After a rough few hundred pages of background, family history and youth, this is where The Path to Power hits its stride — and in fact this week’s chapters cover a great range of topics. The first chunk is about Lyndon Johnson’s first years in Washington underscored by the New Deal legislation of the era; while the last two chapters are portraits of two extremely important people in Johnson’s life, Lady Bird Johnson and Sam Rayburn. Frankly, I’m much more interested in the first chunk, so I’ll make that the subject of this post — and then do follow-up notes for chapters 17 and 18 to keep content flowing over Christmas.

We pick up as Johnson arrives in Washington to begin his new job as a congressional secretary, and the image is one of a young man (LBJ is twenty-three at this point) with very little potential to succeed: He doesn’t know the city, doesn’t know its institutions, have never really worked in politics — and moreover, his Congressman is newly elected, junior and disinterested in the work.

Over and over though, Johnson manages to combine his impatience with a skill for using his limited resources as a positive rather than an negative. I love the stories of the young, green LBJ running up Capitol Hill. Literally sprinting to the office, not wanting to waste a single second more than necessary on such silly challenges as transportation. (Caro, by the way, loves this image as much as I do. It’s a story he will tell in different incarnations over and over to illustrate Johnson’s impatience and rush to succeed.)

There’s a constant drive in Caro’s storytelling. Almost every page in these chapters has Johnson in over his head (piles of letters, no knowledge of his secretarial duties, desperately poor, no valuable connections, no experience with the district he’s serving, no network in Texas, no available help to return for the pleas in letters, …) and every point is resolved through Johnson’s relentless personality:

He had always done every job “as if his life depended on it.” Believing that “if you do absolutely everything you could do, you would succeed,” he has tried to perform perfectly — even minor task that no one else bothered with.

It makes for a great portrayal of Johnson’s character, but it becomes tedious at times — and I wonder if this pattern is thrust onto events for the sake of the story?

When Guan introduced himself, he also introduced a discussion we will be returning to: Is Caro unfairly critical of Johnson as a person? In these chapters, there’s certainly a tension between Political Johnson and Personal Johnson.

Caro admires Political Johnson, and many of the anecdotes in the first few chapters do describe a master in the making. For example, when Johnson out-manoeuvres the Vice-president. Or when he manages to use his political skills to navigate a New Deal policy and single-handedly save sixty-seven family farms. In looking at the telling of stories like these it’s hard to read Caro as unfair to LBJ; and in fact I can worry at times that we’re getting a simplified story for the sake of narrative, leaving out the caveats in order to sustain a single-sided image:

Four hundred and thirty-five Congressional districts: among them districts represented by Congressmen of long seniority whose favor even a President had to court; among them districts represented by Congressmen who chaired powerful committees; among them districts represented by Congressmen who were allies of the New Deal; among them districts represented by Congressmen who worked hard for their districts. Few districts fared better under the New Deal’s programs than this district with a junior Congressman who opposed the New Deal, a Congressman who seldom visited his office — this district whose only asset on Capitol Hill was a young secretary who worked for it with a frantic, frenzied, almost desperate aggressiveness and energy.

Personal Johnson, on the other hand, balances between an abusive and a sycophantic character; whichever is best suited for his personal ambition (this was also touched in the comments from last week). In this version, Johnson isn’t just a reader of men, but also an abuser of them — and he consciously seeks out week-willed people for him to dominate. In these pages, the differences between his relationships to Latimer and Jones are fleshed out to prove the point, and were left with little doubt about how The Chief are using his subordinates to further his own goals. His other side, the deference to men of power and his abilities as a personal son show the same character trait, only with different tactics.

Similarly, Personal Johnson seems to be secondary to Political Johnson when it comes to conviction: In these years, LBJ confirms to himself that ideals are an obstacle to ambition: “He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood. […] He was only interested in himself and what could help himself.”

Finally, the Little Congress is an early example of what I love about these biographies: How Johnson manages to transform dormant institutions and build power for himself. To me, this is Political Johnson as his best: He captures an institution which is little more than a social club; restates its purpose and rewrites its rules — only to use it for himself to climb the next step on the Washington ladder.

Random observations:

• Johnson giving dictation on the toilet is one of the most told stories about his time in the White House, and its genesis is revealed here. I wonder if anyone has tried to emulate this tactic?
• Johnson felt that coffee would distract Latimer and Jones — not only making the coffee, but also the small act of drinking it would waste valuable time.
• “Burn this — others probably won’t understand the personal references” is a great way to end personal correspondence.