(00:00:04) And good afternoon. Welcome back to midday and Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary eichten. Best-selling biographer. Robert Caro's says, he was never actually interested in writing biographies rather. He says he was interested in writing about political power and how it affects people's lives while his first book called The Power broker examined the rise to power of New York Public Works are Robert Moses it one Cairo the Pulitzer Prize at one him celebrity and so lots of books. So on to his next project a biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, which is now 28 years and three books in the making latest book in the series focuses on the 12 years that Lyndon Baines Johnson served in the US Senate book is titled Master of the Senate and it details lbj's rise to power back in the 1950s. Robert Caro was The Twin Cities last week to talk about his latest installment in the LBJ series. He spoke at ruminator books in Minneapolis. (00:01:08) This happens to be one to look that. I'm really happy to give for one thing if I'm giving talks about my book and most oily be finished. And then as you go on your book tour, you know you go and you start to think back you trying to think of things to say and you remember things that happened during the book that you forgotten for many years that you really happy to remember and the one I'm going to talk about tonight is the moment when I first realized that this book was going to have to be something different than I had thought it was going to be I'd always known that the book was not only going to was not first of all, it wasn't only going to be about Lyndon Johnson. None of my book suggests about a man. I never was interested in writing a biography just to do a life of a famous man. I've never had any interest in that I was always Justin in using the lives of my subjects to show the great forces that shaped their times and in particularly the force of political power because that also shapes all our lives. I did Robert Moses not because I want to write a life of Robert Moses. But because I figured here was a man who had never been elected to anything everything we did we talked about we're in a democracy. So power comes from being elected but here was a man who was never elected to anything. He had more power than anyone who was elected more than any mayor more than any Governor more than any mayor and Governor combined and he held it for 44 years. So I didn't know where he got it as in fact, no one did it that time but I felt if I could find out where he got it and how he used it. I would be showing something about Urban political power not as with toward and textbooks but as the what the real Roar naked essence of political power and cities all over America when I was doing the Our broker I wanted to do the same thing for National Power. I want to do the same thing with Lyndon Johnson because I felt that Johnson understood political power better than anyone else in America and second half of the 20th century fact the thing that first attracted me to Johnson with this book, I didn't realize I would have to write two others before I got to do it but it was Johnson in the Senate because he ran the Senate as no one else did before so I knew that number one. The book would be about Lyndon Johnson, but it would also be second about legislative power now in America when we talk about political power National political power whether we say it or not underlying it is always on the line of discussion is always the assumption that we're talking about executive power Presidential Power, but there is another kind of power legislative power in England. They have a parliamentary form of government. So if you In a library, there are hundred biographies of a Disraeli and a hundred biographies of a Gladstone or a pit or Palmerston or peel and they all discuss them in terms of parliamentary, which is legislative power in America. We have almost no discussions of that. So I felt that it was important to do that. So I knew that the book was going to be about Lyndon Johnson and about legislative power and then the following thing happened and I knew it was going to have to be about something more. I was doing what I always do at the beginning of the book which is just hanging around the place and try and get a feel of its atmosphere and it's rhythms. So what I was doing was I was sitting up in the Senate Gallery a lot now, I don't know if you watch C-SPAN. I don't know if you watch the center. I don't know how it looks to you. But in those days first place was the chamber had not yet been lit up for television. So With even dimmer than you didn't have television friendly colors on the wall. It was a very drab dim dimly lit place. But in addition to desks from the gallery look very silly to me. They looked like little schoolboys desks. Like they were too small for the man's standing at them and the school year the school room image with reinforced for me because they seem to be always taking Quorum calls, which is the presiding officer or clerk reading the names of the senator. So it's like taking attendance. Oh, it's like a school room in which they're constantly taking attendance and they're all these droning rituals where the presiding officer says without objection. So ordered without objection so ordered I didn't know what they meant. They didn't seem to mean very much frankly. It seem like a rather silly place, but it is set at the same time that I was doing that I was doing the following thing. I was starting to do my interview, so I was interviewing senators. Administrative AIDS the legislative aides to see what it was like from the dais. I was talking to the clerks who called the role the journal clerks the parliamentarian the assistant parliamentarian to the pages in the cloak room. So I could get a feel of the cloakroom and I realized that no matter what I was asking them about no matter when they talked about the Senate there was in their tones a sense of real reverence for this place and I couldn't understand what this is based on. Then one day I finally