Review: Means of Ascent

Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Robert Caro sets his own standard for political biographies, and if this volume was at all lacking for me it was only in comparison to the masterful first volume in this series. But even this is not exactly a fair comparison, as The Path to Power covered Johnson’s formative years—delving into his family history, his marriage, his schooling, his environment, his first working experience, and finally his rise to the House of Representatives. Its scope, in other words, is quite broad.

Means of Ascent is a very different book, covering only seven years (1941-48). It is significantly shorter (though still hefty enough), and most of these pages are dedicated to Johnson’s 1948 Senate race. This corresponds to what Winston Churchill called his “wilderness years,” in which Johnson was directionless and cut off from the main arteries of power. He spent some of this time in a non-combat role in the military (and spent the rest of his life shamelessly exaggerating his minimal exploits), some of this time using his connections to get rich through a radio station—and finally got back onto the path to power by stealing a Senate election.

As Caro says repeatedly, Johnson is a complex personality with a strange admixture of the despicable and the admirable—and this book contains precious little of the latter. As a result, whereas in the first volume one could sometimes feel sympathetic for the young man from Texas, here he is little more than a power-grasping villain. Caro himself obviously came to feel disgusted with Johnson’s personality, and his feelings seep through in his descriptions of Johnson’s ample transgressions: his blatant mistreatment—indeed, verbal abuse—of anyone he considers inferior (including receptionists, waiters, his own staff, and his poor wife), his absolute amorality regarding even basic ideals (such as democracy itself), and his willingness to stop at nothing to obtain power.

Caro contrasts Johnson’s personality with that of his opponent in the 1948 Senate election, Coke Stevenson—a man Caro portrays as honest and honorable. And here the esteemed biographer got into a little bit of trouble. While Stevenson may indeed have been upstanding in the sense that he was true to his word, did not bow to lobbyists, did not attack political opponents, and did not seek political office in order to satisfy a lust for power—while all this may have been true, Stevenson was also certainly a reactionary and a racist.

These rather unflattering qualities are given only a passing mention in the book, which may leave the reader with a skewed impression of Stevenson. Caro was roundly criticized for this, and in an article in the New York Times, published in 1991, he responded some of these criticisms. Yet his defense—that the subject of race played little role in the election—while valid as far as historical explanation goes, still does not quite excuse the glowing portrait he painted. Upon finishing the book, it is difficult to resist the impression that Caro himself came to admire Stevenson.

Even so, as abhorrent as I find Stevenson’s views to be, I would still prefer such a man to the Johnson of 1948, who seems to have had no political philosophy, no political aspirations beyond his desire to control people, and—worst of all—no respect for the institution of democracy. Throughout all of the legal battles and maneuvers which allowed him to keep his stolen election victory, Johnson never once betrayed the slightest hint that he might have had misgivings about betraying the will of the people. Indeed, as Caro makes clear, he seems to have been proud of it, virtually boasting of the “victory” in later years.

Now, at this point I will do something very brave—or cowardly, perhaps—and venture a slight criticism of Caro. After so many pages, his writing style is beginning to ware on me. This is because, I think, his primary rhetorical technique is that of superlatives. What I mean is that, for Caro, everything is as extreme as possible. Johnson is not just a sleazy politician, but unprecedentedly amoral; Stevenson is not just a popular governor, but a Texan hero; and so on, and so on. Caro relentlessly emphasizes how extreme every event and experience was—so much so that, by the end, you are begging for something totally ordinary and unremarkable to happen (and no, not superlatively ordinary).

That said, the book is eminently readable and highly enjoyable. Here Caro creates such a memorable portrait of an amoral, power-crazed politician that, had this book been written by anyone else, it would by itself be considered an enduring classic of American political writing. It is only when compared to his other books that this one may seem somewhat light.



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