History with David Rubenstein

♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be joined in conversation today with Robert Caro, who is one of the nation's most distinguished biographers.

He's the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies, the winner of the National Humanities Medal.

He is currently working on his fifth volume of his Lyndon Johnson series.

Previously, his book, on Robert Moses was considered one of the greatest books of nonfiction written in the 20th century.

We're very honored to have Robert Caro with us today.

Uh, we're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium of the New York Historical Society.

So, thank you very much for giving us this time.

CARO: Nice to be here with you David.

RUBENSTEIN: So, you began this book in 1976 or so, and, um, Lyndon Johnson was born where and when?

CARO: He was born in the hill country, deep in the hill country.

I'm forgetting his date of birth at, at the moment, uh... RUBENSTEIN: But those people that... CARO: 1908, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Those people that think, uh, a little hill in Central Park is the hill country, what is the, what is the hill country for people that don't know hills?

CARO: The first time, uh, I drove out to the hill country I knew I was getting into something that I had no idea of.

The hill country runs 300 miles west of Austin.

The early settlers used to call it the land of endless horizons 'cause every time you got to the top of one hill, there was all these other hills beyond it.

RUBENSTEIN: Was his father a prominent person or reasonably prominent?

CARO: He was very successful when he was a young man until Lyndon was 13 years old.

Uh, he was the representative from, uh, Johnson City.

Uh, Johnson City was named after someone not related to the... Lyndon Johnson.

He was a successful real estate man.

He bought this big ranch on the Pedernales River, and then he went broke and he became sort of the laughingstock of the town because when he was successful, he was the only person who believed in the Darwinian theory.

He wasn't an evangelical, and the town took it out on him, and he sort of became a...

I'll give you an example.

Uh, he ran for the, the Texas House of Representatives again, and an opponent at a barbecue says, "Sam Johnson is a mighty smart man, but he's got no sense," and everybody laughs, and that's... that was the end of him.

For the rest of his life, he was a laughingstock.

RUBENSTEIN: So Lyndon Johnson, does he go to Harvard or Princeton as well?

CARO: No, he goes to, uh, Texas State Normal College in San Marcos in the middle of the hill country.

RUBENSTEIN: Was that hard to get into, or?

[audience laughter] CARO: Uh, no, anyone could get into it.

RUBENSTEIN: So, how did he do?

Was he a good student, or... CARO: No, he wasn't interested in studies, but he did do something that, looking back on it and getting interested in power, was an act of sheer genius.

He comes there.

He's a freshman student and a... not a good student.

It's almost as if he figures out the only way a student can get power is to give out jobs.

The kids who go there, they're all desperately poor kids from the hill country.

They're there because they couldn't go to the University of Texas.

They couldn't afford it or any other good college, but they gave student jobs, like sweeping up or that-that kind of job.

That gave them enough to stay in school, a lot of them, and that was the only way they could stay in school.

So, the jobs were given out by a person who won a campus election.

Lyndon Johnson immediately, he's unpopular there.

But he creates a political organization and basically steals the election for this guy, and the guy becomes, whatever the title is, but lets Lyndon do the job, and Lyndon gives out the jobs, and therefore, he is the student in the middle of this... nowhere in this little college, he is the only student with power.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so after he graduates from the college, he... does he go teach?

CARO: He starts to be a teacher.

He loves being a teacher.

He, he loved being a teacher.

When a congressman, uh, from Texas who noticed what he did at the university offers him a job as his secretary, that's what they called them then, and he goes to Washington with the congressman.

RUBENSTEIN: And how old is he then, just in his 20s?

CARO: About, uh, off the top of my head, 24.

RUBENSTEIN: 24, so he's, uh, in effect, the chief of staff to a congressman at a time when there probably weren't a lot of staff people on, uh, other than... CARO: Uh, he had two, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Right, okay, so they're small staffs.

Uh, does he shine by doing something that makes him better known than other, uh, secretaries to other congressmen, or what does he do that makes him so well known?

CARO: There was an organization of congressional secretaries that did dances and things like that called the Little Congress.

Lyndon Johnson becomes a member of the Little Congress and gets a candidate who's his friend, and steals the election for this guy, and he's therefore known as the boss of the Little Congress.

