Texas Weekly; Lyndon B Johnson Biography: The Path To Power

in vancouver bc from the state capital here listening to texas weekly week host dave mcneely welcome to texas weekly dave mcneely lyndon johnson was an intensely private man with a very public life for years it was a dominant force in american politics and yet the nature of the man some very very good even those who knew him well now biography that as powerful as the man has been written about lyndon johnson by pulitzer prize winning biographer robert caro after years of detailed research and charismatic what has proved to be a controversial portrait of lyndon johnson in his book the path to power will be discussing when johnson with his biographer carol and no buyers at houston chronicle a better observer the texas political singing and bamboo also regional correspondent for the washington post after seven years of study moment and more common man the defendant to be a genius and two very different areas is genius on the bright side ingenious in the oregon than its highest sense which to me is using the powers of the

government to help those of its citizens who are least able to help themselves those were fighting forces to vancouver the fight on the other side a genius and the amassing of personal power that's there called dark simon johnson for the purpose of being able to dominate and manipulate other people which which came first that that's the the dark and i've said that also offer this because every unit which drew is the pursuit of power or the pursuit of a higher goal of helping people more important oh i think the one on ice or by so i'd like that includes the image two friends they're intermingled we see from his earliest days when he's going to college and he thinks or a year to teach mexican american kids in the top i think we see the whole great society the bright side of lyndon johnson right there because you know nobody in texas than teachers who toward mexican american children this was in nineteen

twenty eight ice left off the job as if it didn't matter as if they didn't have to learn that has put in their time but lyndon johnson went down to this town and he tore them as one of the kids says as if his life depended on it trying to make them understand that they could have a better life than just an education and the amazing thing was when teaching them from dr doc almost wasn't enough reason energy there was this elderly mexican american janitor the school and lyndon johnson would him a grammar book and would sit with him in the evenings teaching him english on the steps of the school so i think a lot of the same time that college he was building his political mission with methods which were quite in terms of college life quite ruthless and so we see there is no point in his life which we don't see the two things and say that it is servers in which

iraq they shrank session the road says is a work of astonishing curtains and revulsion every day there's also a protest too much its importance if any relies almost entirely on the man who rode the whole truth is life though various out your asses basis that if you appear to accept your show she wants a and it no water and there's going to provoke yet is in you know it's a good job and it to curry has citizens you for your time to quote always been things about me can i also mention that he's one crew you know the two hundred leading critics in the united states voted for both the best books the five best books of the year they voted for one of them i would

mention accept that you're saying that the only thing that i really would like to say it i can point your personal attack like that for the book but he says i expect people to take things on blind faith nothing could be less than that i mean i don't think it's one of the most controversial thing that you talk about i suppose as lyndon johnson's use of money to try to obtain political power i think that there's any question about the documentation wires because in the back of the book you know i say in this book who gave the dates that they get and how much they get it does want higher and this book that says on october fourteenth nineteen forty said richardson sent him five thousand dollars on october sixteenth clint murchison sent him far less now on october nineteenth the brown and root contribution thirty thousand dollars for a wine there's a whole chapter one and if you look in the notes of the book it says the very folders

that anybody you or anyone else could go to lyndon johnson library and pull out the same document and i felt so anyone who says that anything in this book i want people to accept on blind faith that i would have to say just doesn't bear any relation you started out we decided to do this book on johnson's believing that he would like lyndon johnson you know the fact that i didn't have what what happened along the way and how do you feel about him now we're going to say why it to put that in context i thought i was going to like them because when i was doing my first book is called the power i sort of fell in love in love with alfred e smith a great governor of new york raised robert moses to power and i thought i was going to see an alfred e smith and lyndon johnson because what would the characteristics of london al smith i knew very poor the son of irish american immigrants ot on educated human want to grammar school but

more important hated books smith used to boast the day after he got out of drama school he and his whole life you only read one book the life of john l sullivan but did and a shrewd tough ruthless politician that does nothing more than my being truthful but the driving sound on al smith was he loved human beings and he believed that the thing that drove him was a desire to help what he called his peak for irish american going into the lyndon johnson my research the first landed was really smart before you decided to sign a contract to do it and the image that emerged from previous years was a man poor mediocre education didn't like reading shrewd tough ruthless politician and of course i knew that lyndon johnson well enough heat related to people he put it online to show the regular appellate work and realized i thought i was going to love him and i had spent seven

years you know working on a book about a man who after i found out the way his mind worked i really didn't like it and i didn't want to spend seven years working on someone else that i didn't know when did you decide that there was a there was a shin came you know slowly came mainly when i was doing the college years you know the college years and his boyhood before that the colleges when i started this book i remember saying to my wife we can to slide over this has been done to death you know the college and a boy when i read it over and over the same stories and we never had quite enough detail from so i said well i'll go and interview some people to have more detail but mainly that the deeper i get it soon as i started trying to get the state and people started telling me that's not the whole story on then they started telling the north star there were a number of moments of

