TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111389/11138900.013

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.8 KB | 114 lines

                                                                                HISTORY, Page 98

A Texas-Size L.B.J. Obsession


Robert Caro, 14 years into his biography, traces a web of deceit

By R.Z. Sheppard


    Lyndon Baines Johnson may have been larger than life, but
since his death 16 years ago, he has been getting bigger. The
growth spurt is due largely to the diligence of Robert A. Caro,
the biographer and political historian who has made L.B.J.'s
saga into an obsession and virtually a life's work. Caro is one
of the best known of a small breed of long-distance writers who
appear from their orbits of research to offer big books on big
subjects. Among others in the select group, most of whom tend
to be, like Caro, journalist-scholars: Richard Kluger, author
of the civil rights classic Simple Justice (1976), and J.
Anthony Lukas, whose Common Ground (1985), a social history of
ethnic Boston, was well worth the wait.

    Caro began work on his Texas-size biography of L.B.J. 14
years ago. The choice of subject was a natural progression from
his first marathon, The Power Broker (1974), a 1,200-page study
of New York City master builder Robert Moses. The Power Broker
is an obligatory book for understanding modern urban politics.
In turning to L.B.J., Caro shifted his focus from how New York
City works to what makes the nation run. The answer is not
surprising. As Franklin Roosevelt's factotum Tommy ("the Cork")
Corcoran responded when Caro asked how the young L.B.J. gained
power, "Money, kid. But you'll never be able to write about it."

    Caro's first Johnson volume, The Path to Power, was
published in 1982 and proved Corcoran wrong. In comprehensive
and forceful detail, it followed Johnson from the lonely Texas
hill country, out from under the humiliating shadow of his
failed father. The book ended with his unexpected defeat in a
1941 race for the U.S. Senate. The Path remained a best seller
for three months and won the National Book Critics Circle Award
for nonfiction.

    Last week Volume II, Means of Ascent, began to run in the
New Yorker. The excerpt details a shameless pattern of deceit
in L.B.J.'s early career. Among the juicier disclosures is how
Johnson, as a noncombatant in World War II, was able to parlay
13 minutes under enemy fire into a Silver Star, which he then
had repeatedly presented to himself at public ceremonies. Alice
Glass, who according to Caro was Johnson's mistress as well as
the lover of one of his most influential supporters, had a more
realistic view of Lyndon's war. "I can write a very illuminating
chapter on his military career in Los Angeles," she later
revealed to a friend, "with photographs, letters from voice
teachers, and photographers who tried to teach him which was the
best side of his face."

    As many as six further excerpts are expected to appear in
the magazine, covering the founding of L.B.J.'s fortune and his
controversial election to the Senate in 1948. Knopf will issue
a first printing of 200,000 copies in March.

    To Caro, Volume II is already history. He is well into the
making of Volume III, which will take Johnson from his reign as
Senate majority leader to his swearing-in as President after
John F. Kennedy's assassination. A fourth, final volume is
planned. Meanwhile, the work moves slowly. Caro and his wife
Ina, who is also his research assistant, spent four years living
in Texas, driving tens of thousands of miles to interview
sources. "It took me two years to realize what I was hearing,"
says Caro. The young Johnson's role in bringing electricity to
his constituents filled the author with populist enthusiasm. But
later, going through some of the 34 million documents stored in
the Johnson Library in Austin, he recalls a letdown. "I thought
Johnson was going to be like Al Smith. But a different picture
started to emerge in the library, and I realized, with
depression coming over me, how he got to be F.D.R.'s man in
Texas."

    Caro insists he is more interested in Johnson's power than
in his personality. "The basic concern of all my books is how
political power works in America," he says. "I don't think
there is an adequate understanding of that. Look at the effect
Johnson had on so many lives. If you were a young black American
getting an education, Johnson had a lot to do with that. And if
you were a young man drafted off to Viet Nam, he had a lot to
do with that too."

    At 53, Caro could spend the rest of his working life
wrestling with the enigma of L.B.J. With his hefty book contract
and a $1 million movie deal, he can afford the commitment. Yet
to see Caro in his Manhattan office, one might think he was a
struggling small businessman out of the 1950s. He works amid a
makeshift table, an old desk and stained bookshelves. There is
no word processor, only an electric portable.

    He often observes from the U.S. Senate gallery, where he
finds the routine business of Government thrilling. Sometimes
he is an audience of one, as if, he says, "the Senate were being
staged only for me." Caro is less anonymous at the Johnson
Library. Since The Path to Power, Lady Bird Johnson has become
uncooperative, and her former press secretary Liz Carpenter
occasionally glares from behind a glass wall as Caro makes his
notes.

    Caro is understandably reluctant to give away findings that
he has worked years to uncover, and for which his publisher and
the New Yorker have paid good money. When asked about the basis
of Johnson's wealth or about the 1948 election, the biographer
responds teasingly, "I think I can add something to our
understanding." Judging from that answer, the only surprise
would be if future installments indicated that Johnson got rich
through his business acumen and won his first Senate term fair
and square.