got my pass for the center to takes a long time. If you're an outsider to get a pass to actually go down on the floor. And as soon as I got it, I walked over to the Senate chamber of the Senate wasn't in session. So it was even more dimly lit than usual and I went still remember the day. I walked in the side door on the left and I walked down between the desks to The Well of the Senate and I turned around and in that instant it was when I realized that I had to ruin idea of this book that it had to be something more than I intended because I don't know what I really said, but in my memory I said something like oh now I understand because well from up above on C-Span or from the gallery the desks of the Senate looks silly. That's not at all what they look like from The Well of the Senate when you're facing them now from up above your each individual small desk, but when you're down there the tops of all the desks in and awe in each Arc therefore talks of desk. In the Senate they wrote they rise and tears the desks in each of these four arcs blend together the tops so you are surrounded by forlorn semicircle or aux of dark burnished. Mahogany, they're polished so highly that they gleam in the lights from the ceiling far above. So as you stand there you are standing in the middle of for great gleaming aux that stretch away from you up from you. It's powerful scene. It's a majestic scene and suddenly at that moment. I remembered something that had never crossed my mind. I like to say I learned that at college but I think I learned that in high school, which was Daniel Webster standing at one of those desks and I had learned because I had a teacher in high school who like to give Webster's addresses. He was a would be actor how reps how Webster whenever he stood at his desk to give one of his great speeches his hand always rested in Mobile flat on the top. The desk while he spoke and I realized then that a lot of the things about Webster. One thing that I thought of was I live on Central Park West in 69th Street in New York. So I also go into the park to jog at 69th Street and turn left to run up to the reservoir and around and back to my apartment. As soon as I turn left almost the first thing I passed it 71st Street is this great bronze statue of Daniel Webster and engraved on the pedestal of those words Liberty and Union now and forever one and Inseparable and I realized at that moment those words were spoken here and one of these desks that I'm looking at so I started to read about the the Senate I read everything I could get my hands on it, you know and things that we learned in school come back to you. You know, how Webster and clay and Calhoun the great triumvirate forth for 30 years to stay. Work a civil war with their compromises and try to keep the union together Henry Clay with his great speech as you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson said about him Daniel Webster is a cannon a great Cannon loaded to the lips for Liberty. He can shake the world when he speaks and Henry Clay. Well, I didn't remember anything about Henry Clay I have to say but when you read about him, he's quite fascinating to you know, he was the most Charming of men. Everyone said they said of Henry Clay that he was so Charming that the white gloves of Washington Hostess has that he kissed they kept his lifelong momentum. He was a lawyer as a young man back in Kentucky. They said Henry Clay can hypnotize the jury. He once went on a speaking tour across the West for the Whig party. They said he attracted audiences so large that he depopulated the forests and the fields of the West. Well, he didn't stand. Because he was this charming actor and he was tall and graceful and he would sort the back and forth. He always had a handkerchief he take it out and wave it for emphasis. When he wanted to make a point. He always carried a snuff box and to make a point to emphasize that he tapped the snuff box and if he wanted to have a dramatic pause he'd stop and take a sip of snuff and he would wander the floor that way and his voice would ring Out Among the desks and third of course Calhoun was very different from the other two. It was said of him that he walked among the deaths like a caged lion in a fury because he knew he was losing he knew his South was losing so I don't know how much really that I thought of at one time how much gradually I thought of during the months but I really thought of other things that happened among those desks that Charles Sumner's legs got tangled under them. So he got beaten almost to death. You know, some new was the great abolitionist from Boston who was always fighting for civil rights bills while he was fighting for one a southern congressmen came up behind him from the House of Representatives with a heavy cane and hit him on the back of the head with the cane and knocked Sumner down and his legs got tangled in the legs of the desk. So he couldn't get up and the guy continue to beat him almost to death with his Cane while another representative stood there with another Cane holding back the Senators and you learn about how in some the finally dies the years later he recovers from the beating his body is brought back to Boston by train and church bells chime all along the Route as the train passes when the when the train gets to Boston a delegation of prominent citizens the mayor and the governor is set I've come to the station to meet the coffin and a skort of through the streets to the church for the funeral service. But as they're waiting a regiment of black soldiers who served in the Civil War Comes Marching around the corner and they March up to the corporate and they surrounded and escorted to the church. But before they do the soldiers drape over the coffin a silk Banner on which they have engraved and which they have embroided the words the Civil Rights bill shall not die. So you think of all that stuff about the Senate the Glorious moments then you think of the in glorious moments because they after the Civil War for a hundred years until really Lyndon Johnson arrives enter the Senate. Is very