies, the choosing is often done behind the scenes by people who have something to win (they could be a lawyer charging crazy fees representing a firm; could be a landowner who would be made wealthy; could be a politician who needs to gain influence). Because US government is the most trustworthy check you can get, it also means private companies are not incentivized to do beyond the minimum requirements. They aren’t stakeholders in the aftermath of a bad job (as for as i’ve observed) — the loss always goes back to the government.
Sometimes the best way to convince people is by arguing the opposite perspective and making them argue the points that really matter. Like when Sam Johnson listed to Stella Gliddon all the reasons why Lyndon was crazy for running, and essentially made Stella work out for herself why his son should be supported — it convinced them more firmly than he could have convinced them.
When running for Congress, and behind the older politicians. “There was a tactic, Sam Johnson said, that could make the leaders' opposition work for him, instead of against him. The same tactic, Sam said, could make the adverse newspaper polls work for him, instead of against him. It could even make the youth issue work for him. If the leaders were against him, he told his son, stop trying to conceal that fact; emphasize it in a dramatic fashion. If he was behind in the race, emphasize that in a dramatic fashion. If he was younger than the other candidates, emphasize that. Lyndon asked his father what he meant, and his father told him. If no leader would introduce Lyndon, Sam said, he should stop searching for mediocre adults as substitutes, but instead should be introduced by a young child, an outstanding young child. And the child should introduce him not as an adult would introduce him, but with a poem, a very special poem. You know the poem, he told Rebekah- the one about the thousands. Rebekah knew the poem. And when Lyndon asked who the child should be, Sam smiled, and pointed to Ava's son. In an area in which horse. manship was one of the most esteemed talents, Corky Cox was, at the age of eight, already well known for the feats of riding and calf-roping with which he had swept the children's events in recent rodeos; the best young cowboy in the Hfl Country, people were calling him. "Corky can do it; Sam said. All the next day, Sam trained him. "He wanted Corky to really shout out thousands, Ava recalls. "He wanted him to smack down his hand every time he said that word. I can still see Uncle Sam smacking down his hand on the kitchen table to show Corky how." And that night, at a rally in Henly, in Hays County, Lyndon Johnson told the audience, "They say I'm a young candidate. Well, I've got a young campaign manager, too," and he called Corky to the podium, and Corky, smacking down his hand, recited a stanza of Edgar A. Guest's "It Couldn't Be Done"”
After he won his congressional seat in the special election: “The first letters to be answered, moreover, were those not from friends but from enemies: the concession messages from his opponents. And while their congratulations had been strictly pro forma, his replies were not. You didn't lose, he told Avery, just as I didn't win. "It was a victory for President Roosevelt." He repeated that to Sam Stone My dear Judge: Thank you very much for your kind telegram. The people voted to support President Roosevelt and his program, and the victory is his" and, since the Judge would be a more dangerous future opponent than Avery, went on at more length: "You warned me you would show us how to carry Williamson County, and I congratulate you upon the support the homefolks gave your candidacy. Please tell your and my friends there that I admire the way they stood by you." And to the opponent he considered most dangerous of all-Polk Shelton, who had campaigned with energy, and whose strong beliefs Johnson feared would impel him to run again-his reply went even further: "Thank you for your kind telegram and your pledge of support. ... I hope you will always feel that my efforts are at your disposal. Whatever service I may be able to render will be cheerfully and gladly done."”
“Any prudent politician would take steps to try to make friends out of enemies, but even very prudent politicians were amazed by both the rapidity and the extent of the steps Johnson took… No effort had been spared to defeat these men; no effort would be spared to win their friendship.”
“It is ambition, that makes of a creature of a real man.” Pride, embarrassment, gloating: such emotions could only hinder his progress… they were luxuries in which he would not indulge himself.”
“Influential or not, anyone who wrote to Johnson was to receive a reply — as fast as it could be typed and mailed.”
LBJ would get the not yet influential but clearly brilliant-minded New Dealers small and very appreciated presents. He was always deferential with his opinions and listened with awe. He was then very useful to them (giving them information of who they ought to talk to or insider politics of capitol hill)
LBJ asked Sam Rayburn to stand beside him at the swearing in ceremony, and Rayburn was very touched. He did little things to make people very touched, and then treat him like a brother or a son.
He made people like him by being fun: great storytelling + practical jokes. "He always had a good Texas story that was in point. He knew three worlds- the world of Congress, about which they knew little, and two worlds about which they knew nothing: the world of Texas politics, and the world of the Texas Hill Country, the world from which he had come. He spoke to them about those worlds -with an eloquence they never forgot, his voice now soft and confiding, now booming the voice of a natural storyteller. He was always ready with the latest inside stories about Congress, stories on which they hung because such information was important to them, but also because in the telling he mimicked accurately and hilariously the characters he was talking about; pacing back and forth, a tall, gangling figure in those small living rooms, he filled those rooms with drama.”
“By giving the party, but allowing Abe to make a birthday speech for his boss, he kept his foot in the door — with both of them.”
“Everyone tried to find out where you stood. But he had great inner control. He could talk so much — and no one ever knew exactly where he stood.”
During the Garner / Rayburn fiasco where Garner decided to run for President and Rayburn had to give his defacto support even though he supported Roosevelt, LBJ would not say anything at all. He never took a stand — he and Wirtz supporter Roosevelt in the shadows but LBJ spied on the Texan delegation from the inside.
“No matter how safe a particular stand might seem now, no matter how politically wise, that stand might come back to haunt him someday. No matter what he said now, no matter how intelligent a remark might now seem, he might one day be sorry he had made it. And so he said nothing.”
