The Path to Power

by Robert A. Caro

  First, Keach would drive him downtown to his campaign headquarters, a big room on the mezzanine of the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, where he would be handed his itinerary for the day, and a list of the influential men he would meet. Keach would head out of the city while Johnson sat reading beside him on the front seat.

  The reading could not have been encouraging. Lyndon Johnson had spent four years learning a district—the hardest type of district to learn; a rural district in which there was little formal political organization with identifiable officials; in a rural district, a newcomer could ascertain the identity of a town’s true leaders—which storekeeper was respected, which farmer was listened to by other farmers—only through endless hours of subtle probing of reticent men. He had spent four years learning not only which men to talk to, but what to say to them: who was proud of a daughter, and who ashamed; who was really for Roosevelt, and who only said he was. And he had learned a district well. But that had been another district. The knowledge he had worked so hard to acquire was useless to him here, in rural precincts he had never even visited.

  Sometimes, no one in Johnson’s campaign headquarters even knew how to reach the tiny communities to which he was traveling that day. The itinerary he was handed would contain directions that were sketchy, incorrect, or simply non-existent. During the early days of the campaign—until he himself had written out directions (typical notation made by this future President of the United States: “Grassyville—5 mi below Paige back over same road. To Schwertner, back to Jarrel, Jarrel to Theon, second left out of town, then to Walburg, Walburg to Weir, Weir to Jonah, Jonah to Georgetown”), he had to stop constantly and ask directions, and, even so, often spent a precious hour jolting over a cowpath into the hills only to find it was the wrong cowpath—a lost candidate in a lost cause wandering around a huge district he didn’t know. Often, his aides didn’t even know the correct name of the community’s “lead man”; the memorandum he was handed on the Walburg precinct informed him that its “about no votes all go one way,” at the direction of G. W. Cassens—or was it C. W.? Unfamiliar even with the names of the lead men, his aides were of course unfamiliar with the men themselves: he had to win them over unarmed with even a clue as to their politics or their prejudices. A typical daily memo told him that at his first stop, Lytton Springs, he should “See Mr. Frank Gomillion, who may or may not be for you”; three key farmers in the next area—Dale—were listed; not only was he given no hint of where, in the Dale area’s 200 square miles, their farms might be found, he was given no hint of their views: “Who these men stand for is unknown,” the memo said.

  Traveling to these isolated communities was no more discouraging than the reception he received when he arrived.

  Johnson had spent four years not only learning a district, but helping a district: working with boundless energy and ingenuity to solve its people’s problems. He had earned a district’s gratitude. But that had been another district—this new district had no idea of what he had done. What must Lyndon Johnson have thought, after four years of tirelessly obtaining pensions for hundreds of veterans, when, heading out to Red Rock one morning, he read a memorandum advising him that it was necessary for him to “get on record concerning veterans’ pensions”?

  The district’s ignorance about his accomplishments magnified the misgivings aroused by his age. Claud Wild had dispatched a veteran Texas politician, “Hick” Halcomb, to reconnoiter some towns before Johnson visited them to ascertain their initial reaction to his candidacy, and Halcomb’s confidential memos to Wild contained, over and over again, an ominous phrase: “too young.” Addressing himself to the voters he met in these towns—the quiet, closed-faced farmers—Johnson could see that Halcomb’s pessimism was well founded. Sam Johnson had a favorite saying: “You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you, and who’s against you.” Sam’s son possessed the gift to which his father had referred. He could see who was for him—and he saw that very few were for him.

  The formal speeches he gave in these towns did not do much to improve the situation.

