The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I by Robert A. Caro

Author:Robert A. Caro
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307422576
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-22T14:00:00+00:00

AND HE USED THESE MEN.

Hawthorne said of Andrew Jackson that “his native strength … compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him the sharper tool.” These were very cunning men, and Lyndon Johnson made very sharp tools of them.

They didn’t realize this, of course. In fact, they vehemently deny it. They felt that they were using Lyndon Johnson at least as much as he was using them, and this feeling was important to them; they were clever men, and proud of their cleverness, practical men and proud of their pragmatism; it was important to them that the upper hand in any relationship be theirs; the thought that someone might be taking advantage of them, getting more from them than they from him, would have been difficult for them to swallow (the thought was, in fact, difficult for them to swallow forty years later; the author learned quickly that one way to bring a frown to their faces was to so much as hint that Lyndon Johnson might have been using them more than they were using him).

But he was using them. An element of mutuality did exist, of course; Johnson was, in Fortas’ words, “running errands” for them on the Hill, giving them information on what Congress was doing, and tips on how to get something done by Congress. But the mutuality was very heavily weighted in Johnson’s favor. He was performing essentially minor chores for them. But what he got from them in exchange was not minor: it was, in fact, the largest thing in his political life during his first years in Congress. What he got from them was the Marshall Ford Dam.

To get the dam completed, he not only used every one of these razor-sharp weapons; he used them with consummate judgment, putting each to the specific use for which it was best suited.

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