The Passage of Power - Robert A. Caro

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZENAMED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist * Time * Newsweek * Foreign Policy * Business Week * The Week * The Christian Science Monitor *NewsdayBy the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker.Book Four of Robert A. Caros monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece. The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassins bullet to reach its mark.By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and Kennedys decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the extent of Robert Kennedys efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage animosity between Johnson and Kennedys younger brother, portraying one of Americas great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedys overt contempt for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnsons heart and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the crucial commodity. For the first time, in Caros breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnsons eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeksgrasping the reins of the presidency with supreme masteryhe propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedys death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnsons finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam.In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnsons lifeand in the life of the nationThe Passage of Power is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caros work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffmans verdict that Caro has changed the art of political biography.

Published: 2012-05-01 (Knopf)

ISBN: 9780679405078

Language: English

Format: Hardcover, 712 pages

Goodreads' rating: -

Genres

North American Hi... Presidents American History Politics Biography History Nonfiction

Reviews

Pier rated it

It has been twelve years since the last volume was released, and thirty since the first. The next should hopefully come out in two or three years, says an article. Let's hope.This book covers the era from 1959 to 1964, the slim few years between Johnson's acceptance of the Vice Presidency to the beginning of 1964, just over a month after the events of 11/22. Power passes from him and to him in nearly equal spans. The Senate Giveth and Kennedy Taketh Away.Johnson was a man accustomed to, and obsessed with, power. Caro himself remarks - quite accurately - that his books are not as much a biographical study as they are a calculation and study of power and its historical effects. The author handles such a momentous idea with skill, eloquence, and precision.Moving from the Top of the Legislative Branch to the Bottom of the Executive was a period of lethargy and suffering. As the administration and the nation revelled in the youthful energy of Camelot, LBJ had no part in it, not even cabinet meetings. He pleaded and grovelled at the Kennedy's feet for a greater position - first with expansion of the Vice President's power, then even for a major committee position. But all that was left was ceremony and pomp, and the possibility of being a heartbeat away from the President. Johnson accepted for the possibility of proximity to power, but had none himself.His only release was in late 1963, as he started to, independently, take on the work of Civil Rights. Johnson's character is quite complex - he is a mixture of social justice demigod and political demagogue. He truly sympathized with the downtrodden, and kissed the asses of the high and mighty to get them liberty.Then came November. Those events I will not recount, as Caro and others do so well, with the fear and detail of a prolonged traumatic flashback. LBJ was calculated, cool, and rational in the hours after the Kennedy assassination. He had a mere two hours to get adjusted to the fact that he as president, compared to two months as elected ones do. He felt a sense of guilt, of usurpation. He was a Texan and the murder was in Dallas. There are those who felt, and still feel compelled to blame him, as the idea of a lone madman killing an iconic president and ending a sustained national euphoria is an idea so alien to the human mind, that it, too, must be the speartip of a greater momentum of history.Somehow, he preserved the legitimacy of his office long enough, and struck a balance between proper mourning and using his predecessor's memory as a call to arms. With a speech that starts, "All I would give to not be standing here today," he concludes with forceful calls to Civil Rights, the Space Program, and building his Great Society. War did not yet figure. A masterstroke.Of course, all does not go well. The South, under the banner of States' Rights, dug its heels and prepared to fight. Johnson also had a minor exodus of Kennedy officials, such as Sorenson, Schlesinger, and Robert Kennedy himself, who had a major feud with LBJ for years. He will play a part in the final volume, no doubt.LBJ knew what to do with power again. He set up his own image, distinct from the urbane and youthful Kennedy. Case in point? Taking the West German Chancellor to a Texan barbecue and giving him a ten-gallon hat, and giving speeches on haybales and on horseback. And the policy moved forward. Many of Kennedy's officials - McNamara, Rusk, the NASA staff - all stayed to continue the Kennedy plans with vigor and determination.The final act looms.The whole series reads excellently. One might make a cliched comparison to Greek Tragedy or Gibbon. Anyone remotely interested in politics should read them all, or those who want big stories of history.

Valentia rated it

The last episode of season one of House of Cards ends with Francis J. Underwood (FU) sitting at his desk in his cabinet conspiring with the audience in the style of Richard III, and on the table there is a book lying. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV by Robert A. Caro. For someone watching the show that is familiar with Lyndon Johnsons bio, the parallels between him and the protagonist in House of Cards, played by Kevin Spacey, are obvious. Both FU and LBJ are savvy politicians and master strategist; both are obsessed with power, skilled at manipulation and ruthless in their approach (e.g. the infamous "Johnson treatment"); both men are aiming at the highest office in America and arguably the world; both unbelievably smart and combinative, but most importantly capable of passing bills through Congress. The season of House of Cards ends in the tense moment where, after a series of hard scheming and morally (and legally) reproachful actions on behalf of FU, he is on the verge of becoming vice president. That is if an article exposing those actions doesn't come out first. In comparison, a sizable part of Passage of Power is dedicated to a piece of investigative journalism about LBJs money that was on its way to be published if it wasn't for the sudden assassination of Jack F. Kennedy that led to LBJ becoming the new president. Moreover, weeks after ascending to the presidency, he cleared his way from critical journalists in his typical manner - concealed transactions, blackmail, bulling.Whether the book is suggestive of how the story in House of Cards would develop, well have to wait and see.As the show is gripping, provoking and revealing more than some would like to admit, so is the book. The Passage of Power is written with such immediacy, with so much skill, that one gets so involved and impatient regardless of their general familiarity with the events and their outcome. Gosh, I think to myself, here is another reason why I love this country. I mean the Anglo-Saxon tradition of writing about history in a fashion that compelling and humane. http://slpssm.blogspot.com/2013/10/th...

Trip rated it

So I started this the same day I finished "Master of the Senate," figuring I'd just read the introduction and mayyybe first couple of pages proper to whet my appetite for the thing over the course of the next few weeks. Instead I stayed up late reading the first 400 pages and then more every opportunity I got. The leisurely pace of Master of the Senate is pretty much gone; here we see Johnson vs Kennedy in the 1960 primary, a race through the three early years of the Kennedy administration in which Johnson was systematically marginalized and left without responsibilities, and then a detailed, nearly moment-by-moment account of the seven weeks following JFK's assassination in which Johnson takes over in a cloud of barbecue smoke and secret phone conversations, succeeding in getting Kennedy-initiated proposals through the Senate and announcing the War on Poverty.Missing from this, I felt, was the strong institutional focus on the Presidency as an institution that was so powerful in The Path to Power and Master of the Senate with respect the House and Senate. Caro is really, really good at describing the quotidian minutiae through which power actually functions in the legislative institutions, and the strong focus on institutions is largely missing here in favor of a focus on the personal war between the outgoing and incoming administrations. The hope is that Caro is saving this material for the (final?) fifth volume, set to show the Johnson administration in its full sickly flower, but it's notably absent here. But who cares? This volume contains great things and promises--in the final chapters, regarding the growing hatred between Robert Kennedy and the new President of the US--still greater. ROBERT A. CARO: hereby elected best writer for life.