  These speeches were generally delivered on Saturday: traditionally, rural campaigning in Texas was largely restricted to Saturdays, the day on which farmers and their wives came into town to shop, and could be addressed in groups. On Saturdays, two automobiles, Johnson’s brown Pontiac and Bill Deason’s wired-for-sound gray Chevy, would head out of Austin for a swing through several large towns. On the outskirts of each town, Johnson would get out of the Pontiac (“He thought it looked a little too elaborate for a man running for Congress,” Keach says) and walk into the town, while the Chevy would pull into the square, and Deason or some other aide would use the loudspeaker to urge voters to “Come see Lyndon Johnson, your next Congressman,” and to “Come hear Lyndon Johnson speak at the square”; to drum up enthusiasm, records would be played over the loudspeaker (“The ‘Washington Post March’—I can still hear it ringing now,” Keach recalls.) But the crowds who came to hear this unknown campaigner were very small—their size discouraging when compared to those who had come to hear Avery or Harris or Brownlee—and the speeches did not move them to much enthusiasm for his candidacy. Written by Alvin Wirtz and Herbert Henderson, their single theme—all-out support of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal—was the right one for that district and that year when the Supreme Court fight was constantly on the front page of the Austin newspapers, but Johnson’s delivery of his theme lessened its effectiveness. When he read from a prepared text—and if he had one before him, he could not seem to stop reading it—his phrasing was as awkward and stilted as his gestures; he shouted the speech, without inflection. Although he was continually urged by his advisors to look at his audience, he did so infrequently, as if he were afraid to lose his place in the text.

  AFTER THE FORMAL SPEECH, however, Johnson would circulate through the town, shaking hands with its people—and suddenly there was no awkwardness at all.

  When he saw someone he knew, his lean white face “would,” in the words of a Hill Country resident, “just light up.” He would stride over, ungainly in his eagerness, and call the man’s name. “Old Herman,” he would say. “How ya comin’?” He would put his arm around Herman’s shoulders. “How are ya?” he would say. “Ah’m awful glad to see ya.” Looking up at that face, alight with happiness, even the crustiest, most reserved farmer might be warmed by its glow. And the glow would deepen with fond recollection. “Well, the last time ah saw you was at the horse races up to Fredericksburg,” Johnson would say. “We had a good time, didn’t we? Remember that mare we bet on?” Lyndon Johnson had not seen some of the people he was greeting for ten years, but his memory of good times they had shared seemed as vivid as if the times had been yesterday. And so was his memory of the names of their kinfolk. Recalls his cousin Ava: “He would say, ‘It’s been a long time. How’s so-and-so?’ And he’d always know some member of his family to talk about. Listening to him, I realized he had a mind that didn’t forget anything. ‘Well, how’s your boy comin’? Ah remember him!’” His questions got the other man talking. In no more than an instant, it seemed, a rapport would be established.

  The rapport would be cemented with physical demonstrations of affection. With women, the cement was a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The technique was as effective for him as a candidate as it had been for him as a teenager. “Lyndon’s kissing” became almost a joke during the campaign—but a fond joke. One elderly Hill Country rancher, annoyed by his wife’s insistence on attending a Johnson rally, growled, “Oh, you just want to be kissed.” (The rancher agreed to take her, but she was ill on the day of the rally, and he went alone. Upon his return, he told his wife, in some wonder: “He kissed me!”)

  With men, the rapport was cemented with a handshake—and a handshake, as delivered by Lyndon Johnson, could be as effective as a hug.

  All politicians shake hands, of course. But they didn’t shake hands as Lyndon Johnson did. “Listen,” Lynd
on Johnson would say, standing, lean and earnest and passionate, before a Hill Country rancher he remembered from his youth. “Listen, I’m running for Congress. I want your support. I want your vote. And if you know anybody who can help me, I want you to get them to help me. I need help. Will you help me? Will you give me your helping hand?” Will you give me your helping hand?—it was only as he asked that last question that Lyndon Johnson raised his own hand, extending it in entreaty.

  With voters he didn’t know, his approach was equally distinctive. He wanted their hands, too, in his, and after a brief “I’m Lyndon Johnson and I’m running for Congress, and I hope that you will lend me your helping hand,” he would reach out and grasp them. Then, with his hand entwined with the voter’s, he would ask questions: “What’s your name? Where you from? What’s your occupation?” And then, as Ava says, “there was that memory again. That was the key—he always knew somebody. I know your mother, or your father—or some friend. ‘I’ve met so-and-so. He told me about you.’ He made a connection.” Seven years before, still a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate, Lyndon Johnson had campaigned for Welly Hopkins. That campaign had been Johnson’s first. But Hopkins, watching the tall, gangling college boy, had concluded that he had a “gift”—“a very unusual ability to meet and greet the public.” Now others saw that gift. They watched Lyndon Johnson’s hand reach out to a voter—and they saw the voter’s hand reach out in return. They saw that once a voter’s hand was grasped in his, the voter wanted to leave it there. They saw that after he had talked to a voter for a minute or two, his arm around him, smiling down into his eyes, the voter did not want the talk to end. “What people saw was friendliness and sincerity, a love of people,” Ray Lee says. The instant empathy Johnson created began, in fact, to cause problems for campaign aides trying to keep him on a tight Saturday schedule. An aide would attempt to urge Johnson along, but the voter, still holding tight to his hand, would walk along with him, trying to prolong the conversation. Sometimes, several voters would walk along. Waiting in the Pontiac, Keach would see Johnson coming—and there would be a small crowd behind him, a crowd reluctant to see him go. “Sometimes,” says Lee, “it was a problem to get him out of town.”

