This will not be an unbiased review. The first two volumes of Robert Caro's biography of LBJ were astonishing in their sweep, magisterial and gripping, and I have waited impatiently almost twelve years for Volume Three. To say it is not disappointing is to be guilty of almost criminal understatement. As if it was possible, Master of the Senate takes what was already an outstanding multi-volume series onto a still higher plane. It is, quite simply, the finest biography I have ever read, or could ever imagine reading. It is more than that: it is one of the finest works of literature I have ever come across, or ever hope to.
It has taken Caro three decades to research the critical aspects of LBJ's life - longer than it did his subject to live it. Such depth of knowledge, spread across so many words - a million so far, and we have yet even to reach his 1960 Presidential bid - would normally mean only that every triviality was written up, making for tedious prolixity. The opposite is true: Caro is so in command of his research, and has so much to say, that not a word is wasted. It has been thirty years well spent.
But the chronological aspect of Master of the Senate is almost the least important. What lifts it to great literature is that it is also a meditation on power, on the nature of leadership, on human relations - and, taken with the first two volumes, a history of America in the twentieth century.
LBJ was a shit. He was corrupt to his core, a liar, a megalomaniac, a misogynist, a bully and, like most bullies, a coward. He would urinate into his wash basin in front of secretaries and then wiggle his penis around; he barked orders to aides whilst defecating. He would grab hold of women's thighs in the presence of his wife, Lady Bird.
He was also, with FDR and Reagan, one of the three most important Presidents of the twentieth century. (LBJ himself was responsible for initializing his name, in a conscious effort to suggest comparison with FDR). He changed the lives of hundreds of millions of black Americans for the better, with a record of outstanding achievement which shows up how inconsequential were both his predecessor, JFK, and his successor, Nixon. Were it not for the endings to their Presidencies, neither would be remembered as more than lacklustre. Yet most people know almost nothing about Lyndon Johnson other than the manner of his elevation to the Presidency, and the catastrophe of Vietnam.
Volume Three stops before his first run at the Presidency in 1960, yet already shows why he deserves the label great. The Senate had for generations been the main obstacle to civil rights, with confederate Democrats ensuring that blacks were not given the vote. LBJ seized hold of the position of Majority Leader, turning what had withered into a non-job into a position of unrivalled Congressional power. Caro begins with a scintillating history of the Senate, which is worth the £30 alone, and which puts LBJ's political achievement into historical perspective. Indeed, his account of LBJ's rise within the Senate is not simply about the accumulation of power but about how human beings tick. As Caro puts it: "He seemed to sense each man's price and the commodity he preferred as coin".
The crux of the book is the civil rights legislation which he pushed through, managing what no one had thought possible given the unchanged Senate membership. The fundamental issue raised by Master of the Senate is thus: can a good deed be done for base motives? Indeed, can a good deed only be made possible by base behaviour? LBJ was not interested in civil rights as a cause. As with everything else in his life, his use of civil rights was entirely political. No Southerner could be elected President whilst the South was still a cess-pit of reaction. So he turned his energies and skills to removing that blockage to his prospects. But even if his motives had been pure, he would never have been able to succeed without using his every base political skill, from the lies to the bullying to the sycophancy to the corruption.
Would we ever want to see a figure like LBJ in power again? The man was an unspeakably awful human being: a monster. But the question is impossible to answer. His epitaph could say, quite accurately, "He did good". What a trade-off: on the one hand, hundreds of millions benefited from his actions; on the other, he was a beast to his colleagues, stole his election to the Senate, and his behaviour represents everything bad in human affairs.
If you only read one book this year, make it Master of the Senate. I can think of no praise which would be too high for it. In literature, less is, usually, more. Caro's three volumes and million words so far show that, sometimes, more is more.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3:
Master of the Senate
Robert Caro
Jonathan Cape, £30
1202 pp

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