different from that place of Glory the moments that we remember about the senate or in glorious moments. It was at one of those desks that Henry Cabot Lodge senior stood when he defeated the League of Nations when the center he led the Senate the defeat the League of Nations and deal such a blow to hopes for peace in the world. It was at those same desks at the isolationists boronai and the rest of them kept Franklin Roosevelt year after year from mobilizing America or even enabling us to give help to England to combat the rise of totalitarianism in the world. So while I didn't think of all of it at that time, I think I knew in that first moment when I walk down between the deaths for the first time that this book was not going to be just about Lyndon Johnson and it was not going to be just about legislative power, but about the Senate of the United States the history of the center of what the Founding fathers intended it to be when they said that each state should be equal in it. That each state should have the same two votes small a large when they said that Senators should serve longer than president six years instead of four. So they would be completely independent presidents when they said that you will never vote for more than one third of the Senate and then he won election. So that public opinion can never exert a total hold over the Senate and it will always be independent not only of a president but of the people of how no one is how the founding fathers deliberately left out of the Constitution any provision for someone to preside over the Senate, you know, the Constitution provides for a speaker who will have powers to preside over the House of Representatives over the Senate says only that it will be presided over by a vice president who they clearly intended not to have any power they say he shall not have any vote except in case of a tie the only offices of the Senate that the Constitution enumerates a minor ones like the chaplain and they sell Argent at Arms. Because the founding fathers didn't want anyone to lead the Senate because they felt why would senators from the sovereign states ever want to be led? So having the side of that the book is going to also take this more go more into the history of the Senate the customs of the Senate etcetera, you start the interview in a different way and you learn about things, you know, that really strike you with great force like seniority in those days when Lyndon Johnson comes to the senate in 1949 seniority governs everything, you know, if you go to a dinner party in Washington, you were even seated by how low he would been in the Senate if you're if questioning is going on in a committee. It's Goes On by seniority the oldest Democrat and point-of-service asked the first questions and the oldest Republic and then back to the Democratic side, etcetera will the way down so seniority governed everything and you weren't even supposed to Speak very much in the Senate your first two years. In fact, you're not supposed to speak very much your whole first term. I've heard there was a story about this one senator who Waits near the end of his first term in finally, he gets up and gives his Maiden speech and he goes over and sits down next to the dean of the Senate this white-haired very dignified old man, who was the embodiment of the Senate Traditions Walter George of Georgia the great George of Georgia, they called him and he goes over and sits down next to him because he's hoping for a compliment on his speech but it becomes apparent after a few minutes. They know compliment is going to be forthcoming. In fact now we're not even any words or for that. So an embarrassment to try and get a conversation going the Freshman says the world to Joyce has the center changed very much since you were first came here and do it says yes freshman didn't used to speak so much. Well, you're not supposed to speak at all really doing your first two years at the end of his first two years Lyndon Johnson is the assistant leader of the democratic party in the Senate the end of four years. He's the leader of the democratic party in the center at the Democrats gained the majority and he becomes majority leader of the Senate not only has he done it with such incredible rapidity, but he's become majority leader at the age of 46. No one else in America's history ever did it until they would just about 60 years old. How did he do it? The epigraph of this book is a line not from me. But from Lyndon Johnson speaking about himself every phrase and it is significant Lyndon Johnson said whatever else they say about me. I do understand power. I know where to look for it. And I know how to use it. So in a way this book, the first part of it at least is about Lyndon Johnson looking for power in the center finding power where no one else thought it could be created. And then the latter part is using it. Where does he find a how does he find? You know, it seems impossible because as I said the Senate was designed so no one could lead it and its rules and precedents reinforce that one of the last majority Leader's before Linda Johnson Alben Barkley of Kentucky said, I can't lead the Senate. I have nothing to promise them. I have nothing to threaten them with. Well Johnson finds things to promise them and he finds Things to threaten them with I was trying to think of one example, I could use to show how he did it and I decided to talk for a minute about Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. Rayburn, you know was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and had been the speaker for more than 10 years. When Johnson comes to the Senate it's hard to believe there was ever a public figure like Sam Rayburn if you look at America today between being speaker and Majority Leader. He ruled the House of Representatives for 27 years and he ruled it. Absolutely. He like a dick just if you know you remember him from democratic conventions his great bald head, you know his that face that never smiled that Grim face and no expression of a came across but we remember him as a figure of great power which