Now, when I'm interviewing, you know, this is 50 years later.

I get a list of the congressional secretaries in 1933, and I start calling anyone of them who's still alive.

And I ask them what they remember about Lyndon Johnson, and most of them say something like, "You know, he's, he's the guy who stole an election."

Who would steal an election to win something like the Little Congress?

But Johnson, they used to have social meetings.

He starts to invite people like the vice president and the pre, uh, the Senate majority leader then, and the politicians, the senators, the congressmen, you know, the Washington Post, uh, writes up their appearances, people wanna come to Lyndon Johnson to get an invitation.

RUBENSTEIN: So, ultimately, the man for whom he's the secretary, who probably has less power than Lyndon Johnson, um, he decides not to run for reelection?

CARO: Yeah, Franklin Roosevelt becomes elected.

Uh, he creates a National Youth Administration, which gives out jobs to college kids so they can stay in college, and Lyndon Johnson has made a friend in Washington, and the friend is Sam Rayburn.

Sam Rayburn was from Texas, and he was a man with a huge heart, and he had known Lyndon Johnson's father and sympathized with him, about the only person who did sympathize with him, during his downfall.

So, Lyndon Johnson invites Sam Rayburn, who's a bachelor, to Sunday breakfast, and Sam Rayburn starts to come back every Sunday, and he takes a fatherly interest in Lyndon Johnson, and he is the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

He is the most powerful speaker in history.

When the National Youth Administration is formed, Lyndon Johnson asks Sam Rayburn to make him the Texas director, and basically, the White House says to Rayburn, "This is a kid.

He's never done anything.

Well, how... why would we make him director?"

And Sam Rayburn basically says, "I want him to be director," and he is director of the National Youth Administration when the congressman dies, and Lyndon Johnson, at the age of 28, decides to run for his position.

That's the story.

RUBENSTEIN: And did he win the election, uh, honestly, or was it another stolen election?

CARO: No, that one he appears to have won honestly.

RUBENSTEIN: 'Kay.

Okay, so he gets elected to Congress.

He's 28 or so, and does he have any power as a freshman congressman?

CARO: None.

No, he has no power as freshman congressman.

In fact, he goes to Congress, if I have this right, in 1937, and when World War II breaks out, he still has no power because, in the House of Representatives, everything was by seniority, and he's not gonna be chairman of a committee for, uh, many, many years, and therefore can't stand it, and he says, "Too slow, too slow," you know.

The Second World War starts.

He gets a commission in the Navy as a lieutenant commander and goes off briefly on an inspection trip, uh, in the Pac... RUBENSTEIN: Was he in combat?

CARO: He was in... he, he flew one mission, uh, as an observer and General MacArthur gives him the Silver Star.

RUBENSTEIN: But he, he, he wasn't the pilot on the mission, he was... CARO: No, he just was an observer.

RUBENSTEIN: Observer.

And, uh, was, was it shot at, that plane, or it wasn't shot at?

CARO: That the plane was shot at.

RUBENSTEIN: So, that's where he got it because he was shot at and could've been killed.

CARO: That's it.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so the war is, uh, ultimately over, and he stays in Congress for that period of time for throughout... CARO: No, he doesn't wanna go back to the House of Representatives, and the first opening that comes up is in, uh, 1947.

The senior senator from Texas, Morris Sheppard, dies suddenly, and that seat is open.

And everybody knows who's gonna ha... get that seat.

It's the governor of Texas, a man named Coke Stevenson.

Now, Coke Stevenson was the most popular politician in the history of Texas and everyone assumes he's just gonna win it.

Lyndon Johnson decides to challenge him and in fact, he wins the election.

RUBENSTEIN: Now was this a close election?

CARO: Well, when the votes are first counted, election night or the, the day after, it's not a close election.

The margin is 35,000 votes, and the person who wins is Coke Stevenson.

RUBENSTEIN: Coke Stevenson wins?

CARO: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Johnson is defeated.

CARO: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, Coke Stevenson goes to the Senate?

CARO: No, the day after the election, something else starts to happen.

From the border counties down along the border, in those days, they were basically Mexican counties, and the seven of them are controlled by a man who's known as the "Duke of Duval."

