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

by Robert A. Caro

Those closest to him knew that his country-boy image was a pose; he was actually a business-college graduate and a businessman who dealt not just in Hillbilly Flour but in Fort Worth real estate; by 1937, while he was telling his listeners that he was a “common citizen,” poor like them, his net worth had passed half a million dollars. Intimates also had some doubts about the depth of his religious feeling; although he was constantly urging his listeners to go to church, he seldom went himself.

But the crowds weren’t coming only for the band, they were coming for Pappy; “for years he’s been talking to us on the radio,” an elderly farmer explained. “He’s been telling us things we like to hear because listening to ’em makes it seem easier to us to be poor folks.” He was hours late for one rally, and a thunderstorm was raging at the site; for hours,

20,000 people stood in the rain waiting for him. When the circus wagon pulled in, the band played for a while under a big umbrella they had set up, but when Pappy stepped up to the microphone, he took it down.

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 ...

elected Roosevelt again!” By this time, Weedin recalls, the audience was cheering and weeping with emotion. “Never have I seen anything other than a religious meeting get an audience so worked up.” They were ready for the climax. Roosevelt cannot save Democracy all by himself. He needs “loyal supporters in Washington.” In particular, he needs a loyal supporter from Texas—Texas, which gives America oil, sulphur, metals, wheat and vegetables, the soil for camps and landing fields, and is therefore vital to America’s defense. “And, Mr. Roosevelt, on June 28, Texas will make one more contribution to national unity when we show undeniably that we want our President to have a man whose loyalty and cooperation has never been—and will never be—questioned. To you, the President, and to the Nation, we give your choice for Senator from Texas—Lyndon Baines Johnson!”

For to many of O’Daniel’s faithful, the strongest reason for not electing him to the Senate was their love for him. They didn’t want him to leave them, to go to faraway Washington; they couldn’t bear to lose him. The argument was working. Recalls one Johnson campaign worker: “I said, ‘O’Daniel’s made us a good Governor—let’s keep him there.’ I said, ‘Don’t send Pappy way up there to Washington with all those professional politicians.’ And that argument really touched. They loved Pappy. They didn’t want him to go away.”

Quill had put forth a maximum effort, but the Machine—the deputy sheriffs and other officials who handled the West Side boxes—had not. They got Johnson’s money—but Johnson didn’t get the votes. In fact, they took his money and laughed at him. A leader of the West Side, Frank H. Bushick, Jr., was later to tell him that during the campaign, “I went by your headquarters several times [and] found an atmosphere of smug self-sufficiency.” Bushick had enrolled nine of his precinct men—“men who have carried their boxes on the West Side for the past fifteen years”—in the Johnson cause, but on Election Day, they were given “the munificent sum of $5 to cover entire expenses for large precincts and voluntary workers. The result being that most of them got disgusted and went home.

Lyndon Johnson’s loss had been due to a political fluke. He had been beaten not by his opponent’s friends but by his opponent’s foes; O’Daniel had won the Senate seat not because these men wanted him to be Senator, but because they didn’t want him to be Governor—because they wanted to get him out of Texas. But it was Johnson’s mistake that had enabled these men to take his victory away. He had planned and schemed and maneuvered for ten years—had worked for ten years, worked day and night, weekday and weekend—had done “everything.” And, for ten years, he had won.