he was but Rayburn was also the loneliest of men, you know, when he first came to Washington as a freshman Congressman in 1917, he writes his sister back in Bonham, Texas God would I would give for a towheaded boy to take fishing and he thinks he's going to have a son he's going to have a big Family what he does on those early weekends in his first years in Washington his he drives around Washington on weekends looking for some house. That's big enough to hold it big family that he's gonna have but Rayburn socially it's sort of dysfunctional he went said I never tell a joke because every time I do I'm the joke, he felt he couldn't talk at dinner parties. So for many years, he wouldn't go to dinner parties. He got married once was for three weeks. No one no one knows what happened. I certainly don't but he never marries again or dates hardly at all after that. So he lives alone in an apartment in Washington now during the week, of course, if you're the speaker, you're surrounded everywhere you go by people coming up to you wanting things from you. You're the center of attention, but on weekends, everyone else goes home to their family Rayburn doesn't have a family. So what he used to do on weekends is walk the streets around the Capitol by himself with his face set in that Grim unsmiling expression as if he wanted to be left alone as if daring anyone to come up to him so that no one would understand why he was alone. But some of his assistants told me how they were young men and how when Rayburn would sometimes call one of them telephone one of them and ask him to come down on a Saturday or Sunday as if he had something urgent for him to do and the young man would come to Ray Burns office and watch him pulling open one drawer after another and his desk looking for some paper the could something that could be an excuse for him having called the young man down. So when Lyndon Johnson comes to Washington as a congressional secretary in 1934 with Lady Bird, they've just been married. He almost immediately invites Sam Rayburn over for Sunday breakfast. Now Johnson has an entree to Rayburn because Johnson's father served with Raburn and the Texas legislature, but this this entrée is under normal circumstances only going to make be good for one visit from rumor, but at this first Breakfast this Pond which never breaks Springs up not between Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, but between Rayburn and ladybird Rayburn I've said is so terribly shy and those of you would read my first two books knew that lady bird was so terribly shy just say when she was in high school. She was very smart. She prays that she won't finish first the second in her class because she'll have to get up and be valedictorian and salutatorian give a speech and she literally praise she told me that if he finishes first a second she'll get smallpox. So she can't hear the speech on as Johnson's wife, of course for years. She could not bring herself to speak in public or even to greet people at a coffee hour for other wives. Rayburn sees in her this terribly showing man sees in this terribly shy woman someone as shy as himself and the Springs up this Bond a paternal but very strong bond between Rayburn and Lady Bird which never breaks, you know, if you go to the Lyndon Johnson's ranch today in that yuge living room is exactly one picture of a human being it's of Sam Rayburn and it was put there by Lady burn and Rayburn starts to come to the Johnsons for breakfast every Sunday and lady bird makes him the food. He likes corn bread whole very hot Texas chili homemade peach ice cream and she says after breakfast I would clear away and Linden and mr. Sam would read the papers and this became very important Rayburn becomes very fond of both of them Johnson and Lady Bird in that same year. 1934 lady bird has to go back to Texas for a while to visit her. Either and why she's gone Lyndon Johnson gets pneumonia, which of course was very serious. Then Rayburn sits next to his bed in the hospital all night in a straight back wouldn't share Rayburn has a chain smoker but he's so afraid that if he gets up to brush the asses off his vest oldest Urban that he sits there without moving all night. So Lyndon Johnson recalls it when he wakes up in the morning. The first thing he sees is the speaker sitting here completely covered with cigarette answers, but when raver and sees Johnson is awake, he jumps up and leans over and says Rayburn and says Linden Never worry about anything again if you need anything cool on me. Well Lyndon Johnson being the way he is it's very short time before he does Franklin Roosevelt has just created a new New Deal agency. The National Youth Administration. Each state is going to have its own director the director of course for Minnesota as you were Humphrey the Lyndon Johnson wants to be the Texas state director of the Nya. Now. There's no reason in the world why he would get this job is administrative experience is zero. He's just a secretary to a congressman. He's never run anything and here he's going to he wants to run an agency that's going to spend tens of millions of dollars and have hundreds and hundreds of employees. There's an amazing paragraph in the Memoirs of the Old Texas Senator Tom Connolly who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee for about 20 years and a great power in Washington. He said a remarkable thing happened today. Everybody knows that Sam Rayburn ever asks a man for a favor. But today Sam came to my office and asked for a favor and would not leave until I did it was the favor was too kindly to use his influence with Roosevelt to get Linda Johnson the job Johnson gets the job as Nya director and his career is on on its way now Johnson come up there a lot of ins and outs and Relationship but when Johnson comes to the Senate the relationship is strong between him and Raburn and he realizes that he has something that no other Senator has it's not enough for a senator, you know, he needs a damn. He needs an Appropriations bill. It's not enough to just get it passed in the Senate. It has to also be passed