Master of the Senate

The third book of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate, takes the reader through one of the most amazing eras in Johnson's life—his twelve years in the US Senate, from 1949 to 1960.

The book's principal contribution is its unparalleled disclosure of the inner workings of the Senate, American legislative power, and how Johnson, in his rise to the president, came to understand the Senate in a way that no other political leader had.

All of Johnson's experiences, from his childhood in the Texas Hill Country to his ardent advocacy for his impoverished people in Congress to his relentless building of a political apparatus, culminated during these years. Caro opens the narrative with a dramatic description of the Senate, describing how leaders like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had elevated it to a position of power in government and made it a platform for debating the nation's most important concerns. And how, by the time Johnson got there, it had shrunk to the level of a body that was almost immune to the forces of change, only reacting to presidential initiatives. Caro dissects the political genius and tactics that allowed Johnson to become Majority Leader after just one term, making him the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in history. Johnson changed the Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control by manipulating the Senate's hallowed rules and customs as well as the strengths and weaknesses of his colleagues.

Caro explains how Johnson's political acumen allowed him to make peace with the incommensurable: to win the trust—or at the very least the cooperation—of the liberals led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he would not have been able to win the presidency, while also maintaining the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate. He exposes the darker side of Johnson's ambition by demonstrating his allegiance to the powerful oil barons who had supported his ascent to power by brutally ruining the career of Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds, a New Dealer in charge of overseeing them. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. Caro describes Johnson's incredible success in scheming to get the first civil rights laws passed since 1875 in an astonishing tour de force.

Master of the Senate is both a definitive and revelatory study of the workings of personal and legislative power and a compelling portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, captivating—told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro's unmatched research.