The Master of the Senate
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Product Description
Book Three of Robert A. Caro’s monumental work, The Years of Lyndon Johnson—the most admired and riveting political biography of our era—which started with the best-selling and prizewinning The Path to Power and Means of Incline.
Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson’s tale through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his incline to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.
It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the tale with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the fantastic issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term—the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose integration of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.
Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, lacking whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the fantastic oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s incredible triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.
Master of the Senate is told with an plenty of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research—years immersed in the worlds of Johnson and the United States Senate, examining thousands of documents and talking to hundreds of people, from pages and cloakroom clerks to senators and administrative aides. The result is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capitol Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings of personal and legislative power. It is a work that displays all the intensity of understanding and narrative brilliance that led the New York Times to call Caro’s The Path to Power “a monumental political saga . . . powerful and stirring.”
From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate examines in meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson’s career in that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after 12 years in the House of Representatives) until his election as JFK’s vice president in 1960. This, the third in a projected four-volume series, studies not only the pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who wielded influence with both consummate skill and “raw, elemental cruelty,” but also the Senate itself, which Caro describes (pre-1957) as a “cruel joke” and an “impregnable stronghold” against social change. The milestone of Johnson’s Senate years was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage he single-handedly engineered. As vital as the bill was–both in and of itself and as a precursor to wider-reaching civil rights legislation–it was only close to Johnson’s Southern “anti-civil rights” heart as a means to his dream: the presidency. Caro writes that not only does power corrupt, it “reveals,” and that’s exactly what this massive, scrupulously researched book does. A model of social, psychological, and political insight, it is not just masterful; it is a masterpiece. –H. O’Billovich
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Related posts:
4 Volumes on a Dead Man. What a Waste of Time.
Homo-Erotism of a Dead President. LBJ Dead since 1973.
I am permanently curious why smart people devote years obsessed with dead people, not to mention dead people from the long past.
It must be a man acting out their homo-erotic fantasies out of another man. Of course, LBJ was Texas roughneck, cowboy, and Robert Caro, the pencil-neck geek must find this guy attractive.
LBJ died in 1973 from a Heart Attack. He got kick out after one term in office, the Vietnam War was a diaster. The welfare state left us with billions in debt.
All this can be debated in literary circles. But why devote three books to a man dead since 1973.
Robert Caro, please get a life, a real job. All humans born, live and then die. The USA life expectancy is about 72. We can debate politics and so on.
Weak males tend to be attracted to strong, dominating males and that clarifies why Robert Caro is devoting three books to a dead man.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Because Amazon were consistently telling me, by mistake, that my credit card details were invalid I re-ordered the book twice more; it then turned out that there was no problem with my credit card and as a result I received three copies of the book as a replacement for of one. I have returned two of these, at considerable expense, requesting a refund of the cost of the two books and of the postage. So far I have heard nothing. A pretty lousy service all round, leaving me nearly GBP 90 out of pocket.Will I ever get my money back?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Caro is a gifted writer. Having loved the previous book (Means of Incline) immensely, I was looking forwards to this one. But, I was shocked to find a constant (and depressing agreed Caro’s skill) liberal bias that was simply too thick to make it readable.
One brief example is the glorification of Woodrow Wilson in one of the opening chapters — he “democratized” (!) our financial structure with the income tax, says the leader. And we see liberal opponents described as backward reactionaries with terrible motives, with nary a principled opponent to federal power or a constitutional guardian among them.
Caro’s serious about equality and rights reminds me of of what Bastiat wrote in 1850: “Socialism… confuses the honor between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We object to of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education…. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality.”
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
if only caro was as excellent a historian as he is a writer…. but errors of fact and interpretation mar his credibility.
couple examples. more than once he talks about how the senators debated constitutional issues “in particular,” caro says, the right to unlimited debate, which is known as the filibuster. but unlimited debate is not a right, and not a constitutional issue. it’s determined by the rules of the senate, which are voted on and passed by the senate at the beginning of each congress, and can also be amended during a session. so this so-called “right” can be altered or eliminated by members of the senate whenever they choose to do so. the first time caro said this i thought it was sloppy writing, that he must know the truth. the second time he said it i thought, this is indefensible that he pretends to know the senate, yet doesn’t know this.
another example, this time of twisted intepretation– in talking about fdr’s efforts to defeat senators who opposed him– an effort in which fdr failed– caro says but even if fdr had succeeded, even if he his supporters had won every seat in that election, he still would have faced 2/3 of the senate which had not changed, which would have been entirely unaffected by this election result.
what is he smoking? right, only 1/3 of the senate is up for election in any agreed cycle, with 2/3 remaining in office. BUT the reality of politics is this: had fdr been able to defeat several senators, persons who remained would have been quaking in their boots and bowing their knee to fdr. had fdr succeeded, the remaining senators would have obeyed his every whim.
caro’s ability to craft brilliant sentences and make narrative tension covers up a lot. the reality is this is a deeply flawed and untrustworthy book.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I got “hooked” on Robert A. Caro’s LBJ saga when the first book, “Path to Power,” came out — TWELVE years ago. An appealing read at the time, and it was supposed to be a three-parter. I expected that the entire tale — through the Presidency — to have been told by now. So, what do we get? One-thousand fourty pages on LBJ’s SENATE years, and I’m still waiting for a book on LBJs presidency. Again, I am “hooked” because I ongoing on the first one. It’s like being pulled into a soap opera that you just must watch to find out how it ends. Caro obviously place in a lot of work and research, but — COME ON. How much of this detail was necessary? I just hope Caro, and I, live long enough to find out how the saga ends. I want this tale to be buried once and for all, just like LBJ. As for “Master of the Senate,” the only way I got through it is to skim and speed read. I have additional books to read. This saga needs “cloture.”
p.s. (added November 18, 2003)
Now that the 40th Anniversary of JFK’s assasination is upon us — when are we going to get Caro’s answer to the BIG question: Did LBJ have JFK bumped off???? I’M WAITING……
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5