in the house and Senators don't have much influence over there. But Johnson is the only senator who can go to the Speaker of the House who runs it and say speed up this bill expedited or do whatever and when awareness of this starts to pervade the Senate very quickly. You can see it in letters notes memos and the Johnson Library very powerful senior Senators saying wounded my damn bill is stalled in the house. Can you put a word in the speakers are a Linden my Appropriations bill is being hacked up by the house Ways and Means Committee. Can you move it to the top of the speaker's pile something like that and of Johnson when he does a favor for a man like this, he makes sure that they know it and that they owe him and it becomes a source of power and other sources to getting some up in a couple of Senses doesn't take any more his cash campaign contributions Johnson is the only conduit he's made sure his the only conduit for the Texas natural gas tycoons and oil tycoons and contractors and Congressman all campaign contributions have to come through them. And this is the largest source of campaign financing is a very Vivid scene in this book. Well, I don't say I wrote it vividly but it's was told to me that the LIE of this loyal when a Johnson's lawyer walks into his Ranch the living room of his Ranch on the Pedernales just before a senate election and Johnson is sitting there with it One telephone in each hand saying about 24 him and 24 him and 34 him and 40 for him. That was a source of Power and Johnson uses these powers and many others that I detail in the book with the ruthlessness that makes them even more effective. Here's another quote from Lyndon Johnson. These are his words. I'm just like a fox I can see the jugular in any man and go for it. But I always keep myself in rain. I keep myself on a leash just like you would an animal well in that self-assessment Lyndon Johnson is only partially telling the truth because in fact while he can see the jugular and any man, he doesn't always keep himself on a leash and there are a lot of instances in this book where he destroys people with his power mean one, which is particularly character revealing and also sets the tone of Johnson's course in the center because it happens literally only when he's only been there for like three months concerns a man named Leland olds and I spend a lot of time in the book going into this story because it hasn't been told before Leland old when Johnson comes to Washington and to the senate in 1949 is the chairman of the federal power commission, which regulates Natural Gas and Electric Power. He's an old new dealer an old liberal. He worked for Franklin Roosevelt in New York Roosevelt made him the chairman of the board of the New York State Power Authority when Roosevelt comes to Washington. He brings Leland olds with him and makes him chairman of the federal power Commission because olds believes that electricity or power natural gas for electricity should be kept the price should be kept reasonable. He doesn't believe there should be no profits, but he believes the prophets should be reasonable because after all is he said who owns a river? If not, the people now the natural gas in interests of Texas are course becoming millionaires over the profits that they were already making but they want to make a lot more and this one man Leland owes is standing in their way. He's up for renomination in March of nineteen Forty Nine. Just three months after Johnson arrives and Johnson's first assignment in the center is to defeat Leland those has renomination, which is not going to be easy because always has been working with the Senators. Fifteen years and even those who disagree with his philosophy admire and respect him Johnson does the following thing he discovers that when Leland olds was a young man back in the 1920s. He was a reporter for a wire service like the Associated Press today that this one was called the Federated pressed. It has subscribers. They were 80 newspapers reporters for the Federated press didn't work for any of the newspapers. They just sent out the stories on the wires and whatever subscribers wanted to pick him up could use them. Most of these newspapers were mainstream newspapers with one was the Communist daily worker. So Lyndon Johnson has his assistants go through every issue of the daily worker during the 1920s and he finds 54 instances in which the byline by Leyland olds appears in the daily worker. He has those 854 articles photostatic. He takes it around to the other. Offices of senators and he convinces them that Leland olds is a communist as always been a kind of lost souls was actually an anti-communist and this is two years before Joe McCarthy gives his first speech Johnson gives a speech in the sun. And the key line is do we want a commissioner or a connoisseur? And he convinces the Senate that olds is a communist. And in fact further than that that olds may very well be a communist agent who has been working within the government to undermine free enterprise. He destroys Leland those it's a terrible story when this happens to Old I was going to look I think he's 55 years old. He was still in his 50s. He has almost no say things and he can never again get a job in the industry to which he's devoted his life to learning about because who would hire this communist he never has a good job again, and he dies years later a poor man. He was always a poor man after that his wife suffers a series of nervous breakdown. His daughter told me how her mother couldn't believe that neighbors and their neighborhood in Washington who had known them for 20 years and been her friends wouldn't talk to her because they were afraid this was the atmosphere in Washington and that era to be seen talking to someone who was a communist. It's a horrible story of all the horrible parts of it. The worst to me is what Lyndon Johnson says during a recess in the hearings Johnson, you know is a chairman of the committee that is justice. Drawing olds with this cross-examination for which olds is utterly unprepared. He has no idea what's going to