He's the boss of Duval County, but he really is the boss of all seven counties.

His name is George Parr.

And Lyndon Johnson has made friends with him before, and now Lyndon Johnson, he doesn't go himself, but he sends two men down to the seven counties, and votes start to come in, late votes.

Now, they also are coming in from the Mexican west side of San Antonio, which is a huge, teeming slum.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CARO: And all of a sudden, that 35,000-vote margin starts to come down several thousand a day.

At the end of, I think it's six days, it's down to a couple of hundred votes.

It stays that way for a couple of days, and Coke Stevenson is assumed to have won, and all of a sudden, a box, a ballot box...

They, they voted by paper ballots then, is found in the desert near a town called Alice, and they open the, um, box, and there are 202 votes cast, and they're cast in alphabetical order, and they're cast in the same... they're written in the same ink, and they're written in the same handwriting, and 200 of them are for Lyndon Johnson, and he wins the election by 87 votes.

RUBENSTEIN: And that's, that's how he gets the nickname "Landslide Lyndon."

CARO: That's correct.

That's where he got the name.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so he goes to the Senate.

CARO: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And in the Senate, is he a rising star from the beginning?

CARO: Immediately.

You know, about the House of Representatives, he says, "Too slow, too slow."

He also said at various times, "Too big, it's too big."

You, you had to... and you could only advance by seniority.

He's elected to... or whatever, to the Senate, and he's sworn in, and he goes with his assistant Walter Jenkins, and I interviewed Walter Jenkins.

They go to a side door of the Senate chamber, and it's empty.

It... they're... it's not in session, and they open the door, and Lyndon Johnson steps into the semicircle of 96 seats, and he says to Jenkins, "Just the right size," and what he means is," I can persuade anybody of anything, and I only have to persuade a small number of people here."

And in an astonishingly short period of time, Lyndon Johnson is the assistant majority leader.

RUBENSTEIN: And he becomes the majority leader after just how many years in the Senate?

CARO: Six years, actually.

RUBENSTEIN: Oh, so in his first term as a senator, he's a majority leader.

CARO: Uh, no, second.

Uh, it's the beginning of, of his... RUBENSTEIN: Second.

Beginning of the second term, he becomes... CARO: ...term because he's filling out the first term of somebody else.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so beginning of his second term, he's majority leader, and does he really, uh, exercise more power than majority leaders have ever done?

CARO: The Senate was the Senate of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun in the 1850s and '60s, so it was a powerful body that really accomplished things.

After that, for almost 100 years, the Senate was the same mess it is today.

It can't really do anything.

The leader before Lyndon Johnson, Alben Barkley of Kentucky, says, "A leader can't do anything.

He has no power.

I have nothing to promise them.

I have nothing to threaten them with."

So, Lyndon Johnson is... becomes his assistant, and Barkley dies.

Or I, I forget.

Does he die or decides not to run again?

I, I forget which one it is.

Oh, no, he runs for governor of, of Kentucky, and Johnson becomes leader, and now we're talking about, what is political genius?

What is Lyndon Johnson's genius?

What is genius in political power?

So, the leader before him has said, "I have nothing to promise them.

I have nothing to threaten them with."

Lyndon Johnson thinks of something to promise them and something to threaten them with.

Everything in the Senate before this was done by seniority.

If you wanted a committee, you put your name in, if you were on the committee, a, a, you advanced toward the chairmanship of the committee seat by seat until you were chairman.

Lyndon Johnson thinks of something that can give him power.

Let's not appoint people by the seniority system.

Let's appoint them by merit, he goes to the senior Democrats, and he's the... one of the youngest if not the youngest senator, and he says, "Listen.

The Republicans are really powerful."

This was in the days when Robert Taft was the leader.

"And they're gonna be more powerful because when... uh, this is coming up, and that is coming up."

He says, "They're gonna be powerful in, in foreign affairs.

We need someone good on foreign affairs.

The guy who can talk terrific on foreign affairs is another freshman named Hubert Humphrey.

Let's put him on instead of the guy due for seniority.

'Course, we'll have to move that guy, give him what he wants on another committee."