revelation which i listen to on this program our eventual at ft use or the stuff in the college yearbook and college newspaper i knew to work i try to two were referred to the bow yes and they referred to in the college yearbook they refer to him as boris johnson which nine percent say that now because the classmates would say to me i think one said you know he was a man who just could not tell the truth and all the ones that are the thing about i think this has great significance in light of the credibility gap that idea was he seemed unable to tell the truth she had to lie about everything big things and small important things and an important and a few court and why it didn't seem to matter you hearing tones telling the same why are ten minutes later to somebody else but that's no it's a beautiful time in the year book details the stolen election and i think you have

to and it details his absolute determination to marry money so you have that you have a number of references just a couple of the college newspaper says most of those issues i never did for that relate to them but then i tried to talk on shore and sixty four article every human being i was at san marcos that remembering while and i know like to look at twenty seven square smith you are really only two professors who knew him well although a number said that i talk to them do with two deans a lot of new and very well and the registrar couple of other administration officials and i talked about the picture that emerged was one giant first things that was so striking characters do that it had to be given in its entirety and four i believe also is exactly the opposite of the picture of lyndon johnson's problems that we've had

before and that fundamentally color the way you begin to see him from an arm i think it helped me and then i went back before that to the boycott and i stayed with this isn't true is that boys would not true on and in fact there was this very dramatic moment which that with his brothers when his brother in fact told me after having spent a lot of time telling me you know the same stories that his brother told his brother in fact told me that they were true that when you took him out of the boyhood home and said yes that was i mean that was quite a moment when i had first order to work and to send jobs like and down indoors to help number of in the letters you gentlemen on the standing reporters he was a very un law and interviewing them for wanting to drag it was an alcoholic and more than that he was you know whenever you check something out it wouldn't be true so i just sat on the can avoid it with him anymore but during the course of the seven years i was working on the book sam houston johnson

developed camps was in an out of the hospital for his whole series of operations and when he came out he was a change i met him in johnson city and he was a changed man the point they didn't threaten any become very religious but more than that if you was reported so where you would've seen a call man nodded lalla brackets so i really wanted i'm trying so hard to get a picture of johnson's point and i figured the best way to really get i think it was worthwhile to talk to him again brought him after hours do you know the lyndon johnson boyhood home has been re created so it looks as it did once sam houston growing up there and i set him down at the place at the dining table where he sat and i pointed to a women's four percent nicer now we create for me one of these terrible audience between your father and first was very slow growing lights and then when he said what'd linden set

up with then it sort of going fast and furious and it dropped a while ago i dropped away and he was just shouting backing of the father shouted linden goddamn and lending you're never amount to sing like you don't understand politics and lyndon johnson back so he was obviously recreating in his fights i said to him now sam houston i want you to go back or all these wonderful stories that you tell and that your brother told over he told not great but it's a brother told over no air and fill in some more detail and he said oh i forgot that i can't and i said why not he said because they never happened and then he started telling me an absolutely different story of lyndon johnson's aide for which in fact when you check each of the points were the other people in johnson city you know about them was true i missed the fact that they know that they will is to

know about that you interviewed are now saying that that is renewing your conclusion that ordered those in picture mr latimer in laterally work of those survivors over just as good a day after the show cartoons and the local paper thursday though you're hurt his judgments and the conclusions he reaches are totally incorrect his conclusions are held throughout the question and he doesn't read the servicers who oppose them are johnson and her one concern and as his first vote as character to mr emerson that all volunteer would you mind reading something else can i read something else or go on letterman does not accuse carrollton school and now you're a lawyer should have taken the trouble to leave that on top of everything i talked to jean latimer day after day

everything that he told me he says i quote inaccurate and it's quite true that my conclusion i mean what these things meant a different from mr latimer if i can't well that's a life form that's a sentiment did you in paperback and they're not on their savings to you know you pour them correctly <unk> russians the aftermath i don't know in this case i don't think that that's really the situation was not their invited him as a as in johnsen's long time black essentially when war world know someone else called right word i said he was mr lautner as a wonderful man and he's quite a really he was the condiment lyndon johnson

tried to surround himself or his life with men who were very soccer fan who like taking workers who like calling him chief which is he and what he insisted he recall mr lima was the type of them and he idolizes johnson npr the law's is today he was psychologically very dependent on johnson and you're quite right she's conclude as he was telling me about how lyndon johnson worked him seven days a week from five in the morning till midnight he would say to me but that didn't matter i was happy to do it for him because he was the chief that was again not a direct quote but it's a paraphrase you're quite right that the conclusions that mr letterman i have from the facts are different but he wouldn't disagree would any of the facts but he doesn't do what you just said you were saying the work locally yes that's his clue is lyndon johnson the demands of lyndon

