I’m currently reading Robert Caro’s book, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV (Vintage)
He paints a vivid portrait of Johnson, a man at home in the old U.S. Senate, where power was wielded in a very personal way, an inside game at which he excelled.
I was struck by this rich quote, which I thought worth sharing. The context as Johnson’s hope that the convention would deadlock, and the selection of the party’s candidate would be made in the back rooms, where power brokers did their deals. In that realm, Johnson felt from a lifetime of experience, he had his best shot at emerging as the party’s choice.
Lyndon Johnson’s confidence that he would get what he wanted from any man if he was only able to spend tine alone with him had not, in the major episodes of his life, often proved to be overconfidence. He would be negotiating, furthermore, with men who talked the idiom of hard, tough, pragmatic politics, the language not of the Senate floor but of the Senate cloakroom–Lyndon Johnson language.
“It is the politician’s task to pass legislation, not to sit around and say principled things,” he often declared. In the conversation of these men, “principled things” were not a prominent motif; what they talked about was winning. [emphasis added]
To what extent is that still true? Have things changed, or is that level of discourse just out of public view, hidden even more effectively than the in the bad old days, perhaps because there is just so much “fluff” coverage of politics that we don’t have much time or attention to push through to that background reality?
Anyway, it’s a provocative thought from a fascinating book.
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don’t know anything about back rooms; just know what I see from public view. Like yesterday’s hearing on SB2435 proposed HD1 Relating to Ag (gutted and replaced with label GMO content). Label GMO advocates were excited, turned out to testify. NO ONE from proGMO big biotech, not even lobbyist Maluafiti, showed their faces in the room (tho she was reportedly seen waddling around outside). After hearing testimony and questioning and recess… bill was DEFERRED, no votes recorded. How dat happen? back room? how would the public know?
Slim Charles said it best in the Wire: “Game’s the same. Just got more fierce.”
LBJ would’ve loved the Wire like a fat kid loves cake.
Can’t recommend Caro’s books on LBJ highly enough. I’m much more of a legislative junkie, so the first three are incredible.
The fourth is good, too, but (ew!) executive branch.
Caro gave Robert Moses of NYC’s tribridge authority (now in the news over Christie’s bridge dust up) the same exhaustive treatment in a multivolume bio some years back.
I read chunks from each of the volumes of Caro’s biography. LBJ was a very corrupt politician in Texas when he started out, professionally and personally. He had to be, in a way. But as President he was an idealist, much more than JFK.
Much of the liberal legislation in the 1970s came from Nixon. Busy with the Vietnam War, he indulged Congress, but he also believed in what he did. Nixon was a crude, brutal realist, but he was not corrupt. So we need to distinguish between corruption and realism.
Also, the invasion of Iraq and the rapid expansion of the European Union were neither realistic nor idealistic, they were a fixation on a grand idea by mediocre minds.
You are talking about realism, but you mean corruption and cynicism. You are also talking about LBJ, but you mean Hanabusa, right? 😉