The Path to Power

by Robert A. Caro

  If in public Miller seemed the archetypal Southern Senator, in private he might have been the model for another caricature: the wealthy businessman venomously ranting and raving in Peter Arno’s New Yorker cartoons, about That Man in the White House. Miller and a group of friends would often gather in Kleberg’s inner office for a late-afternoon drink. These men were Roosevelt-haters, who saw in the President’s programs the erosion of the power and the privilege so dear to them, and their hatred was made more bitter by the President’s popularity, which forced them, for the sake of expediency, to keep their feelings hidden. (Expediency dictated concealment of their feelings on many subjects. One of the Miller group was Martin Dies, later chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; Jones vividly remembers Dies coming off the floor of the House in 1935 after making a speech supporting a new bid by the veterans for payment of the bonus. “There, that’ll sound good back home,” Dies said, and then, unable to contain his true feelings any longer, snarled: “Goddamned Reds!”) So in the privacy of Kleberg’s office, their laughter at the latest scatological joke about Franklin’s physical disabilities, or about Eleanor, was all the louder, and their railings against “Reds” and about the “dictatorship” being foisted on the American people, and about the “socialists,” “communists,” “Bolsheviks” and—worst of all—college professors who surrounded the dictator were all the more vehement. Of that group—Dies, Kleberg himself, Horatio H. (“Rasch”) Adams, a Kleberg golfing partner and reactionary lobbyist for General Electric, other ultra-conservative Texas Congressmen such as Nat (“Cousin Nat”) Patton, James P. (“Buck”) Buchanan and Hatton W. Summers—no one laughed louder or railed more vehemently than Miller. Lyndon Johnson was always invited in for a drink. And since the door between the suite’s two rooms was open, Jones, Latimer and Brown could hear what their Chief was saying.

  His tone with these powerful men was very different from the tone he used with them; he was as obsequious to those above him as he was overbearing to those below. “In talking with these guys,” L. E. Jones says, “Lyndon was very much the young man, very starry-eyed, very boyish. It was very much the junior to the senior. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘No, sir.’” Even if there was a vacant seat in Kleberg’s office, Johnson would often be sitting on the floor, his face upturned to whoever was speaking, an expression of the deepest interest and respect on his face, in the manner that had led Vernon Whiteside to say he would “drink up what they were saying, sit at their knees and drink it up.” Says a fellow congressional secretary who observed Lyndon in this type of situation: “With men who had power, men who could help him, Lyndon Johnson was a professional son.” (The reaction would have been familiar, too: proof that, on Capitol as on College Hill, where flattery is concerned, excess is impossible. These men were very fond of Lyndon Johnson—and the fondness had strongly paternal overtones; Rasch Adams, for example, gave Lyndon Johnson advice not only about women but about culture; feeling that his cultural horizons needed broadening, he bought him theater and opera tickets.) And the flattery that Johnson’s three assistants overheard was no stronger than the philosophy. To their surprise, their Chief agreed with Miller, agreed enthusiastically. “Miller just hated Roosevelt,” Jones says, “and Lyndon was in tune with Miller. Hell, sometimes he was louder against Roosevelt than Miller was.” Johnson used Miller’s arguments in dealing with Kleberg. Opposed to the AAA program as “socialistic,” Kleberg said he was going to vote against it. Johnson, like Miller, told the Congressman he must vote for it—not because the program was sound, but because his constituents were overwhelmingly in favor of it, as was Congress; his vote didn’t matter, they said; the bill would pass anyway. This scene was repeated. Kleberg would return to his office from meetings of the Agriculture Committee “just shocked at” new Roosevelt proposals. Johnson agreed that the proposed programs were “terrible,” but, Jones recalls, told Kleberg that he “had to” vote for them “because it was just good politics.”

  And Johnson did not—for a while at least—espouse a conservative philosophy only in the company of conservatives. During bull sessions at the Dodge, Johnson, echoing one of Miller’s pet phrases, would say of Roosevelt: “He’s spending us into bankruptcy.” The President’s first priority, he would repeat emphatically, should be to “balance the budget.” A hot topic at the Dodge was Huey Long’s recently published Every Man a King. Johnson admired the Louisiana populist, but not for his populism. His admiration was for Long’s speechmaking ability and his growing political power; he was critical of his proposal to redistribute the nation’s wealth. And Long shared the President’s fault. “Lyndon was critical of the part [of Long’s book] about spending so much money—you know just spend, spend, spend,” Jones says. Discussing the book with Jones, he dictated several sentences which he told L. E. to write inside its cover—sentences, Jones says, to the effect that “Roosevelt is spending too much money. If we’re not careful, he’ll lead the country into disaster.” Most of the young men of “A” and “B” floors were liberal; Lyndon Johnson was the basement conservative.