happen to me hasn't even brought a lawyer because I Johnson has made him think that he was on his side and Johnson is just destroying him with this course examination and olds knows he's being destroyed and he's standing outside his a recess and the hearings and old to standing outside in the corridor with his wife more and with one young assistant and Lyndon Johnson comes up and says to him Lee we're still friends, aren't we? There's nothing personal in this, you know, it's just politics. Well that was politics Lyndon Johnson's type of politics or one part of them in Johnson's type of politics. And after that episode a lot of the Senators will though Johnson has no power in the Senate are a little wary of him a little afraid of him. They see what he can do and when he becomes leader and he has these Powers they all realize they will learn Those of them who don't learn immediately. They learned the hard way that he's going to use these powers to make them do what he wants the best explanation. I good explanation of the difference between President Kennedy and President Johnson was given by the senator from Washington scoop Jackson. He's and I'll read it. This is his words. President Kennedy would explain precisely why a bill was so important and why he needed the senator support, but if the senator said that his constituency simply wouldn't allow him to vote the way Kennedy wanted Kennedy would finally say he was sorry that they couldn't agree but he understood. Lyndon Johnson scoop Jackson would say in Jackson worked closely with Johnson for 25 years Johnson would none wouldn't understand quote. He would refuse to understand. These are Jackson's words. He would charm you or knock your block off or bribe you with threaten you anything to get you vote. He do anything he had to to get your vote and he'd get it. That was the difference. He'd get it. So when Johnson after Johnson becomes leader, he starts to run the sun really run it and the Senate become turns into something very different than it had ever been before or at least since the days of Webster clay and Calhoun. It becomes a place filled with energy. It always been a drought for decades in a drowsy slow-moving place. Now, it's very different than I wrote this description of Johnson on of on just before the vote. On a bill that's important, but it's not particularly controversial with the vote all but upon him now. He seemed always to be in motion and the motion would be faster almost frenzy as he talked to Senators his hands never stop moving gesturing expressively chopping the air with the snake killing gesture opening upon to illustrate a point punching the air with a fist jabbing lapel with a finger patting a senator's shoulder straightening his toy grabbing his lapel hugging him. If he agreed to the proposition being made he'd see a senator come in and sit down on one of the couches in the rear he jump up and run over to him throw it sit down. We saw him throw his arm that big arm around the shoulder grab the lapel and lean into him with that big face tilting his face back the Senators face back until he agreed with Johnson. Then he'd go back into his own front row center chair. Maybe he'd sit down for a moment, but he wouldn't stay it in at Lon. He just seemed he was too filled with nervous energy. Abruptly galvanized by a sudden thought he would leap out of his seat going from slouch to almost phonetic in an instant rushing over to a senator you'd see him with the finger right in the face. He'd be over on the Republican side as much as the Democratic then he'd be back across the floor pulling someone else off to the side a slash of vivid movement through the senatorial still life. And that was on a non-controversial bill. I want to build on which the vote was going to be closed and the result of genuine political significance the frenzy of Lyndon Johnson's actions escalated another notch as the moment approached for the role of call the call that would determine the actual irrevocable winning or losing for this man who had to win Lyndon Johnson's order is grew sharper more punctuated with your you know, some of the scenes are simply incredible to take your own Senator Hubert Humphrey in his oral history describes Lyndon Johnson telling him to do something there on some errand on the floor and saying get going now and when he doesn't move fast enough Johnson kicks him in the shin and when he still doesn't move fast enough he kicks him in the other session now, although this is told and you can find it in his oral history. I wasn't going to use it because to tell you the truth, it sounded exaggerate it to me until I was going through the Contemporary newspapers for the The year is 1957 and has a column by this Old Washington columnist. Robert S Allen who said who write this is what Allen Road I thought Humphrey must be exaggerating until he added look and he pulled up his trouser leg and sure enough. He had some scars there and then he pulled up the other leg. He had a couple of scars on his shins. Will Linden had kicked him and said get going now. So he rushes around the floor some of the Senators on his own Democratic side. We still planning to vote the other way, you know, we all know about Johnson's grabbing the lapel gesture, but that's really an adequate to keep me do things a little pals. There was a very Dominion of Senator John past story of Rhode Island. He was only about 5455 small senator from a small state johnson-graham says to lapels pull Johnson is 64 right pulls them together like this and lift Pastore up on his toes and pins and The wall while until Pastore agrees to vote as way here. Also. Another thing he did. Oh, I don't I don't have a buttonhole and those days men's lapel had buttonholes if he thought the senator was going to try and pull away from the Grail on the lapel. Anyway, he would stick his forefinger through the palace. So as I wrote The Senator couldn't leave his presence without leaving his lapel Neon. Then I wrote the leader was hurrying back and forth across the chamber prowling the oils charging up the stairs to the cloakroom and