whibaml: robert caro on LBJ

Thanks to Mike Eisenberg for recommending Caro's work. I'm fully caught up on all gazillion pages of this (four big volumes so far) and can't wait for the next installment. I thought I lived through many of these events, but realize from Caro's account that I had NO IDEA what was actually happening.

A sobering conclusion from the LBJ biography, and from Caro's earlier biography of Robert Moses (another wonderful book) is that in our system of government, large purposes, good as well as bad, can only be achieved by forms of corruption, or things that we think of as corruption. Sceptical? Read the books.

Caro's brief history of the senate brings out that its purpose, as consciously devised by our founders, is to keep the government from doing what the people want. Only under very special circumstances has the grip of the senate been broken, temporarily. LBJ created those circumstances by total dedication to the cultivation and use of power.