  And he didn’t campaign only on Saturdays.

  On the other days of the week, the other candidates campaigned mainly in Austin, or in a “big” town such as Brenham or Lockhart (or, quite often, did not campaign at all). On those days, Johnson campaigned in the tiny towns that dotted the district. No speech had been scheduled for those towns, and none had been prepared by his speech writers. But, more and more often now, he had to give one. A voter who had shaken his hand would begin following him, and another would join him, and another—and soon a Tenth District version of a crowd (fifteen men and women, perhaps, or twenty or twenty-five; “twenty-five would be quite a crowd,” Deason says) would gather, and someone would shout: “Let’s hear a speech,” and someone else would shout, “C’mon, Lyndon, let’s have a speaking,” and he would be pushed up onto the bed of a truck or a wagon.

  And if Lyndon Johnson with a speech in his hands was stilted and stiff and unconvincing, Lyndon Johnson without a speech—Lyndon Johnson alone and unprotected on a flatbed truck; no paper prepared by others to hide behind; nothing to look at but the faces of strangers; Lyndon Johnson with nothing to rely on but himself—was, nervous though he was (his cousin Ava, who had known him since he was a child, saw that he was “terrified up there”), gangling and big-eared and awkward though he was, suddenly was also a candidate with gifts—“very unusual” gifts—that went far beyond “meeting and greeting.”

  When, on such unplanned occasions, he talked about the President, it wasn’t in Herb Henderson’s phrases, or Alvin Wirtz’s phrases, but in his own.

  “Don’t you remember what cotton was selling at when Mr. Roosevelt went into office?” he would ask.

  “Don’t you remember when it was selling at a nickel?

  “Don’t you remember when it was cheaper to shoot your cattle than to feed them?

  “Don’t you remember when you couldn’t get a loan, and the banks were going to take your land away?

  “I’m a farmer like you. I was raised up on a farm. I know what it’s like to be afraid that they’re going to take your land away. And that’s why I’m for Mr. Roosevelt.

  “What President ever cared about the farmer before Mr. Roosevelt?” he would ask. “Did Hoover care about the farmer? Did Coolidge care about the farmer? The only President who ever cared about the farmer was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was for the poor man. He wanted to give the poor man a chance. He wanted the farmers to have a break. And he gave ’em a break. He gave us a break! He’s the one who did it for us! He’s the one who’s doin’ it for us! And he’s the one who’s goin’ to do it for us! AND I’M BACKIN’ HIM!”

  The people before him were, many of them, people he had seen for the first time only a few minutes before. But as a result of his brief conversations with them, he could attach to their faces not only names but circumstances of their lives—and, in so doing, could make them feel that their destiny was linked to Roosevelt’s destiny, and to Lyndon Johnson’s.

  “John Miller,” he would say, “didn’t you just now tell me you was goin’ under when the soil conservation came in, and they started payin’ you to let your land lie out? Well, whose program is it that’s paying the farmers to let their land lie out? Roosevelt’s program. Take the CCC. Now, it’s helping you, Herman. Didn’t you tell me your boy’s over to Kerrville doin’ terracing? Well, whose program do you think CCC is? Roosevelt’s. All these programs that have got the farmer out of the hole are Roosevelt’s programs. He’s the man who’s doin’ it for you. And I’m behind him. It’ll take somebody in Congress to keep pushing for the things he wants. And you need to send a Congressman up there who knows this.”

