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A Republic...If You Can Keep It Essays and Reviews by Michael Burlingame, Charles C VOLUME XIII, NUM BER 1, WINTER 2012/13 A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship A Republic...If You Can Keep It Essays and Reviews by Michael Burlingame, Charles C. Johnson, Michael Nelson, Ronald J. Pestritto, Richard Vedder, William Voegeli, and Ryan P. Williams Plus Victor Davis James Hankins: Hanson: Christopher Caldwell: Protestants Algis Valiunas: Imperial Burdens Gay Rites Gone Wild Leo Tolstoy Martha Bayles: Cheryl Miller: Benjamin Balint: Lincoln & Downton Abbey Salman Rushdie Django Unchained PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $6.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Book Review by Michael Nelson Too Much Information The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro. Alfred A. Knopf, 736 pages, $35 obert a. caro began working on Caro turned 77 in October, however, and has Caro’s interpretation. Although the Johnson a biography of Lyndon Johnson in been requiring more time to account for his of Lone Star Rising and Flawed Giant is almost R1974, the year he published his award- subject’s life, which is understandable since it as unattractive as the man Caro describes, winning The Power Broker: Robert Moses and grew increasingly complex and consequential. Dallek argued that Johnson’s personal ambi- the Fall of New York. He meant The Years of At every stage of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, tion served a larger lifelong cause: to integrate Lyndon Johnson to be a six-year, three-volume Caro has underestimated the number of in- the South into the nation by developing its project. Instead, Caro’s first volume,The Path stallments to come and the number of years economy and ending racial segregation. In to Power, appeared in 1982—eight years of his he’d need to complete them. What’s more, Dallek’s view, Johnson’s “liberal nationalism” life spent recounting the first 33 years of John- he’s also writing a book about the writing of only went wrong when he tried to extend son’s. Means of Ascent was published in 1990. his books, a project that can only prolong the it to Southeast Asia, where he committed It covers seven years, culminating in Johnson’s completion of the LBJ biography. 550,000 troops in a bootless effort to stop election to the Senate in 1948 (widely suspect- North Vietnam from bullying South Viet- ed but not proven to have been stolen until s one of caro’s faithful and, on nam and, notoriously, promised the north a Caro uncovered clear documentary evidence). balance, admiring readers, I’m in a billion dollars to stop fighting and let him de- Master of the Senate, published in 2002, spans Aminority among presidential scholars. velop the Mekong River valley with a foreign the first ten years of Johnson’s career as a sena- The three previous volumes ofThe Years of aid counterpart to Franklin Roosevelt’s Ten- tor and Senate Democratic leader. The Passage Lyndon Johnson won most of the Pulitzer Priz- nessee Valley Authority. of Power, published last year, covers the period es and National Book Awards for which they Dallek diminished himself, however, by from 1958 to early 1964: ten years from Caro; were eligible…and left academic historians picking fights with Caro in that favorite five years of Johnson. notably unimpressed. Stanford in Washington scholarly sniping ground, the footnotes, and Devoted readers of this biography can take professor Robert Dallek’s two-volume biogra- sometimes seemed to think he had won just little encouragement from the actuarial tables. phy—Lone Star Rising (1991) and Flawed Giant because he cited a fellow academic historian If Caro levels off at his current pace, taking (1998)—was hailed as the corrective to Caro. who interpreted an incident differently from two years of research and writing to chronicle As best I can tell, neither of Dallek’s volumes Caro. In one case, Caro called Johnson’s one year of Johnson’s life, it will be another received a single adverse review by any history failure to vocally support Franklin Roos- two decades before Caro publishes the vol- professor in any scholarly journal. Many re- evelt unprincipled. Dallek quoted William ume that takes Johnson through his presiden- viewers mentioned Caro, almost always for the Leuchtenburg saying it was not unprincipled, cy—that is, through the 1964 election, the purpose of saying how much better Dallek was. and then lazily or tendentiously treated that Great Society, Vietnam, the 1968 election— And, indeed, Dallek captured LBJ’s com- opinion as conclusive. In another footnote, and into retirement as a former president. plexity in ways that compare favorably with Dallek said Caro was wrong to criticize John- Claremont Review of Books w Winter 2012/13 Page 39 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm son’s conduct as a naval officer because Caro “Here’s a guy who has…enough power to turn From the is “ever ready