then suddenly the moment was at hand the moment for which he had been waiting the number of votes on the tally sheet in his hand was at last the number he needed he would win if nothing changed. He quickly puts one of his allies in the presiding officers chair and he stands there at his majority Leader's does not even know you look that's the front row Center desk. It's right at the edge of the well, here's the dais the well and in the front row of desks Johnson is so tall as 64 and the dais in the center is really very low. So it's Johnson standing there. His allies are almost at the same level as the presiding officers eyes and Johnson prompts and let's say a senator get on the other side gets up to object Johnson would say out of order. If the presiding officer didn't take the hint Johnson would say louder out of order if the presiding officer still didn't take the hint Johnson would shout out of order until the guy said Out of Water call the question call. The question. The question would would be called by the presiding officers yeas, and nays have been ordered the clerk will call the roll. And with those last words the words that signal the actual vote. The power of Lyndon Johnson is majority leader was fully revealed for during the six years of his leadership 1955 through the end of 1960 during the six years of his leadership. The Senate of the United States presented during closed and crucial votes a spectacle such as had never been seen before during the century and a half of its previous existence and that has never been seen since let's say Johnson has he was orphaned operating with a one-vote majority 4947 Democrat if Not exactly the number of votes and he didn't want anyone changing his mind. He wanted the vote to go fast. So he's staying at this front row Center desk and he raised his arm around us above his head and make these Motions like an airplane mechanic revving up an engine or an Orchestra conductor leading an orchestra if he didn't have if his men was still in the cloakroom working to get another vote from a senator one that he needed or if one of his votes who's being sped to the capital by police Corps. He wanted the vote to go slowly. So he'd make the stretching out gesture in the vote would be slower. As some of his hurried into the chamber many walks down to the well to talk with their colleagues standing at the edge of the well towering over the men and Lyndon Johnson would raise his long arm over them making those big circles like an Orchestra conductor leading the United States Senate the Senate that for a hundred and fifty years had refused to be led. Sometimes he would indulge in an even more blatant manifestation of his power. He simply if he is Count was wrong and he was one vote short. He just shout out to someone across the chamber change your vote Allen and the reporters would see him change devote you cited The Columns for Time Magazine described that this way the tall man with his mind a tomb to every Sight and Sound and parliamentary Nuance who signaled the role calls faster or slower who gave another signal in the door would open and two more guys would run in my God running the world power enveloped him. Well that Lyndon Johnson's power. How did he use it? That's the last part of the book. He uses it to do things that seemed impossible. He gets the first Civil Rights Act since reconstruction through the Senate first Civil Rights Act and almost 90 years in the face of all the Mast power of the South he was at home there. He was born to be there. The life of Lyndon Johnson is to me a very poignant life the story of his Boyhood is just sad poignant and so is a lot of the rest of his life but his 12 years in the Senate if not said which makes that in a way the most poignant thing of War because he wasn't content to stay there. He wanted something else, which he got Lady Bird was too, (00:43:54) right? (00:44:04) And for the United States these 12 years were productive years. When you look back at the Senate of the United States during the first two and a quarter centuries of its existence from its founding to right now. The Senate worked really as the founding fathers had intended it to work as a center of governmental creativity and Ingenuity and energy worked really that way only once during one six-year period 1955 through 1960 the six-year period And when Lyndon Johnson was its leader the Senate really work then Lyndon Johnson was indeed what I call him Master of the Senate I try to keep this shorter, but if I could do things shorter, I wouldn't always be writing such low on book. Thank you very much. (00:44:54) College of prize-winning author Robert Caro speaking last week at ruminator books in Minneapolis Cairo is currently on a book tour promoting Master of the Senate of the third book in his biographical series on former President Lyndon Baines Johnson our apologies for the technical glitch right at the end of the speech there after his speech mascara took some questions from the audience. Robert Caro was asked why the media hadn't reported on some of the information that's included in a series and LBJ. Well, (00:45:26) actually it's more complicated with some that's a very hard question to answer. I'm not sure. I know the answer at that in that era reporting was very different. A lot of the reporters were effect were afraid to offend the leadership. And in fact, it's difficult to offend Senators today because you won't have access to them. And in those days you didn't write about unpleasant things. I used to ask if you all knew about this cash being circulated. Why didn't you write about Answer basically is reporting reporting was different then also, it's easier to find out things after a period of time has passed and it is at the moment. So I have that advantage and I also have the advantage of time. I love being a reporter myself and I miss it. I miss it all the time. But one thing that I really hated about being a reporter was that you always had to write before you had answered all your questions. I always had a deadline if they gave you a week the end of that week to report