  Their destinies were linked because of the Supreme Court fight, he told the farmers standing before him. The Court had already struck down one program that had helped the farmer—the AAA; whose fault was it that the government cotton certificates they were holding could no longer be redeemed? Who knew what programs the Supreme Court would strike down next? “Can you afford to risk the loss of your personal progress under Mr. Roosevelt? I tell you, this fight of the President is one that affects you and me right in this district. It means our bread and butter, and our children’s bread and butter.”

  That was why, he said, they should vote for Lyndon Johnson. “The eyes of the nation are on us right here,” he would say. “The whole country’s watching what you do on April 10. This is the first and only test at the polls in all of the United States of the President’s program.” The other candidates in the congressional race were all alike, he said. Sure, only two of them were openly opposing the Court plan. But the rest, he said, are noncommittal, vacillating, temporizing—“They’re hanging back like a steer on the way to the dipping vat.” Only “one man in this race has taken a positive stance,” he said. “I am that man. A vote for me will show the President’s enemies that the people are behind him. This is the test. Mr. Roosevelt is in trouble now. When we needed help, he helped us. Now he needs help. Are we going to give it to him? Are you going to give it to him? Are you going to help Mr. Roosevelt? That’s what this election is all about. Don’t let anybody kid you. That’s what this election is all about!”

  No Fundamentalist preacher, thundering of fire and brimstone in one of the famed Hill Country revival meetings, had called the people of the Hill Country to the banner of Jesus Christ more fervently than Lyndon Johnson called them to the banner of Franklin Roosevelt. And, as in revival meetings, passions rose.

  Often they began to spill over when Johnson began talking about the NYA. “That was when Lyndon really touched people,” says his cousin Ava. “Because what people here wanted more than anything else was for their children to have a better life than they had had.”

  Seeing a young man in the crowd, Johnson would speak directly to him—but in w
ords that touched chords in the parents in the crowd. Calling the young man by name, he would tell him that he knew what it took to get an education if you were a poor boy. He knew, he said, because he had been a poor boy—and he had gotten an education.

  “There’s an education for every boy and girl that wants one,” he would say. “It’s up to you. You can get it if you want it. You have to work for it. You can do what I did. You can pick up paper. You can pick up rocks. You can wash dishes. You can fill up cars. You can do a lot of things if you want that education. But if you want it, you can get it.”

  A Roosevelt program—the NYA—would help you get it, he said. And if he, Lyndon Johnson, was elected Congressman, he would help you get it. He had already helped others. Turning to a father in the audience, he would demand: “Well, how’s your boy comin’? I remember him. Didn’t I get him a job down in San Marcos? How’s he comin’?”

  Suddenly his voice would not be the only voice. “Oh, yes, you sure did,” the father would shout back. “You got him that job. And he’s doin’ just fine! We’re sure proud of him.” Another voice would shout. “That’s right, Lyndon. You tell ’em, Lyndon!” Another voice would shout, “A-men.” And all at once many voices would be shouting. “A-men, Lyndon. A-men, Lyndon! You tell ’em, Lyndon!”

  And sometimes the response took a form even more impressive than shouting. “Sometimes,” Carroll Keach says, “when the Chief would start talking, the people in the crowd would be kidding with him, and laughing. But then he’d really get started, and the crowd would get quieter and quieter, and finally there would be just a group of farmers standing there and listening very hard, without saying one word.” Observers less impressionable than Keach started noticing the same phenomenon. On March 16, Johnson was pushed up onto a flatbed truck in Lockhart for an impromptu talk. Hick Halcomb, the old pol who was following Johnson around for Claud Wild, was present; his memo to Wild that night did not have its customary cynical flavor. “Speech was to some 45 men, who listened unusually attentively,” it said. Two days later, Halcomb reported from Georgetown: Johnson “made a speech at urgence of group on street corner. Spoke to 64 people. … Not a man moved out of his tracks during speech.” Another report was filed from Bastrop. “Reaction to Johnson’s appearance started folks talking,” Halcomb wrote. “I followed him and listened to such remarks as these: ‘He’s a fine-looking chap. He’s a go-getter.’” Halcomb’s memos began to have a different tone. It was hard to believe, he told Wild, but he was beginning to think that maybe Lyndon Johnson had a chance.