  He was “in tune” with Miller not only in talk but in action. His closest associate among Texas politicians was Welly Hopkins, who, between trips to Washington to obtain RFC loans for clients of his law firm (he always spent his free time on these trips with Johnson; once, they went to New York together to see the Empire State Building), was distinguishing himself back in Texas as one of the state’s most vociferous Red-baiters (he was also leading the fight in the Texas State Senate against attempts to regulate the use of child labor). When Kleberg’s bid for reelection was challenged in the Democratic primary by a more liberal candidate, Johnson, Miller and Hopkins orchestrated a campaign to turn back the challenge in the time-tested method of Texas reactionaries: refusing to discuss the liberal’s positions, they tarred him as a “communist,” guilty of “radicalism” and “similar filth and slime.” Although it is difficult to ascertain the precise stands of Kleberg’s opponent, Carl Wright Johnson, because in a district so completely controlled by the King Ranch, no newspaper would give Carl Johnson more than cursory coverage, he was, in general, attacking Kleberg for advocating a federal sales tax which would fall hardest on the poor—while at the same time advocating other federal legislation which would largely exempt Texas Gulf Sulphur from paying any federal taxes at all. Johnson imported the fiery little stemwinder (“Lyndon called me from Corpus Christi and said, ‘Dick’s in trouble down here’”)—who used his customary strategy, with its customary success. Turning to Carl Johnson at the end of a county-fair debate, Hopkins recalls, “I said to this guy: ‘Your heart’s black, and your mind’s Red. …’ And he was finished.” (Roy Miller issued a formal denial of the charge. “The company I represent has absolutely no interest in federal legislation,” he said.) Miller’s son, Dale, already a knowledgeable lobbyist in his own right, had, in a brief first meeting with Johnson, gotten the impression that he was a New Dealer. “His manner personified the New Deal,” he says. “He looked the part. He was young, dynamic, outgoing—the new wave of the future.” Dale Miller was, therefore, surprised that “my father, who was very, very conservative in his political philosophy,” was “comfortable” with Kleberg’s secretary. But his father, Dale recalls, assured him that Johnson “was not a wild-eyed liberal,” and as Dale himself got to know Johnson better, he understood what his father had been trying to tell him. “He [Johnson] gave the impression of being much, much more liberal than he actually was. He gave a lot more impression of being with the New Deal” than was actually the case.

  Jones had realized this, too—and the realization never ceased to astonish him. Watching Johnson’s constant display of thank-you letters from constituents, Jones had seen in his Chief a deep “need for gratitude,” and, as Jones puts it, “For someone who needs gratitude, the New Deal is the natural philosophy, because it lets you do things for people, and therefore gives you the greatest opportunity to get gratitude.” He was seeing, at the closest range,
how effectively Lyndon Johnson was translating the new government programs into action; not one of the thousand Congressional aides, Jones says, could possibly have been better at implementing the philosophy of the New Deal. And yet, Jones says—and Brown and Latimer and other contemporaries who knew Johnson at the time agree—he was implementing the philosophy without believing in it.

  BUT IF IN THE OPINION of these congressional secretaries, Lyndon Johnson’s true feelings were in harmony with those of reactionaries such as Roy Miller, the secretaries also heard him singing quite a different tune when he was in the company of powerful older men of a different persuasion. The same young men who had heard him denouncing the New Deal when with Miller heard him praising it when talking with Congressmen such as Wright Patman, who had not yet abandoned the Populism he had espoused in the Texas Legislature. Once, a congressional aide, who had just heard him “talking conservative” with Martin Dies, came across him, “not an hour later,” “talking liberal” with Patman—espousing a point of view diametrically opposite to the one he had been espousing sixty minutes before. When talking with older men, men who could help him, Lyndon Johnson “gave them,” this aide says, “whatever they wanted to hear.”

  Younger men he gave nothing. The shift in his behavior at the Dodge was quite sudden. For a time, he had been “B” Floor’s conservative; then, abruptly, he started, in the words of another “B” Floor resident, “shifting gears,” drawing back from his position. Other residents noticed that on two consecutive nights, Johnson would argue on opposite sides of the same issue. And then, in a very short time, he stopped arguing about issues at all. He would no longer, in fact, even discuss them.

  His silence in this area was especially conspicuous because of his volubility in all others. If political tactics, for example, were being discussed, Johnson would be the center of the discussion; if the discussion concerned political issues—philosophy, principles, ideas, ideals—Johnson would not even be part of it. Realizing, as he entered a room in which a bull session was being held, that its topic was a serious issue, he would try to duck back out of the room before he was seen. If he was already participating in a bull session and it turned to such an issue, he would quietly slip out of the room, or, if he remained, would refuse, even if drawn into the discussion, to allow himself to be pinned down to a specific stand. He would refuse to take a stand even when directly challenged to do so, turning aside the challenge with a joke, or a Texas anecdote. Pressed to the wall, he would say he simply hadn’t yet made up his mind on the issue. During those first exciting years of the New Deal, discussion of great issues swirled through Washington, and nowhere was discussion more animated than in that basement home of a hundred bright young men in government. Amidst the swirl of ideas, Lyndon Johnson seemed unmoved. The son of the man who had said, “It’s high time a man stood up for what he believes in” seemed ready to stand up for nothing.