In Johnson's Library, when I'm there, I'm looking through his papers, and I'm coming through these folders with innocuous, uh, headings on them, but there are Lyndon... the diagrams of various committee with Lyndon Johnson moving people around like on, on a checkerboard RUBENSTEIN: So, Lyndon Johnson's the majority leader.

In 1952, a young senator from Massachusetts gets elected named John Kennedy.

CARO: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, did Lyndon Johnson, uh, fear that Kennedy was more... gonna be more powerful than him?

Did he take Kennedy seriously?

CARO: No, he doesn't take Kennedy seriously.

RUBENSTEIN: And so, when Kennedy says he might be running for president in '58 or so, does Lyndon Johnson worry that Kennedy can get the nomination and beat out Johnson, who has more power in the Senate?

CARO: No, Johnson is sure he doesn't have to worry about Kennedy.

RUBENSTEIN: So, does he actually criticize Kennedy for having Addison's disease and spread rumors about him?

CARO: When he starts to come up in, in the polls, Kennedy, Johnson... goes around describing him.

He says, "You know, he's yellow, look at his skin."

He had, he had, uh, Addison's disease, and it, it turns your skin sort of yellow.

He used the word sickly, said, "Look at his ankles.

His ankles are..." Uh, uh, this is what he said.

"His ankles are like this."

Kennedy has not been a, a, uh, dutiful senator.

Uh, uh, Johnson looked down on him in part because he was a... had the reputation of a playboy, you know.

RUBENSTEIN: How did Lyndon Johnson think he would get the nomination, just power brokers?

CARO: Oh, Johnson was the most powerful Democrat in the country.

RUBENSTEIN: But he thought that would be enough to get the nomination in 1960?

CARO: Yes, he... RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so finally he recognizes at some point, uh, as the convention's getting closer that Kennedy is gonna be the nominee.

Does Johnson say, "I'll never wanna be vice president under that runt," as he calls him?

CARO: No, he doesn't say that.

Um, no one has thought of him being vice president.

It wasn't considered, but on the morning after when he wins the nomination, Jack Kennedy comes down to Johnson's suite, and Johnson says to, uh, an aide, "He's gonna offer me the vice presidency."

And he huddles with, um, three of his aides, and they all say, "Don't take this.

As majority leader, you're, you're gonna be the second most powerful Democrat in the country, the vice president is nothing.

Nobody pays attention to the vice president."

But Johnson has thought of something else, and he says it.

This is not a nice story.

He has an aide look up how many presidents died in office, and he says, he says to uh, actually, uh, two women that were... Helen Gahagan Douglas and Clare Boothe Luce, who were both saying this to him, "Look at this.

Uh, four" whatever.

I forget what it is.

"Four since 1900 have died in office.

That's my best...

I'll never get to be president otherwise..." RUBENSTEIN: Because he's a Southerner, people didn't think then a Southerner could get elected president on his own.

CARO: Thank you.

Correct, correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Right, so, he, Kennedy comes in, offers it to him, and Lyndon Johnson says yes.

CARO: Yes, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Lyndon Johnson decides to take it.

Uh, they run, and they win, and, um, uh, Richard Daley, uh, calls Lyn... uh, John Kennedy on the night of the election and says, "With the help of a few friends, we're gonna win Illinois," which means, uh, "We think we can win this election"... CARO: Yeah, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And they do win.

CARO: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, so does Lyndon Johnson, who has all this power in... as, as the Senate majority leader, does he get a lotta power under Kennedy?

Because Johnson knew everything about the Congress, does Kennedy give him a lotta power?

CARO: No, Kennedy basically ignores him.

He doesn't listen to him.

He doesn't invite him to the meetings at which the real decisions are made, and Johnson is completely cut out of every loop in Washington.

RUBENSTEIN: Ultimately, why does President Kennedy feel he needs to have a trip to Dallas while he's president, and why does, uh, Lyndon Johnson come on that trip?

CARO: Oh, money.

Texas was the land of big contributors... RUBENSTEIN: But wasn't there a political dispute in Texas over... between the conservatives and the liberals about what was gonna happen?

CARO: Oh.

That, that, y-y yes, but I have to say I've read that in several books.

That, that, that is not really the reason.

CARO: I spent a lot of time talking to John Connally, who was the, you know, the governor of Texas, and he says it was just a fence-mending, uh, trip.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so obviously, as we know, uh, President Kennedy is assassinated.