“He had a way of getting along with the leaders, and he didn’t bother much with the small fry. And let me tell you, the small fry didn’t mind. They didn’t want much to do with him, either. People were critical of him because he was too ambitious, too forceful, too pushy.”
“Although Johnson would not be thirty-one until August, 1939, he was no longer a particularly youthful Congressman. He was only a junior Congressmen, one of several hundred junior Congressmen. One of a crowd.”
When LBJ essentially ran the 1940 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s finances, he went above and beyond. His network of influential businessmen allowed him to bring huge amounts of money to the table and then put his name on disbursing that money. The donors would say exactly to whom and in which quantities they wanted their money sent out to, which helped LBJ circumvent the actual Chair of the Campaign Committee. This combined with his entree into the white house to get measures passed made him a force to be reckoned with
During the 1940 election, he would always telegram “Call on me, at any hour” and “Do you have any other assignment for me?”
“If Sam Rayburn or John McCormack requested a specific amount of money for a specific Congressman, John. son would honor the request, but these requests were relatively infrequent. And except in those few cases, the decision as to which Congressman got money, and how much he got, would be Lyndon Johnson's decision. His alone. O.K., he wrote next to some requests. None, he wrote next to others. "1,000 would be a lifesaver" _None. "An additional $300 will, I am sure, get results" None. Out. The words and numbers he wrote on those lists were a symbol of a power he now possessed- over the careers of his colleagues. The power was a limited one-it was the power of the purse, and the purse was not a large one. Small though it might be in comparison to the purse which financed a presidential campaign, however, it was not small to most of the men whose campaigns it was financing; it was substantial in terms both of their needs and of their expectations. They needed its contents, needed it badly. What Lyndon Johnson wrote beside their names had played a role--a small role but a definite role in determining their fates.”
“For some of these funds the money from Texas he had, moreover, become the sole source. The telegrams candidates had recived ton reces. announcing that funds were on the way had said ihey had been continue by "my good Democratic friends in Texas.» By his friends. The repeats did not know who those friends were and even were they to find ou, they could hardly ask these Texans with whom they were not even acquainted to contribute to their campaigns. Their only acess to this new- and, ap parently, substantial- source of money was through Lyndon Johnson. He controlled it. The money they needed could be obtained only through him. They were going to need money again in 1942, of course, in less than two years. In 1942-and in succeeding years. Whether or not they liked Lyndon Johnson, they were going to need him. Not merely gratitude but an emotion perhaps somewhat stronger and more enduring self-interest dictated that they be on good terms with him. This realization--and the reality behind it -abruptly altered Johnson's status on Capitol Hill.”
“His need to be the center of attention parties had been thwarted by the degree to which, in Washington, ate an was a function of power, but now, as Dale Miller puts it, "Because of sis political power," he was more often the center of attention. The averation was apparent in the House cloakrooms and dining room, where, belore the 1940 campaign, some fellow Representatives would snub Johnson, greeting other colleagues while ignoring him because, as one says, "they wouldn't put up with him."
“In order to reap the fullest benefits from his work with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Johnson kept working after Election Day. Among the implements he employed were letters--letters with the Johnson touch. These letters, written to powerful officials, all shared a single theme: each official was told that it was he- and he alone who had made it possible for Johnson to participate in the 1940 campaign. Each official was thanked-humbly, gratefully--for giving a young man his great opportunity. And each official was flattered--with flattery custom-tailored by a master of the art.” These letters are sent not only to allies, but even more flatteringly to enemies.
“This door vas used as well bartes rosescable young dents presentaters, because the to personal secretaries possessed vital; unit ted licess to the President; "everyone had to go through Pa -excer Missy and Grace," Corcoran recalls. If one of these two women knem Roosevelt was alone, she could bring someone in for a quick moment's die. cussion in which the President could give him the decision or guidance he needed, "so if Pa wouldn't let you in, you went around back to Grace, and she or Missy got you in." A refinement of this procedure was also employed. If Rowe, say, or one of the President's five other administrative assistants (the men with a "passion for anonymity' whose offices were across narrow West Executive Avenue in the old State, War, and Navy Building) asked Watson for an appointment with the President, he might be told that the schedule was filled, but that Watson would try no guarantees to fit him in between appointments if he wanted to wait with other visitors in his spacious anteroom. "And you'd sit there," says Rowe, "and if Pa wouldn't let you in fast enough, you'd go out and go around back to Missy [and ask her], 'When do I get in? I've got to talk to the President.' Then you'd go back and sit in Pa's office again, and Missy would tell Roosevelt, and he would tell Pa, 'I need to talk to Jim Rowe. Get him, will you?' And Pa would say, 'He's right here.?' It was a game." This version of the game was used frequently by those of the young men the two women were fond of. "I learned I always went in through the back door," Rowe says. "And Lyndon got in like me through the back door." Fond though Watson was of Johnson, Pa was a vigilant guardian of the President's time, and had Johnson asked for more than occasional bits of it, he might easily have worn out his welcome with the General. So he used the more informal route -which is one reason his name seldom appears in the White House logs that chronicle the Presi dent's official visitors.”
LBJ courted all six offices with access to the president. Corcoran made the mistake of only courting one of them, so when that secretary suffered a stroke, there was no one to get him the back door to repair the damage.
Johnson used Roosevelt as a banner-head in both his congressional and senatorial elections. “just a private under my Commander-in-Chief.” He chose the right man to follow publicly
Other books held at the same esteem:
Three Body Problem
The Engines of Cognition
Thinking in Systems