  At San Marcos, it was assumed this behavior stemmed from ambition. “He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood,” one student had said. “He was only interested in himself and what could help himself.” The feeling in Washington was the same.

  THE YOUNG MEN at the Dodge saw the ambition expressed in other ways as well. The Texas State Society, composed of all Texans in Washington, held monthly dances in various hotels. At these dances, young men danced mostly with young women, but not Lyndon Johnson. He danced almost exclusively with older women. “I don’t remember his ever taking a girl [to a dance], but he would dance with all the wives of all the Congressmen and Cabinet officers,” Brown recalls. Even the adoring Latimer felt he knew why: “because the wives would introduce him [to their husbands],” he says. Other aides held the same opinion. Brown recalls standing with a group of friends from the Dodge and watching Lyndon dancing, and one of them saying: “Do you notice he ignores the young, pretty, single women? He’s dancing with all the wives.” Another said: “Lyndon’s campaigning for something.” And a third chimed in: “He never quits campaigning. He’s always campaigning.” The young men commented to each other on remarks he made; once one of his three assistants drafted for his signature a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., on behalf of a constituent. The salutation in the draft was “Dear Henry,” and Johnson crossed it out, writing “Dear Mr. Secretary” in its place, saying, “Look, I can’t call him Henry.” There was a pause, and then Lyndon Johnson added: “There’s going to come a day when I will, but it’s not now.” And Brown recalls that once, after Johnson had been introduced to someone as an assistant to Congressman Kleberg, “he kind of objected to being classified as an assistant because, he said, ‘I’m not the assistant type. I’m the executive type.’”

  Ambition was not uncommon among those bright young men in the Dodge, but they felt that Johnson’s was uncommon—in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs. “There’s nothing wrong with being pragmatic,” a fellow secretary says. “Hell, a lot of us were pragmatic. But you have to believe in something. Lyndon Johnson believed in nothing, nothing but his own ambition. Everything he did—everything—-was for his ambition.” A saying about Johnson had gained wide currency among these young men because they felt it described him accurately: “Lyndon goes which way the wind blows.”

  To those closest to him—the three assistants who worked in the same office—the statement that “Lyndon Johnson believed in nothing” is an oversimplification, and not merely because during the discussions with the Roy Miller clique which they could overhear, their Chief “was always as conservative as ever.” Lyndon Johnson, they feel, did possess beliefs—quite conservative beliefs. His “earliest orientation,” Brown says, “was on the conservative side.” Says Jones: “Intrinsically, he was conservative.” But, they feel, the crucial point is that this statement has no relevance in any discussion of Johnson’s career. Having spent years in close proximity to Johnson, they are certain that any beliefs of his, regardless of what they may have been, would have not the slightest influence on his actions. In his actions, Jones says, “I don’t think Lyndon was either a conservative or a liberal. I think he was whatever he felt like he needed to be. … Winning is the name of the game. I have no doubt that he could have become either an ultra-liberal or an ultra-conservative, if that would have brought victory. Now that suggests hypocrisy, doesn’t it? But, well—winning is the name of the game.

  “Lyndon was a trimmer,” he says. “He would be guided by no philosophy or ideals. He would trim his sails to every wind.”

  SOON THERE WAS symbolic proof of this.

  During the 1933 redistricting, San Antonio (Bexar County) and its 240,000 inhabitants had been split off from the Fourteenth Congressional District and placed in a new—Twentieth—District. In 1934, it would elect its own Congressman. One of the candidates had been impressed, during a visit to Washington, by Kleberg’s “very efficient” secretary, with his “ready entrée into all of the government departments”; upon his return to Texas, he told reporters that “Lyndon B. Johnson … is considered to be the brightest secretary in Washington.” He asked Johnson to work for him during the 1934 Democratic primary, which would be held during Congress’ Summer recess. Johnson, with Kleberg unopposed in the primary, agreed—although the candidate was Maury Maverick, the fiery radical whose Utopian schemes and fierce defense of Communist organizers in Texas had already caused an opponent to charge him with a desire to “supplant the American flag with the Red flag of Russia.” (Sam Johnson was very proud at praise for his son from such a source; mailing him a newspaper clipping containing Maverick’s quote, he wrote on it: “Breaking into front-page space. Mighty fine, and worthy of it all. Them’s my sentiments—Sam.”)