Book Review: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate

THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON: MASTER OF THE SENATE
by Robert A Caro, Alfred A Knopf, NEW YORK, 2002, pages
1167, ISBN 0-394-52836-0
Robert Orr*
This is the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. It focuses on
Johnson's time as a senator for Texas, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. On any
measure this work is a great achievement.
It may seem odd to review such a biography in a law journal. Robert Caro is not a
lawyer. He was a journalist, but turned to writing political biography, first of Robert
Moses,1 the powerful New York City government official, and now of Lyndon
Johnson.2 Johnson was not a lawyer. He was, surprisingly but very significantly, a
school teacher, before he became involved in politics. But it is sometimes too easy to
forget that in a democracy, most laws are not made by professional lawyers; they are
made by persons directly elected by the people. And as such Lyndon Johnson was a
very significant law maker, in particular in the Senate, and of course afterwards as
President.3
The aspect of this book which makes it relevant to public lawyers is that to a
significant extent it is a detailed analysis of the operation of a key constitutional
structure in the world of political power. It provides considerable insight into one
aspect of the American constitutional arrangements, the Senate, the constitutional
thinking behind this arrangement, how this arrangement shapes political activity, and
how the constitutional arrangements are in turn shaped by that political activity. In
particular, the book focuses on law making. It is seldom that this is a central theme of
legal, historical or biographical writings. In Australia, there has been a range of recent
political biography and autobiography, with quite a few works by or about senators,
but none to my knowledge has dwelt on the law making aspect of Senate life. Standard
constitutional texts often, and rightly, focus on the theory of the Senate, and moments
of crisis and dispute, rather than its regular operation in the hands of politicians.4 The
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*
Deputy General Counsel, Australian Government Solicitor.
1
Robert A Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974).
2 Robert A Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982); The Years of Lyndon
Johnson: Means of Ascent (1990); The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002)
(Master of the Senate).
3 The excellent American work Legislation and Statutory Interpretation by William N Eskridge
Jr, Philip P Frickey and Elizabeth Garrett (2000) has a picture of Lyndon Johnson on its
cover, as President signing into law the Civil Rights Act 1964.
4 John Quick and Robert Garran, The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth
(1901) especially 411–444, 662–673 and 683–688;G Evans (ed), Labor and the Constitution

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Australian Constitution itself notoriously obscures rather than informs about some key
constitutional operations.
Not only does this work focus on the meeting of constitutional principles and
political reality, it demonstrates how fascinating this meeting is. It was said that Caro's
biography of Robert Moses took matters like 'bond issues, municipal legislation,
machine politics, and highway construction, and brought them vividly to life'.5 In this
work Caro does the same for Senate committee inquiries, legislative development and
voting processes. But before considering this further, I make a few preliminary
comments.
DETAILS, PEOPLE AND PLACES
This book is in no measure a broad overview of Lyndon Johnson's political life. In
some aspects there is an intense focus on the details. This is partly a result of Caro's
concern as a former political journalist for the inner mechanics of key events, exactly
who said what to whom and where, and not just the outcome of the events. This also
mirrors the lawyer's concern for the importance of the actual words of legislative
provisions, and the means of legislative passage. In my view Caro is right to think that
where Johnson parked his car, where his various offices were, how he stood when he
spoke to people and where he sat in the Senate, were all important to what he did.
Caro is also right to think that where a legal policy idea comes from, who does the first
draft of a provision, the addition of an adjective to add emphasis, and the exception to
assuage a particular interest can all be significant aspects of the law making process.
Lawyers who work on legislative development within government are often
particularly involved with and responsible for these details. For historians and
lawyers, it is true that knowledge of detail does not always bring insight and
understanding, and Caro sometimes does not use the details to pursue these greater
goals. But there can be no doubt about the very fine grasp of detail in this work.
A key element of Caro's research was personal interviews, interviews which in
many cases became conversations spreading over years. Such interviews clearly
enabled Caro to get behind the written sources to the spoken words, the personalities
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1972–5 (1977) especially 178-190 and 215–301; Geoffrey Sawer, Federation Under Strain
(1977) especially 107–40; Dennis Pearce, 'The Legislative Power of the Senate' in L Zines
(ed), Commentaries on the Australian Constitution (1977) 119; Peter Hanks, Constitutional Law
in Australia (2nd ed, 1996) within 33–127; P H Lane, Lane’s Commentary on the Australian
Constitution (2nd ed, 1997) especially 63-81, 392-397 and 406-419; Gabriel Moens and John
Trone Lumb and Moens’ The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia Annotated (6th ed,
2001) especially 44–56, 188-196 and 202-213. Odgers'Australian Senate Practice edited by
Harry Evans(11th ed, 2004) focuses to a greater extent on the practical workings of the
Senate. However, recent editions have included comments such as: 'In practice, with the
ministry, the executive government, initiating most legislation in the House of
Representatives, controlling that House through a party majority, and advising the
Governor-General, the task of exercising the legislative power falls upon the Senate' (11th
ed, 227). This seems to me to be more of a rhetorical flourish than a statement of either
constitutional principle or political reality. Political scientists are often best at looking at the
meeting of principle and practice, see the recent publication by Stanley Bach, Platypus and
Parliament: The Australian Senate in Theory and Practice (2003).
5
Scott Sherman, 'Caro's Way' (2002) 41(1) Columbia Journalism Review 63-4.

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and the places so crucial to political life.6 This was particularly important since
Johnson's outstanding political skills were very much in personal and small group
conversation. They were not the big set piece speech or formal written document. His
power sprang from these skills and was constricted by them. At any rate, as Caro
notes, formal records, even of the American Senate in the 1950s, are surprisingly
unreliable. He states that one area in which the Senate Record is particularly damaging
to historical accuracy is that of civil rights, the political issue which dominates this
book. During interviews people would vividly recall venomous racist remarks on the
floor of the Senate, but time and again Caro went to the Record for the relevant date
and no such remark, or even an approximate version, was there.7
The concern for detail, and reliance on personal interviews as well as the written
records, enables the work to convey a strong sense of place and personality. This is
illustrated in a telling episode towards the end of the book. Caro describes how Philip
and Katharine Graham, publishers of the influential Washington Post, finally accepted
Lyndon Johnson's open and insistent invitation to visit the Johnson Ranch in Texas.
Caro writes that 'it was a typical Johnson Ranch weekend: the ritual visits to the
"birthplace", to the little family graveyard on the riverbank, and to the stone barn in
Johnson City'.8 There was also the invariable insistence that the guests shoot a deer,
whether they wanted to or not. It is clear that travelling to the genuinely harsh
landscape in which Johnson had been raised, hearing his family's story and spending
time with him there, had a significant impact on the Grahams.9 They became friends
and indeed strong supporters of Johnson.
But the place which most dominates this third volume of Robert Caro's biography
of Johnson is the Senate itself. Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948 after a very
close fight for the Democratic Party nomination, so close indeed that there are
significant doubts about the result,10 and this gave rise to his nickname 'Landslide'
Johnson. He had previously served in the House of Representatives since 1937. By the
time he ran as Vice-Presidential candidate with John Kennedy, Johnson had become
one of the most powerful political figures in America.
The Senate is of course a physical...