Um, Lyndon Johnson goes immediately to Air Force One.

And did he really need to be sworn in, because doesn't he become president already without being sworn in?

CARO: The Secret Service comes to the hospital and says, "We gotta... we've gotta get out of Texas," right?

Well, first, they come, and they say, "We got to get you back to Air Force One."

They're still operating on President Kennedy upstairs.

Johnson says, "I'm not leaving."

Then, they, when someone comes down, Johnson is, has been standing for all this time against the wall in a, in a cubicle.

In front of him is one Secret Service man, a man named Rufus Youngblood.

There are others at the door, and one of Kennedy's aides, Mac, Mac Kilduff, comes in, and walks across the room, and says to Johnson, "Mr. President," and that's how Johnson finds out he's president.

So, the Secret Service immediately says, "We've gotta get out of Texas."

And they, they hustle him out.

It's a dramatic scene because no one knows if there are other snipers and all, you know?

RUBENSTEIN: So, they get to Air Force One, uh, and then the law of Texas is that a body cannot be moved out of the state unless there's an autopsy, but the Kennedy people didn't wanna wait for an autopsy, so they wait to bring the, um, deceased president in a in a coffin to the plane, and he's sworn in by a federal judge, who, um, he was close to comes back to Washington.

CARO: Yes, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And now, he's president.

Um, he decides he going to, uh, try to get the agenda of President Kennedy passed.

CARO: I'm being grilled here.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, you know this stuff pretty well.

So, he gets the agenda.

The civil rights agenda is... why does he wanna go after the civil rights agenda?

Because, uh, Johnson was never a civil rights... CARO: Oh, that's a... RUBENSTEIN: Big civil rights leader.

Why did, all of a sudden, did he wanna push that through a conservative Congress?

CARO: Lyndon Johnson was always interested in power, but there's another side of Lyndon Johnson that you also say always about.

When he's in, in college, he has no money, and he has to drop out of college for a year to be a teacher to make enough money to go on, and he's, teaches in a little town near, all the way down near the border, primarily Mexican town called Cotulla.

I wrote in my book, "No teacher had ever cared if these children learned or not.

This teacher cared."

Uh, he insist, he thought it was important that they learn to speak English, so if he heard at recess a little boy shouting in Spanish through the window, he'd run out and give him a spanking.

If it was a girl, he'd run out and yell at her.

Because they didn't have a debate team like the, uh, like the White kids had in their school, he organized a debate team, and 'cause he didn't have a car, he found someone with a car who... that he could persuade to drive the kids to a debate.

They didn't have equipment, so he bought softballs and, and, and bats.

One of those kids said he coming to Cotulla was like a blessing out of a clear sky.

There was no political advantage for him.

This was just something that came out of something in him.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so let me ask you the question that everybody has on their mind.

How many times a day do you get asked when you're gonna finish your fifth volume on Lyndon Johnson?

CARO: We were doing so well together.

(laughter) RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, your answer is it'll be finished when it's finished?

CARO: That's my answer.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CARO: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And, um, after spending more than 40 years on Lyndon Johnson, do you admire him more than you did before?

Do you admire him less than you did before?

CARO: Well, um, a question of admiring is a very complicated question.

He does some things that are really terrible, but he also achieves some things that are quite wonderful that looking back on it, you'd think wouldn't be achieved.

Like, he passes the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, passes the first voting rights bill.

In 1965 alone, he passes Medicare, Medicaid, every education bill we think of today, student loans, student instruction, revamps the immigration bill, does miraculous things, but you can't overlook the fact that... of Vietnam.

So, you both admire him and are horrified by him, but, I think my books try to be an examination of how political power really works... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CARO: In America by the guy who worked... did the most with it.

RUBENSTEIN: So look, um, on behalf of, uh, everybody here, and everybody that's watching, and on behalf of the country, I wanna thank you for, uh, the great works you've given the country and the world, and, uh, we all hope that you'll finish this fifth volume, and, uh, there won't be a sixth volume, right?

CARO: No.

RUBENSTEIN: No.

Well, thank you very much for a great conversation, and thank you for what you've done for the country.

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