Posted on 03/07/2012 8:42:22 AM PST by PJ-Comix
A publishing event: the fourth volume in Robert Caro's monumental biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which began with the best-selling and prize-winning The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate.
The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career. It tells the story of his volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency. It gives us for the first time the story of the assassination from the viewpoint of Lyndon Johnson himself. And with the depth of insight, the profound grasp of both the life and times of his subject that Robert Caro has consistently brought to this mesmerizing biography, it reveals what it was like to suddenly become president in a time of great crisis--an assumption of presidential power unprecedented in American history; how he stepped, unprepared, into the presidency and within weeks forced through Congress bills on the budget and civil rights that it had determined to let die; how through his singular political genius he set out to make the presidency his own, and to fulfill the highest purpose of the office. It is Johnson's finest hour, before his aspirations and his accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.
And for background by the former Bush spokesman’s attorney father see:
Also explains the human sacrifice that lead to where the DemocRAT party finds itself today.
I wonder if the book gets to the truth of a quote attributed to LBJ?
"Once, while on a trip with two governors, Johnson reportedly made the following comment in explaining why the civil rights bill was so important to him. He said it was simple: 'I'll have them n*****s voting Democratic for two hundred years.'"
“The Passage of Power follows Johnson through.... the most triumphant periods of his career.”
Sorry, I simply don’t recall any “triumphant periods” in the career of this ignorant megalomaniac.
Caro is not a syncophant for Johnson, that’s for sure. He shows him in book two as a grasping nasty guy. I have the third, but haven’t got it read yet.
I will buy this one as well as Caro does his work well. The comments are not his in the article.
LBJ one big lesson in disaster.
JFK was as bad as LBJ, he just wasn’t as successful in getting his goals accomplished, his death helped the Democrats do that.
This is what destroyed America.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
I read it also in a different book long ago but don’t recall the title. I may have read in the same book that LBJ was known to take a leak in the front yard of his ranch while being interviewed by a reporter. Pulling out his ‘johnson’ if you will. The guy was quite a character.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.