Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3 (review)

Lyndon Johnson had a complex relationship with the South. Although his power depended on the backing of southern leaders, Johnson feared that too close of an association with the South would prevent him from realizing his ultimate ambition: the presidency.

The tension between Johnson's need for southern support and his craving for power was most pronounced during the twelve years (1949-1961) he served Texas in the U.S. Senate. This period stands at the center of Master of the Senate, the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Johnson. Like the preceding volumes, Master of the Senate is a biography not just of a man, but also of power. Caro focuses this volume on legislative power, an instrument that he claims Americans undervalue due to their preoccupation with executive power.

Master of the Senate begins with Johnson's 1948 election to the U.S. Senate—an election that Caro elsewhere has argued Johnson stole. In an attempt to provide context, Caro devotes the book's first one hundred pages to a history of the chamber—a history from which two themes emerge. First, Caro depicts the Senate as an elite, reactionary body opposed to social reform, especially in regards to civil rights. Second, Caro characterizes the Senate as a distinctively southern institution.

Because southerners in Johnson's day effectively were precluded from the presidency, the Senate was the highest office available to politicians from the old Confederacy. Once elected, southerners—all of whom were Democrats—remained in office for decades, which, in an institution that prized seniority, allowed them to amass power. The South also had a tradition of electing senators who were intelligent men, shrewd politicians, and master parliamentarians. Moreover, southern senators often voted as a bloc, particularly on racial issues.

Southerners also used the filibuster to protect their power. Because the Senate's standing rules permit unlimited debate, members effectively can stop the legislative process by refusing to stop talking. While a two-thirds vote of the Senate can end a filibuster, Johnson's South possessed enough votes to prevent that outcome and changes to the standing rule that authorized filibustering.

An ambitious man, Johnson refused to wait for the seniority system to move him into power and began seeking alternative routes. One tactic of Johnson's was to cultivate a relationship with Senator Richard Russell from Georgia, the leader of the Southern Bloc and an influential but lonely man. Russell grew close to Johnson and saw him as a great southern leader and potential president.

The other way in which Johnson bypassed the seniority system was through party leadership posts—positions that were seen as meaningless administrative jobs. Johnson, however, saw possibilities, and Russell's backing allowed Johnson to become Democratic whip in 1951 and majority leader in 1953. In these posts, Johnson used his skills in scheduling, negotiating, vote counting, and information gathering, along with his access to vast sums of money from Texas businessmen, to turn the Senate into a well-run machine under his control.

Nevertheless, Johnson felt frustrated by the mid 1950s. Although considerable, Johnson's power was fragile because the Southern Bloc could strip him of it if he angered them. Meanwhile, Johnson's failed attempt to gain the Democratic Party's 1956 presidential nomination convinced him that he would never gain the national support needed to win the presidency unless he championed Civil Rights legislation—the very kind of legislation that would antagonize the South.

The last portion of Master of the Senate relates Johnson's role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Johnson turned an originally forceful bill that targeted, among other things, discrimination in public accommodations, into a weak voting rights bill. Yet the act passed—the first Civil Rights act to pass the Senate since Reconstruction. That passage was due solely...