Sunday Review: Who was Lyndon Johnson?—Part 2 (book review)

Master of the Senate

By Jonathan Price

[Sequel to The Passage to Power]

The events of The Passage to Power actually were momentous and compelling, and the legislation Johnson passed as President was momentous. But Master of the Senate, the preceding volume, is perhaps even more surprising and effective in what it reveals and in its techniques. After all, the major substance of this tome involves parliamentary strategy, the counting of votes, and recondite legislative maneuvers. The average reader or, e.g., high school student would consider this extremely boring. It’s the inside-baseball version of how a bill becomes law, although here it’s often about how it never gets to become law, especially in the case of Civil Rights legislation. Yet it’s the attention to this kind of detail that eventually made Johnson not only majority leader of the U.S. Senate, but ultimately President of the United States (with the caveat of the Kennedy assassination providing the most effective transition for a Southern Democrat).

Sunday Review: Who was Lyndon Johnson?—Part 1 (book review)

The Passage of Power

By Jonathan Price

Lyndon Baines Johnson was our 36th President and held office for five years—from the assassination of John Kennedy in November 1963 until 1969 and the inauguration of Richard Nixon. Those of us who, like the writer of this review, lived through that period, do not on the whole, I think, remember Johnson fondly, for he was so intimately associated with the continuation of the Vietnam war and the apparent intransigence with which he pursued its policies and managed to alienate previous supporters and allies, including many of our international allies.