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I agree with this review only in part. Johnson was not that Left Wing in his Senate years, in part because his power was derived from Richard Russell and the Southern Caucus, and in part because he decided to align himself with Eisenhower to point up the tensions between Senate Republicans and the President on many matters. In addition, the Senate was a largely dysfunctional body after the civil war, that was usually in gridlock, and that is not always a good thing. LBJ transformed the place, and made it work more effectively. But the man was a sociopath, and would eschew nothing, no matter how tawdy, illegal, and/or immoral to further his power. He was also a paradigm of Churchill's description of the Germans: he was either at your throat or at your feet, and rarely anything inbetween. And that is an understandment. When he was at your feet, he was prostrate and sucking your toe. When he was at your throat, he preferred simply knawing at your neck with sharp teeth until decapitation, the greater was his pleasure for it. He also enjoyed humiliating his staff at every opportunity, and therefore had great trouble retaining anyone of any talent. He had John Connelly for awhile, but he got out early on.

The review also does not adequately cover the dynamics of the 1957 Civil Rights battle. The play on the ground was that the Republicans wanted a tough bill in order to continue their inroads on the black vote in the North that Eisenhower had cut deeply into in 1956. They wanted the Southerners to filibuster it, and kill it, and then use it as an issue. Nixon was the major force behind this strategy. Johnson wanted to get a bill passed, to burnish his credentials in the North for a presidential run, and foil Nixon's strategy, but to do that he needed to eviscerate it, to get Southern support (the Southerns were willing to go for a fig leaf in order to assist Johnson's presidential ambitions). Johnson accomplished both: the evisceration and then its passage. TO get his toothless Civil Right's Bill passed, be blackmailed or bought off a few Pubbies, and bought off Western state Democrats (who had almost no black voters to contend with and were thus malliable) by giving them a subsidized public power bill. That got liberal icons like Franch Church and Mike Mansfield on board. He also had Hubert Humphrey in his pocket when he needed him, a chap whom he had long since castrated and tamed into a creature of his will.

And there you have it.

1 posted on 11/28/2002 12:37:04 PM PST by Torie
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To: jwalsh07; sinkspur; x; deport; Dog Gone; Bigun; Texasforever; Nonstatist; crasher; AntiGuv; ...
For your reading pleasure John, regarding a president about whom we are both not indifferent. Ping to the others who might be interested.
2 posted on 11/28/2002 12:40:36 PM PST by Torie
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To: Torie
"With Johnson, you never quite knew if he was out to lift your heart or your wallet."

-------------------------------

He would manipulate both to his advantage.

3 posted on 11/28/2002 12:54:57 PM PST by RLK
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To: Torie
I think it is best to fully judge Caro's biographies of Johnson after his fourth and final volume about LBJ's presidency is published. I do note that Johnson cooperated quite a bit with Eisenhower since he realized that Ike was popular with the public. Daschle is so clueless that he couldn't figure this out even though he supposedly read Master of The Senate.
4 posted on 11/28/2002 12:56:40 PM PST by PJ-Comix
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To: Torie
bump for later reading.
I think Caro took a more sympathic look at LBJ in the 3rd book as in the 2nd you walked away thinking LBJ was nothing more than a vote stealing scroundel.
When he came to talk here in Seattle some months ago on part of a book tour (and since winning a Book Award I believe he'll be on tour again) he brought up on the radio twice and in his talk again LBJ's helping out of the Mexican janitor down in Patula (Cotula?) when Johnson was a teacher. The "he just wants to help out" became really thin the 3rd time I heard it -- if Caro himself can't find another compassionate moment in LBJ's life then who can?
5 posted on 11/28/2002 12:58:21 PM PST by lelio
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To: Torie
... a man for whom politics is merely a nihilistic series of deals, utterly without any principled ground.

And that is the essence of Lyndon Johnson, probably the worst, and most unprincipled, president of the United States ... his evil legacy lives on after him to this very day.

6 posted on 11/28/2002 1:03:56 PM PST by SamKeck
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To: Torie
It amazes me that Caro could come to love Johnson, a man of very dubious accomplishments who represents everything evil in American politics. Then take a look at Caro's seminal work, "The Power Broker." In that work he obviously despises Robert Moses and casts doubt on all of his accomplishments. Moses' list of accomplishments was completely brushed over, Jones Beach, L.I Expressway, Northern State Pkway, The Triboro, Throgs Neck, Whitestone, Verrazano bridges to name a few. The UN, The Westside Hway and the list goes on and on.

He created the modern suburb and so much of the way we live and work today is a result of his genius. Yet Caro comes to hate Moses and all he stands for.

18 posted on 11/28/2002 6:07:08 PM PST by appeal2
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To: Torie
As civil rights leader Roy Wilkins succinctly put it: "With Johnson, you never quite knew if he was out to lift your heart or your wallet."

This is what makes the Democrats the political party of choice among sociopaths.
21 posted on 11/28/2002 6:42:17 PM PST by houstonian
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To: Torie
"It's not the job of a politician to go around saying principled things."

What a great line!

22 posted on 11/28/2002 6:48:31 PM PST by u-89
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To: Torie
Excellent post. Thank you.

Johnson's White House aide John P. Roche wrote years after LBJ died that he could not make Johnson understand that Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated Leninist. Johnson, Roche recalls, kept asking, "'What does Ho want?' as if Ho were a mayor of Chicago holding out for five new post offices." Such a question could only come from a man for whom politics is merely a nihilistic series of deals, utterly without any principled ground.

Fascinating. The one thing that completely befuddled Johnson was a man who wanted power for the sake of a deeply held principle, even if that principle was an evil ones. In the end politics is about principles. Johnson's number one principle was self-advancement at all cost, and feeding his own perverse carnal desires for sex and power.

27 posted on 11/28/2002 10:18:27 PM PST by Zack Nguyen
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To: Torie
BUMP to read !
32 posted on 11/29/2002 3:03:30 AM PST by happygrl
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To: Torie
The jerk gets us embroiled in Viet-Nam, runs the war his way, and then cops out and runs away.

I hope the redneck is burning in hell.

36 posted on 12/01/2002 11:01:39 AM PST by rockfish59
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