something you always had more questions than at the beginning. So when I decided to write books, I had more time to pursue (00:46:36) things. Robert Carroll was asked about the US Senate and how the Senate has changed over the years. (00:46:44) They evolved if you look the 40 rules and the precedents that explain them take them. There's long as one of my books. It's over a thousand Pages the southern legislators the southern Senators, they would learn the stuff. You know, it's an interesting thing. If you were from the south and you knew until Lyndon Johnson became president was an accepted thing you could never be president if you were from the south and therefore when a southerner came to the Senate he came to stay this was the place he was going to make his home for the rest of his life. So he studied these rules with the devotion of a man who knew he was going to be living by them the rest of his life. And in addition to that the southerners were there along error was a one-party South they stay forever. I will to George served in the senate for 36 years Richard Russell for 38 years. So they knew these presidents and they are so involved. Then you can see if the I won't try to do it now have Johnson could use these rules and precedents, you know to support things in the Senate that he wanted to do. (00:47:54) Robert Carroll was asked to discuss the differences between former New York Governor Al Smith, New York Public Works Czar Robert Moses and President Lyndon Johnson. (00:48:05) They all were ruthless pragmatic politician. But Al Smith when he gets power, all he wants to do is help his people and he goes to Tammany Hall and he says now, I'm the first Catholic who ever got elected governor. You want a Catholic to do good. You have to free me from you and and they (00:48:24) do Robert Kara was also asked if it's possible another Lyndon Baines Johnson will be elected to the US Senate, (00:48:33) you know, the answer to that question in my opinion is yes, but it wouldn't be the same Lyndon Johnson with all the people with Robert Moses, you know when he becomes When he comes to power in New York, New York hasn't been able to might build a mile a road in 30 years, right? Arterial Road ever since New York will never build anything big again. The city is bankrupt. They were all these other recent Moses comes in one year. He built 72 miles of Parkways. He'll 672 miles of rows from the day. He left office in 1968. You know, how many miles of Arterial Highway New York City has built 0 so if a robber if a Robert Moses was you know, it's the nature of political genius, which is what I'm trying to say is that they find the way to do something that no one's thought of before when Johnson comes to the side. Everyone said as the Senate can never be let he finds a way to do it. Another genius will come along. You'll find another way of doing it. I don't know what it would be. I would try to find out about it. Maybe I could understand and write about I couldn't conceive of it but that's the nature of political genius to think of something that no one has (00:49:43) Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Caro's speaking last week at ruminator books in Minneapolis Cairo is the author of the power broker a biography of New York Public Works are Robert Moses book earned Karthik Arrow the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975. He is currently working on his biographical series on former President Lyndon Johnson. He's been working on it for 28 years. It's currently on a book tour promoting Master of the Senate the third book in the LBJ series. Well that does it for our midday program today. I'm Gary eichten. Thanks so much for joining us. Just a reminder that all of our middays are available on our website, Minnesota Public Radio. Dot org? Minnesota Public Radio dot org is our web address and good service. Really? If you want to hear for example, the Robert Caro's speech again. If you would like to listen to it at a time an off our if you'd like to recommend it to a friend, whatever just log on to our website Minnesota Public Radio dot-org. You will also find lots more information on a wide variety of subjects of special campaign. Mm section includes for example, the comments of Brian Sullivan who was on our 11 o'clock hour today on midday a program, by the way, which you'll be able to hear at nine o'clock tonight. So and when you're there one other feature, we should mention about the website lots of opportunities to weigh in on the issues of the day, and we hope you'll take advantage of that opportunity know many of you try to call in to our call in programs, or maybe you're just too shy to call in. Participate in the call in programs that's fine. Go online and jot down your comments on on subjects that you hear discussed Minnesota Public Radio dot-org big news story of the day in case you missed it big local news story of the day. The University of Texas has decided that it wants University of Minnesota president Mark yudof to be the new Chancellor of the University of Texas system president yudof is the sole finalist in Texas and apparently according to sources in Texas president yudof has decided to make the move back to Texas where course he spent some 25 years. The University of Minnesota has a press conference scheduled for later this afternoon, and we sure should learn much much more about that story as the day progresses. We'll have details as the day progresses. Sarah Mayer is the producer of our midday program. Our assistant producer is Rob Schmidt's we had helped this week from Petty Ray Rudolph and Christopher Avec of ruminator books. I'm Gary. Eichten. I will be on vacation next week Mike McKay. He will be in the chair be kind to him. Hope you can tune in on Monday programming a Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Midwest Home and Garden second annual luxury home tour featuring 22 one-of-a-kind million-dollar homes throughout the Twin Cities weekends, June 7th 14th and 21st tickets at London Byerly's details at TC home tour.com. 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