johnson placed on the way i did what he says i would say that this these perverts that are quoted in a newspaper on the best proof that what i say is as his career i want to ask you about the portrait of faith johnson well as in congress since and it's a kind of a dual portrait of rio's to congress and you make the point that the as a porsche moving legislation as a young house really been virtually nothing on the national religion six years or something like that then there were years when he would never give a floor speech at the same time this is a man who managed to come through some other talent the new deal's man in texas and an fdr is man in texas how how is a guy who doesn't do anything on the floor who has no desirable if any particular piece of legislation or to show any opinion on legislation able to at the same time become fdr's men picked

lyndon johnson did not push legislation himself his own people and denial a new for other people's bills the court is in the opinion of the other congressman who served with him he didn't have in one of the court in the position where years down the row he could be asked if he could be quoted back but you said something he wanted to have complete flexibility because we see throughout his life his positions would change hundred and eighty degrees you know whichever and he didn't have a wife not to be free to do that so in congress he was very silent he didn't introduce his own bills and he didn't fight for others roosevelt's man in texas was at a position of considerable power and he really wanted that jockey the trades and labor they lifted him up to get their tour dates in a different sphere you know what he did there was

he persuaded the white house and i think roosevelt person that sam rayburn who is the we see those bills man in texas had always enjoyed gone up for vice president in our nineteen forty roosevelt i'm gonna have split in this terrible split and i rose to lead another minute and sam rayburn of course had done everything lyndon johnson i mean he loved lyndon johnson like the sun when johnson was very sick you know in washington when he was young in the morning when he woke up and there was raeburn in a very tough man sitting in a straight chair next to an incident or night and has he had wanted to move i don't think in the sterling and as he was sleeping says the front of his lapels in his best work conduits and radishes in the middle and then woke up rayburn means ordinances nowland and don't worry about anything you need anything corny and soon thereafter wounded need something he wanted this job as the national youth administration recognizes and i'm trying to project russian

contacts now ray brewer is a man who's known that he would never ask and demand for a five foot four lyndon johnson he'd bet you know the white house had appointed someone else the national youth administration director on taxes and tom connolly says the old texas senator says in his memoir as sam rayburn came to my office and would not leave until i promised to give the job to lyndon johnson in the white house had to announce there's been a mistake the directors israel and johnson now in nineteen forty rayburn is the logical choice to succeed honors roosevelt's man in texas this is immense power that has to do with a federal patronage it has to do with federal contracts has to do with a lot of things right rayburn was then majority leader soon to be speaker of the house and he was the logical choice but johnson betrayed he persuaded the white house and roosevelt that re burned aren't was really leading a stop look roosevelt

nothing could've been further from the truth but johnson persuaded i guess one of the things i wonder about in those of the portrait that comes through there is both political genius and through political scholar was in the in the boer war why were people able to understand that it taught me that if you look at that portrait of johnson that comes through is the bed the dark part of them you wonder how that like that was able to sort of keep rising through the system i think one thing he was well that's a that's a very good question is the question that the courtyard there's a lot of that is one the money his use of money you know he wasn't really rising through the system are in til he discovered the use of money to obtain political power in congress and to it it's really not the case that nobody saw this at the time because you know helen get to the more perceptive people did i i i don't think that's in this voice i

can't quite remember what's in this volume and what's in the next level and headed there was one certainly she was a very perceptive one and knew lyndon johnson well and certainly i you know you'd see when the party in congress and he talk and talk and talk you never stop talking to a poor leaving at the end of the evening it suddenly say to yourself he didn't sign he never would get trapped into a position where you say crime and give them had shaded in the morality about last time around and was not a matter that drew an animal owners to that is justified and to a mall or relative that is nestor liz elaborate know i want to be with her stolen elections now the world has long talked about lyndon johnson's stealing the

election of nineteen forty eight the koch stevenson election which will be inclined to which human volume one we see the trail of stolen elections it incredibly going well way back to college were no one cared about elections know was interested in politics on this campus we see that that this one gentleman with certain went to college with them said to me when i read about the stormy election night and forty i have to laugh because he was stealing watches the nineteen thirty i know i helped him still and then he goes to washington there's an organization there are congressional secretaries called the little congress again lyndon johnson as sort of this is a political genius and we can see exactly the quantity he could take little organizations and make them into sources of power sees a little congress as a potential source of power he's elected to that and their stall actions again nine nineteen forty one he ran for the senate against governor of daniel and our one of johnson's aide said to me the only reason us that is the other fellow still more votes and

we'd really appreciate you taking time and discusses burton afraid we are out of time we like the fiberglass robert carroll who is the author of women and ultimately the power and the worries the houston chronicle damn ball sorkin thank you for joining us please be with the search you've been listening to texas weekly an unrehearsed question and answer session between members of the texas press corps and a prominent figure in the news texas weekly is produced by katie fm and kale are you tv and is distributed by the center for telecommunication services at ut austin preceding program does not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin says the longhorn radio network ms bee