The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)

by Robert A. Caro

During the campaign, he had repeatedly promised to fight to the finish any proposed sales tax, which would fall hardest on the small wage-earners (or “common citizens”) whom he was allegedly championing; no sooner had he been inaugurated than he tried, unsuccessfully, not only to push through a sales tax (secretly drafted by his oilmen allies and the state’s largest corporations) disguised under a different name, but to make it a permanent part of state government by incorporating it in a constitutional amendment (the amendment would also have permanently frozen—at ridiculously low levels—taxes on oil, natural gas and sulphur). As for his pension plan, he refused to discuss new taxes to pay for it—lest one of the new taxes turn out to be a tax on oil. And with this refusal, his pension plan was effectively dead. Almost totally ignorant of the mechanics of government, O’Daniel proved unwilling to make even a pretense of learning, passing off the most serious problems with a quip; asked once what taxes he was proposing to keep the deficit-ridden government’s head above water, he replied that “no power on earth” could make him say. Ignoring Democratic party machinery, he tried to appoint to key government posts either men with absolutely no experience in the areas over which they were to be given authority or reactionaries, including members of the Jeffersonian Democrats, an extremist group that had bitterly opposed Roosevelt’s re-election in 1936. He offered few significant ...