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edd813a
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Lyndon Johnson. The junior congressman saw two things that no one else saw. The first was a possible connection between two groups that had previously had no link: conservative Texas oilmen and contractors--most notably his financial backer, Herman Brown, of Brown & Root--who needed federal contracts and tax breaks and were willing to spend money, a lot of money, to get them; and the scores of northern, liberal congressmen, running for re-e..
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Robert A. Caro |
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b16e383
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Lyndon) Johnson created his own theater.
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leadership
enthusiasm
symbolism
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Robert A. Caro |
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8ee6a8e
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You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remar..
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Robert A. Caro |
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8136d9e
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I would rather link my name indelibly with the living pulsing history of my country and not be forgotten entirely after a while than to have anything else on earth,
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Robert A. Caro |
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3049d5c
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In later decades, the role of the Vice President would be gradually and substantially enlarged--at the discretion of the President--but at the time of the 1960 election, that was where the office stood. No legislative powers, no executive powers, and obstacles, hitherto insurmountable obstacles, to obtaining any--except what the President might choose to give
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Robert A. Caro |
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9be892d
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He won that election in the byways," Bill Deason says. Ava Cox says: "That's what made Lyndon Johnson be elected the first time.... He told them: 'I know what you people are up against. Because I'm one of you people.' And it wasn't the people of the cities who elected him, but it was the people from the forks of the creeks." That was indeed the reason he won--and the reason no politician had thought he could win. The polls had not shown his..
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Robert A. Caro |
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c64bfd4
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Power corrupts--that has been said and written so often that it has become a cliche. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, he must conceal those traits that might make others reluctant to give it to him, that might even make them refuse to give it to him. Once the man has power, it is no longer necessary for him to hide those traits. In
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Robert A. Caro |
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e6a38d5
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And, of course, the sentences would often be strung together in stories, many of them set in the Hill Country. They were about drunks, and about preachers--there was one about the preacher who at a rural revival meeting was baptizing converts in a creek near Johnson City and became overenthusiastic. One teenage boy was immersed for quite a long time, and when his head was lifted out of the water, one of the congregation called out from the ..
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Robert A. Caro |
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c2920d1
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That speech (Daniel Webster's) "raised the idea of Union above contract or expediency and enshrined it in the American heart."
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patriotism
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Robert A. Caro |
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caac39b
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Debates educated a nation. That educative function had atrophied during decades of making decisions behind closed doors.
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public-discourse
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Robert A. Caro |
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9ba3f15
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The breath of life of the Senate is, of course, continuity,
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status-quo
power
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Robert A. Caro |
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8deb53a
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No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn -..
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sam-rayburn
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Robert A. Caro |
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de104cd
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the Founders' armor had resisted every attempt by others to force them open; the Senate had been designed as the "firm" body; it had become too firm--too firm to allow the reforms the Republic needed. Never had the dam been more firm than during the last decade, the decade since the conservative coalition had learned its strength. During that decade, despite the mandate of three presidential elections, it had stood across and blocked the ri..
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Robert A. Caro |
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e0b2519
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But then one evening in November, 1939, the Smiths were returning from Johnson City, where they had been attending a declamation contest, and as they neared their farmhouse, something was different. "Oh my God," her mother said. "The house is on fire!" But as they got closer, they saw the light wasn't fire. "No, Mama," Evelyn said. "The lights are on." They were on all over the Hill Country. "And all over the Hill Country," Stella Gliddon s..
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Robert A. Caro |
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0a69f4b
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The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a "oneness found nowhere else in politics." The symbol was the legendary "Southern Caucus," the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened--meetings that were, White said, "for all the world like reun..
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Robert A. Caro |
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0e1d315
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The air of compromise is rarely appreciated fully by men of principle. C. Vann Woodward
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Robert A. Caro |
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38ddc76
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He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones.
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leadership
manipulation
vision
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Robert A. Caro |
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073425f
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Senator Harding, who declared in his inaugural address that "We seek no part in directing the destinies of the world."
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Robert A. Caro |
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359933c
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Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. "The trouble with the nation's economy," he declared, was simply Prohibition, which "makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency"; the "present economic crisis," he explained, was due to the "withdrawal of billions of dollars from the c..
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Robert A. Caro |
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44b24a0
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was to secure
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Robert A. Caro |
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d831ff0
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We of the South,
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Robert A. Caro |
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f9a21d3
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Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position.
