Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro discussed Lyndon Johnson's early years, contrasting the former president's compassion with his ability to betray in order to gain power in a speech to a capacity audience at Cook Auditorium yesterday.
Caro is the second of six presidential historians participating in this term's Montgomery Fellowship program, highlighted by a lecture series with the theme "Power and the Presidency." His first two books on Johnson, which traced the president's early career, garnered him a National Book Circle Award.
Caro called Johnson's term a "watershed presidency" in which the "legislative embodiments of the cause of social justice" were accomplished.
Among Johnson's accomplishments were civil rights acts, laws pertaining to education and acts providing medical care for the poor and elderly.
But Johnson's term was also marred by the escalation of the Vietnam War, and Caro said if he were a Montgomery Fellow during Johnson's term, the audience would be "hanging Lyndon Johnson in effigy on the Green."
Johnson's rise to power, much like his term as president, was marked by both bright and dark moments, Caro said.
At just 28 years of age, Johnson had already been elected to Congress and was consistently being invited by Franklin D. Roosevelt to visit the White House.
Caro interviewed some of Roosevelt's assistants, who said Roosevelt was such a political genius that few people understood his rhetoric -- but Johnson understood every word the first time he heard it.
Johnson used his quick accumulation of influence to fight for the needs of his constituents, who lived in the tiny Texas hill town where he was raised.
Johnson energetically pushed for the town to be connected with electricity -- not an easy task for a town buried alone in a wide valley, where there was approximately one person per square mile.
"When Johnson became their congressman, they were living lives not out of the 20th century, but out of the Middle Ages," Caro said, adding that Johnson's deed was one of the most "noble examples of the use of government" for a constituency's needs.
"All over the hill country, people began to name their children for Lyndon Johnson."
While Johnson always showed compassion for the less privileged members of society, and particularly African-Americans, he also had a dark side, Caro said.
Johnson often concentrated on the push for more power, Caro said. Even in the beginning of his congressional career, Johnson always wanted to leave his district and run for the Senate.
In order to gain power, Johnson even contradicted his beliefs and made himself a "willing tool" of a group of reactionaries who were prejudiced toward African-Americans, Jews and members of the working class.
Caro said one of the darkest moments in Johnson's career was his betrayal of former House Speaker Sam Rayburn, an extremely powerful but very lonely man.
Johnson formed a close friendship with Rayburn, who became emotionally dependent upon Johnson.
Rayburn showed his appreciation by helping Johnson become the head of a New Deal agency for which Johnson was considered too young and inexperienced.
But a few years later, when Rayburn was the logical person to fill a key post for Roosevelt, Johnson stabbed Rayburn in the back by falsely convincing Roosevelt that Rayburn had turned against him.
Caro also discussed Johnson's obsession with secrecy. He said Johnson used to tell people to burn ordinary letters he wrote to them, and he had pages that told about his past ripped from his college yearbook.
Caro is working on a third volume about Johnson, called "Master of the Senate."
College President James Wright gave opening remarks and introduced Caro to the audience.
