Insight to Lyndon Johnson

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that Lyndon B. Johnson is known to have been a hard-nosed smooth-operating arm-twisting Senator from Texas who became John Kennedy's Vice President and then a one-term President. The writer points out that two works, Robert Caro's 'The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson', and Robert Dallek's 'Lone Star Rising', present Johnson as a relatively power-mad political genius who manipulated others with great aplomb. In looking at how each of these two authors take on the topic of Johnson, it is significant to note that both authors have created multi-volume works on LBJ, both have spent enormously in terms of time and resources to flesh out their stories and to find insight into the man, and both approach Johnson from a motivational point of view. The writer discusses that there are marked differences in style, observations, selections of facts, perspectives and intentions within the works. The writer concludes that these two books create different visions of Johnson while each treading the very same ground as the other.

From the Paper:

"The differences between the two authors actually get in the way of an accurate understanding of some of the major events of Johnson's reign. Caro's work, though thoroughly researched, is exceptionally simplified - essentially portraying Johnson's moral compass as consisting of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The characterizations of Johnson in Caro's work can lead the reader to think of Johnson as being of limited capacity for thoughtful or intellectual accomplishment driven only to succeed through any means possible. We see a Johnson often reduced to a single word descriptor that serves only to simplify Johnson as being two dimensional at times. In his defense, however, Caro's clear purpose is to show Johnson as being controlled by his passions and ambitions, which would naturally reduce a person to a relatively few necessary personality traits. The additional problem facing Caro's work is that he does not have a PhD, and is otherwise academically not qualified to write such an extensive set of texts - at least an academic critic would look at the work through a less forgiving eye. Caro's work is based almost entirely upon massive numbers of interviews he conducted with people directly involved with Johnson at varying points in his career."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Caro, Robert J. The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,vol 1.New York,: Vintage, 1990.
• Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1908-1960, vol 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

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