Caro vs. Dallek: Competing Visions of Lyndon Johnson

Introduction: Two Biographers, One Subject

Lyndon B. Johnson is remembered as a hard-nosed, smooth-operating, arm-twisting Senator from Texas who became John Kennedy's Vice President and then a one-term President. What occurred during his administration brought the civil rights movement to its triumphant conclusion and drew the nation inexorably into Vietnam. He was responsible for the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and for initiating the War on Poverty. Johnson's bid for a second term collapsed amid the massive social turmoil that scarred the nation during 1968, after which he slid into private life, published his memoirs, and spent his final years on his ranch in Texas, where he died in 1973.

Scholarly work centered on Johnson numbers in the hundreds of published books, articles, and dissertations. Historians looking at Johnson invariably focus on his rise to power, the stranglehold he maintained over the Senate prior to his ascension to the White House, and the collapse of his effectiveness as party leader just two years after his landslide reelection. Two such works — Robert Caro's The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Dallek's Lone Star Rising — both present Johnson as a relatively power-mad political genius who manipulated others with great aplomb.

It is significant to note that both authors have created multi-volume works on LBJ, both have invested enormous time and resources in fleshing out their stories and finding insight into the man, and both approach Johnson from a motivational point of view: what drove Johnson to function within political office in the manner in which he did? There are marked differences in style, observations, selections of facts, perspectives, and intentions within the two works. The result is that these books create different visions of Johnson while treading the very same ground.

Johnson's Ambition and Hunger for Power

Johnson became powerful within the American political scene long before he became President. Unlike many Vice Presidents who are specifically chosen on the basis of their relative weakness compared to the President — hence the selection of figures such as Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew — Johnson was selected by Kennedy for his significant and almost unstoppable power over the Senate. Both Caro and Dallek approach Johnson's rise in this manner: he was a master of his domain who ruled the Senate through will, force, and sheer domination of personality. Both authors acknowledge that Johnson used deception in ways that were distasteful and dishonest.

Caro's take on Johnson is slightly more measured than Dallek's in certain respects, though Dallek concludes that Johnson's power was rooted in the fact that "he could not bend the knee to anyone; he could not be under someone else's control" (Dallek, 24). Dallek also notes that "Lyndon Johnson has convinced everyone that he really is a political genius... [who] loves to exercise power [where] President Eisenhower does not" (547). Caro uses the example of Lyndon's "testing" of women as a telling point about the man's need for control. While in college, "Lyndon's idea was to get a real nice-looking girl and see if you could control her," for the purposes of getting her elected to the student council and then being able to control her vote (Caro, 182). This kind of manipulation carried itself directly into the Senate.

Both authors assert that LBJ's power derived from an uncommon audacity and will. Caro observes that LBJ's ambition "was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs... Lyndon Johnson believed in nothing, nothing but his own ambition. Everything he did — everything — was for his ambition" (Caro, 275). Dallek also comments extensively on the subject: "He consumes people, almost without knowing it... people who worked for Johnson became extensions of himself and his ambition" (Dallek, 192). Johnson was so blatant about his personal ambitions that people "distrusted Johnson's professions of public service... [he was seen] as subordinating the interests of his party and country to his personal ambitions" (540).

Both authors pay significant attention to the details of Johnson's greed. At the height of his Senate power in 1959, Johnson occupied "twenty palace-size rooms, most of them ornately decorated and thickly carpeted" off the Senate floor; conference rooms were claimed for his exclusive use; and he made renovations to his various spaces "at a cost of between $100,000 and $200,000 of taxpayers' money," leading to his domain being dubbed the "Taj Mahal" (Dallek, 764). Where Dallek's examples of Johnson's self-indulgence focus on office space, Caro's examples of greed and lust for power center on Johnson's willingness to take money from virtually anyone: "He gorged on work, women, and food, overbore friend and foe alike, and ravened for both money and power" (Caro, 12). Johnson was greed embodied.

The 1948 Senate Race and Electoral Fraud

Caro's most significant story about Johnson concerns the Senate race of 1948, in which Johnson was accused of committing fraud. It is here that Caro exposes Johnson's "utter ruthlessness... and seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal" (Caro, Introduction). His choice to feature this particular story is significant, because it is an event that Dallek does not dwell on at comparable length. Caro's depiction of the 1948 Senate run involves the conversion of a 700-vote count into a 900-vote count through the addition of a loop to the numeral 7, thereby cheating Johnson's way into office.

Dallek's description of the vote-count fraud is, in some respects, more thorough than Caro's. He explains all of the various elements of the deception, down to the smallest points — including warnings by election officials that rescinding their first count would be seen as an admission of guilt and would "expose him to an indictment for perjury or false swearing." Caro's work makes it beyond question that Johnson's 1948 win was an illegally stolen election, though Caro's total overcount is 202 while Dallek's is 250. Caro also observes that the mutual aid society to which Johnson belonged would go to any length — even breaking the law — to take care of its own, and he chooses to include details of the truly corrupt double-dealings in which Johnson involved himself during this period.

The differences between the two authors actually impede an accurate understanding of some of the major events of Johnson's career. The divergence in emphasis between a journalist's instinct for dramatic revelation and a historian's concern for documentary precision shapes how each writer weighs and presents the same episode.

Conclusion: Villain or Flawed Pragmatist?

For both of these authors, Johnson represents one of the most fascinating political figures of our time. Johnson's greed, his mad thirst for power, his drive and willingness to lie, cheat, and steal are not questioned and not challenged by either author. Instead, both look at the cause, the effect, and the manner by which his goals were achieved, drawing from those aspects differing perspectives on what ultimately comes down to psychology. Johnson's mental state, his focus, and his work all reflect a highly driven, callous, unforgiving, thoughtful, creative, and effective leader who succeeded in creating a world in which he could be and remain the absolute authority. None of these factors are in doubt.

But where Caro sees the evil of avarice, Dallek sees the nature of politics. Where Caro describes Johnson as being driven to destroy others, Dallek sees Johnson as "doing whatever it took" to get the job done. Both authors often say the same thing, but whenever possible, Caro uses words that carry invective at their core. His intent is clearly to persuade the reader to share his emotional judgment of Johnson as somewhat monstrous — this is the nature of his brand of engaged journalism. For Dallek, however, Johnson's motivations deserved description and clarity, but not the kind of editorial commentary that Caro provides.

In Caro's book, Johnson is a villain. In Dallek's, he is a flawed, multifaceted man capable of doing great things. What we ultimately need from both authors is the sense that they are being true to their work — that they are giving us accurate and appropriate information, and a reliable view of the impact that Johnson had not only on the presidency, but upon the nation and its future as well.