to put Johnson in the worst the entire state around, and you don’t have the possible light”—as if attacking Caro sufficed slightest idea how he got it. And I determined to defend Johnson. Dallek went after Caro in then that I wanted to understand.” his notes 13 times in Lone Star Rising, exactly Caro knew Moses was powerful. But sim- Land of Lincoln 13 more times than he criticized all his other ply knowing that left two important questions sources combined. unanswered. First, how had this man “shaped University of Arkansas historian Randall New York and its suburbs in the image he Woods called and raised Dallek’s hostility personally conceived”? Moses built 13 vehicu- to Caro in his able but testy 2008 book LBJ: lar spans, including the Verrazano-Narrows Architect of American Ambition. Woods didn’t Bridge, still the longest suspension bridge in criticize Caro, as Dallek did; he simply dis- North America and, at the time of its comple- missed him. “I do not quote him once,” Woods tion in 1964, the longest in the world. He also said in an interview and, reminded that he ac- was the main reason for the construction of tually did cite him—once—replied, “I meant public housing units for 550,000 tenants and to take that out.” Woods also said he refused 15 expressways, adding more miles of major to read any of Caro’s books about Johnson be- highway than the total mileage of any other cause, “when you read you absorb things in- city, even car-crazed Los Angeles. Second, Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case directly and his work is just not trustworthy. why had Moses, who initially sought power as A Documentary History And, too, he’s such a compelling writer, and so a means to accomplish great ends, become a JASON EMERSON that book is going to make an impression on monster who sought “power for its own sake”? “This book is the fi rst to capture and provide you whether you want it to or not.” in one resource all of the documentation he nine months caro set aside to relevant to Mary Lincoln's long-controversial heir snobbery notwithstanding, write The Power Broker became seven insanity trial and treatment. Jason Emerson Dallek and Woods have virtues as his- years. Answering the first question— distils the full body of evidentiary material T torians that correspond to weaknesses how Moses was able to wield power so skill- into an easily accessible chronology. T Caro displays. The latter is usually at his worst fully—was the main obstacle. To be sure, the An essential reference for anyone interested when he turns to “political power and how it answer included some familiar elements of po- in the subject.”—Harold Holzer shapes our lives,” which he insists is the true litical leadership. Moses forged alliances with subject of all his books. Robert Moses, on the powerful figures in business, politics, and the local and state level, and Lyndon Johnson, on media. In public, he successfully cultivated a the national and international scene, inter- reputation as a reformer while privately chan- est Caro because they sought political power neling jobs, legal fees, insurance premiums, more ardently, wielded it more effectively, and and other benefits to powerful machine politi- lost it more tragically than any other Ameri- cians. Convinced that no court or elected body cans of their time. How well he illuminates could stop one of his massive projects once he power, then, is the standard by which Caro’s had driven the first stake, Moses mastered work ultimately must be judged. And because the art of the fait accompli. He was a hands-on nearly every one of his insights into Johnson is taskmaster whom devoted subordinates both transposed from his study of Moses, one can’t loved and feared. understand The Years of Lyndon Johnson with- Caro’s genius lay in discovering how Mo- out knowing what Caro learned from writing ses’s power relied not just on these familiar The Power Broker. elements but also on tools and techniques Lincoln’s Political Generals Caro’s passion for understanding politi- he essentially invented. After turning an ob- DAVID WORK cal power in general and Moses in particu- scure student literary magazine at Yale into a “In this thoroughgoing study of sixteen lar flowed from his work as an investigative vehicle for becoming a Big Man on Campus, ‘political generals’ in the Union army, David reporter for New York’s suburban newspa- Moses spent his life devising ways “to take an Work demonstrates convincingly that these per Newsday in the mid-1960s. After Caro institution with little or no power…and to generals' efforts signifi cantly aided the Union wrote a series attacking Moses’s plan to build transform it into an institution of immense war effort in their capacity as administrators, a bridge across the Long Island Sound, “the power.” The “public authority” was just such political supporters, recruiters and organizers paper sent me up to Albany to ‘lobby’ against an institution.
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