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

by Robert A. Caro

Hollers called his campaign “a crusade against corruption in public office,” and its focus was Johnson’s finances and ethics. Johnson, Hollers charged, had “enriched himself in office,” and had enriched his friends as well, during a time in which other men in the Tenth Congressional District had been off at war. He noted that Johnson’s three senior advisers, Wirtz, Clark and Looney, represented the oil companies and the big private utilities Johnson claimed he was opposing; the name of Brown & Root was raised, and, for the first time, publicly linked with Johnson’s; the Congressman, Hollers said, was “an errand boy for war-rich contractors.” “If the United States Attorney was on the job, Lyndon Johnson would be in the federal penitentiary instead of in the Congress,” Hollers said. “Will Lyndon Johnson explain how the charter for KTBC, owned by Mrs. Johnson, was obtained? Will Lyndon Johnson explain … his mushrooming personal fortune?” Johnson’s vigorous contention that he played no role in the affairs of his wife’s station was not convincing in a small city in which the link between KTBC’s advertising and the Congressman was an open secret among the city’s businessmen. As an Austin journalist was to write: “Never again, after this campaign, was Johnson free from the belief … that he used his public power to get money for himself.”