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Renaud, Gilles --- "Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Book 3) by Robert A Caro" [2003] DeakinLawRw 22; (2003) 8(2) Deakin Law Review 399

Book Review

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Book 3) by Robert A Caro (Knopf, New York, 2002)

JUSTICE GILLES RENAUD[*]

The Law. Two words. A mere two syllables. And yet they embrace two visions of epic proportions: one of hope, and one of despair. On the one hand, the law may be the salvation of the oppressed seeking redress, a staff of ages to support those who are weak, ill, infirm, or otherwise unable to sustain themselves; the law may also be the instrument to obtain the obeisance of those unable, for whatever reason but chiefly by reason of paucity of numbers, to muster a measure of independence, on the other. And no biography is more apt to lay bare the potential majesty of the law in elevating our minds and souls, and its potential abjectness in forcing the weak to abjure happiness than Robert A Caro’s sweeping and monumental third tome of The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate.

One thousand and forty pages of erudite analysis, seventy pages of references, that is what Mr Caro has offered to anyone wishing to understand the genesis of modern civil legislation in the United States. In so doing, he reveals a man of immense contradictions, a lover of children who have neither food for their bodies nor their minds, and an indifferent legislator who failed to act time and again when it was within his power to alleviate such suffering; an employer who was progressive and known as a kind benefactor to his staff, and an unfeeling autocrat who exploited people until they were spent. Lyndon Baines Johnson was all of this, but he will be remembered mostly for his promotion of voting rights for Black Americans, a step that was fundamental to the acquisition of equal status under the law with white Americans, while insisting that his 'Negro' chauffeur travel hundreds of miles without proper accommodation and being totally indifferent to his plight as he wound his way throughout the Jim Crow South to an equally racialised Nation’s capital.

The great lesson that Mr Johnson’s award winning biographer reveals in this sweeping account of one man’s life, and of the life of a nation that emulated his rise to prominence, to wealth, and to gaining an understanding of the needs of others, is that the law is neither good nor bad. It is merely an instrument, a tool that may be employed to serve humanity or not! The examples that are provided make plain that many great injustices were committed in the name of the Constitution, of freedom, of the law, be it the proud member of the Board of Registrars who boasted, 'I just run off a bunch of niggers who were tryin’ to vote' (see page 687), or the telling introductory comment: 'In August, 1957, black Americans in the South who were denied the right to vote, and who asked a lawyer ... what law would assist them to do so, were informed that there was no such law – and that information was accurate'. Refer to page xi.

In his first two books, The Path to Power and Means of Ascent, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author has traced the humble beginnings, and the powerful achievements of a driven man who never stopped to dream that he would one day be known throughout the land by his initials, that he would one day be the President. In Master of the Senate, LBJ is shown to triumph over incredible odds as he succeeds in achieving legislation that not only had been thought impossible since the 1875 legislation on civil rights, but that he had fought against for his score of years as a politician. At the same time, he is credited with reviving the hopes of an entire community and of ensuring that 'the law' meant what was just, and did not continue to be understood as some form of elliptical expression, with the words 'for whites and other powerful persons only' being left unsaid as superfluous.

This book is neither fiction, nor dithyrambic, but it is the portrait of a passionate man who fought with cool reason to achieve a great goal, against a social and legislative background that a mediocre novelist would abandon as being improbable at best. In the final analysis, we are provided with a fresque that is epic and enormous, and for this Mr Caro is to be commended.

In conclusion, it must not be forgotten that Johnson would not have succeeded in this enterprise, and he surely would not have attempted it, but for the daily struggles and constant sacrifices, at times including their lives, of countless Black American men and women. It is also their story that Mr Caro recounts with wondrous ability.

I trust that the fourth and fifth books are not too far in the future.

[*] Ontario Court of Justice, Canada.