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mentoring
objectivity
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Robert A. Caro |
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53f3c91
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Johnson was insulated from reality by his hopes and dreams.
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obsessive
self-delusion
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Robert A. Caro |
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cdab6a2
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I, sir, take a different view of the whole matter. I look upon Ohio and South Carolina to be parts of one whole--parts of the same country--and that country is my country.... I come here not to consider that I will do this for one distinct part of it, and that for another, but ... to legislate for the whole." And finally Webster turned to a higher idea: the idea--in and of itself--of Union, permanent and enduring."
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Robert A. Caro |
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cb6e467
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Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable!
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Robert A. Caro |
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366fffa
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their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine,
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fear
perspective
emotions
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Robert A. Caro |
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05da2a1
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determining the essence of different points of view (what Lyndon Johnson called "listening"),"
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negotiation
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Robert A. Caro |
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38d90be
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He repeated his plea that they be fair and open-minded, open to reason and compromise, and praised them for being so reasonable and open-minded thus far--which of course made it harder for them to act otherwise,
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motivation
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Robert A. Caro |
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20c0a4f
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MR. CALHOUN. Never, never. MR. WEBSTER. What he means he is very apt to say. MR. CALHOUN. Always, always. MR. WEBSTER. And I honor him for it.
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Robert A. Caro |
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5698ed0
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Humphrey was to say, and now he was planning to continue doing so, to use the chairmanship, in Humphrey's words, "to hang on to [the power] he had wielded as Majority Leader" as a "de facto Majority Leader"; Johnson "had the illusions that he could be in a sense, as Vice President, the Majority Leader." His proposal violated what was to these senators one of the Senate's most sacred precepts--its independence of the executive branch; he was..
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Robert A. Caro |
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6b83367
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And, in fact, had Johnson's plan succeeded, in many ways it would indeed have been "just the way it was."
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Robert A. Caro |
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a49390e
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While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men-- a great reader of men.
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leadership
others-focus
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Robert A. Caro |
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acd4874
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He could follow someone's mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.
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listening
negotiation
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Robert A. Caro |
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3d698a4
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Senators came to realize that he understood not only their bills but the reasons they had introduced them;
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persuasion
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Robert A. Caro |
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0dd86fa
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involved.
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Robert A. Caro |
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6647245
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He took the trolley instead of the bus because it was smoother and he could read on it.
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Robert A. Caro |
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61783bf
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In 1918, anti-German hysteria was sweeping Texas. Germans who showed insufficient enthusiasm in purchasing Liberty Bonds were publicly horsewhipped; bands of armed men broke into the homes of German families who were rumored to have pictures of the Kaiser on the walls; a State Council of Defense, appointed by the Governor, recommended that German (and all other foreign languages) be barred from the state forever. Hardly had Sam Johnson arri..
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Robert A. Caro |
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d53b605
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strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies"--a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching."
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Robert A. Caro |
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35d52e1
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Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans"; "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty"--the phrases of Kennedy's inaugural"
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Robert A. Caro |
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643dd4f
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And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country" that they summoned up, and, in some ways, summed up, the best of the American spirit, igniting hopes so that, almost on the instant it seemed, they summoned up a new era for Americans, an era of ideals, of brightness, of hope."
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Robert A. Caro |
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150995a
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The roar of the Twenties was only the faintest of echoes in those vast and empty hills--a mocking echo to Hill Country farmers who read of Coolidge Prosperity and the reduction in the work week to forty-eight hours and the bright new world of mass leisure, while they themselves were still working the seven-day-a-week, dawn-to-dark schedule their fathers and grandfathers had worked; a mocking echo to Hill Country housewives who read of the m..
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Robert A. Caro |
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81edf0f
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Recalling his mother's endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had "thought that mothers never had to sleep." --
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servant-leadership
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Robert A. Caro |
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bccc8ea
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He could be as memorable an orator as his father, particularly when he was speaking on that topic that had captured his imagination;
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rhetoric
vision
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Robert A. Caro |
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55d4b5c
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To a staff member who, after talking with a senator, said he "thought" he knew which way the senator was going to vote, he snarled, "What the fuck good is thinking to me? Thinking isn't good enough. Thinking is never good enough. I need to know!" Often, he didn't know."
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Robert A. Caro |