Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #2)

by Robert A. Caro

‘We Shall Overcome.’

“And we shall overcome.” There was a moment of silence, as if, one observer was to say, it took a moment for the audience to realize that the President had adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own, had joined his voice to the voices of the men and women who had sung that mighty hymn. And then the applause rolled across the Chamber.

the story continues. When, in 1963, Lyndon Johnson became President, his “family’s” assets totaled perhaps $20 million. This son of an impoverished father from the impoverished Texas Hill Country, who for most of

Known as the “Cowboy Governor,” not only was he a true cowboy, his whole life, it seemed, was a Western epic, right down to the 1948 campaign, when, in an almost incredible confrontation on the main street of a dusty little South Texas town, Stevenson and his old ally, the renowned Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer, faced a band of Mexican pistoleros who had been ordered to prevent Stevenson from inspecting the disputed ballots that had taken victory from him and given it to his despised foe, Lyndon Johnson.

Scientific polling, techniques of organization and of media manipulation—of the use of advertising firms, public relations specialists, media experts from outside the political apparatus, of the use of electronic media (in 1948, radio) not only for speeches but for advertising to influence voters—the mature flowering of all these devices dates, in Texas and the Southwest, from Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 campaign.

In the 1948 campaign in Texas these techniques were not employed by both sides. One candidate used them—to an extent unprecedented in the state. The other candidate refused to use them at all. And as a result, we can observe the impact of these techniques with a clarity that illustrates the full force of their destructive effect on the concept of free choice by an informed electorate.

After his father’s fall, it was terribly important to Lyndon Johnson that no one think that he had “no sense,”

“He was the very best at counting,” Fortas says. “He would figure it out—how so-and-so would vote. Who were the swing votes. What, in each case—what, exactly—would swing them.”

Johnson’s ability to make liberals think he was one of them and conservatives think he was one of them:

Lyndon Johnson could not endure being only one of a crowd; that he needed—with a compelling need—not merely to lead but to dominate, to bend others to his will, not to take orders but to give them.

His career had been a story of manipulation, deceit, and ruthlessness, but it had also been a story of an intense physical and spiritual striving that was utterly unsparing; he would sacrifice himself to his ambition as ruthlessly as he sacrificed others.

Johnson responded to their articles with his own estimates of his assets, estimates far lower than theirs, and with forceful reemphasis of his assertions, his estimates and assertions were often repeated without much analysis by the bulk of the press, and the findings in the few pioneering articles became blurred in the public consciousness.

“Everybody knew that a good way to get Lyndon to help you with government contracts was to advertise over his radio station.”

Until the end of his life, whenever the subject of the vast growth of the LBJ Company and associated business enterprises was raised, Lyndon Johnson would emphasize that he owned none of it (“All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson.… I don’t have any interest in government-regulated industries of any kind and never have had”).

the men he picked were not the brightest available, nor the men with the most initiative or ability. They were, rather, the men who had demonstrated the most unquestioning obedience—not merely a willingness but an eagerness to take orders, to bow to his will. While he called it “loyalty,” the capacity he prized most in his subordinates was actually the capacity for subservience.

Pleased with Estes’ delivery of the speech, Wirtz ordered it rebroadcast over a twenty-station statewide network, and reprinted in full-page advertisements in the state’s leading newspapers.

Dissemination of false information is not new!