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Caro's Lives: Comparative Biography as Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2015

David Lebow
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Abstract

Robert Caro's biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson prove fruitful for political theory, particularly when approached in tandem, along the lines of Plutarch's comparative profiles. Building on the supposition that general insights into political power and its ethics lie in biographical particulars, Caro demonstrates that the most exhaustively detailed research of the most extreme subjects can yield otherwise inaccessible findings. Similarities between Moses and Johnson expose common mechanics of accumulating power, converting personal relationships into institutional authority, and show that norms are given effect as tools used by politicians. Contrasts offer the career as a unit of moral evaluation and suggest that although power may corrupt, it also “reveals.” A praiseworthy career should aim at ends distinct from both ideals and means. Assessment depends not only on intents or accomplishments, but on means, weighing their morality against their necessity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Winter 2015 , pp. 99 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2015 

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References

1 Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1974)Google Scholar, 832. Henceforth Moses.

2 Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1982)Google Scholar, 442. Henceforth LBJ I.

3 Life of Pericles, in Plutarch's Lives, vol. 1 (New York: Modern Library, 2001)Google ScholarPubMed, 202.

4 On Plutarch's comparative method (synkrisis), see Duff, Timothy, Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 243–62.Google Scholar

5 Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 62.

6 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, “Plutarch,” in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 10, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1904)Google Scholar, 312.

7 There are certain affinities between this approach and the recent renaissance of “political realism” in contemporary theory that can only be gestured at here. Central to this movement, says Karuna Mantena, is a “view of politics in which power and conflict are taken to be constitutive and a suspicion of doctrines and theories that elide this fact as carelessly idealist or utopian” (Mantena, Karuna, “Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 [May 2012]: 455)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Raymond Geuss enumerates several axioms of political realism, including that it deals “not with how people ought ideally” to act, but with how “institutions actually operate in some society at some given time,” it recognizes that politics is “about action and the context of action,” and that “politics is historically located: it has to do with humans interacting in institutional contexts that change over time” (Geuss, Raymond, Philosophy and Real Politics [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008], 9–13Google Scholar). For an overview, generally, see Galston, William A., “Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 4 (October 2010): 385–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 “Bravery of Women,” in Plutarch's Moralia, vol. 3 (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1931)Google Scholar, 477.

9 See Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 52–71.

10 There is something quixotic about lauding his great detail in an article too short to actually be able to convey this detail. For a few striking examples, see LBJ I, 279, 420; Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (New York: Vintage Books, 2002)Google Scholar, 367 (hereafter LBJ III).

11 Life of Alexander, in Plutarch's Lives, vol. 2 (New York: Modern Library, 2001)Google Scholar, 139.

12 Charles McGrath, “Robert Caro's Big Dig,” New York Times Magazine, 15 April 2012, MM34, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/robert-caros-big-dig.html.

13 Stephen Harrigan, “The Man Who Never Stops,” Texas Monthly, April 1990, 100.

14 Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York: Vintage Books, 1990)Google Scholar, xxxi. Hereafter LBJ II.

15 Harrigan, “The Man Who Never Stops,” 100 (italics added).

16 Ibid.

17 Chris Jones, “The Big Book,” Esquire, 12 April 2012, http://www.esquire.com/features/robert-caro-0512.

18 McGrath, “Robert Caro's Big Dig.”

19 Moses, 745; LBJ III, 510. For detailed examples of how political science misunderstood power, see Moses, 743–54 and LBJ III, 507–11.

20 Nicholas von Hoffman, “Robert Caro's Holy Fire,” Vanity Fair, April 1990.

21 Moses, 671.

22 LBJ II, xxxi.

23 McGrath, “Robert Caro's Big Dig.”

24 LBJ II, xxxi.

25 Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power (New York: Vintage Books, 2012)Google Scholar, xvii. Hereafter LBJ IV.

26 William Goldstein, “Writers at Work: Robert Caro Talks about His Art, His Methods and LBJ,” Publisher's Weekly, 25 November 1983, 41 (italics added).

27 See Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 22–30.

28 LBJ III, xxi.

29 LBJ IV, xvii.

30 Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Penguin Books, 2002)Google Scholar, 7.

31 LBJ I, xvii.

32 See the “inescapable questions” in LBJ III, 619.

33 Moses, 4.

34 LBJ II, 179.

35 Life of Themistocles, in Plutarch's Lives, 1:146.

36 Moses, 20–21.

37 LBJ 1, xxi–xxii.

38 Jonathan Darman, “Robert Caro's Last LBJ Volume,” Newsweek, 13 March 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/robert-caros-last-lbj-volume-82573.

39 Jones, “The Big Book.”

40 Goldstein, “Writers at Work,” 40.

41 LBJ II, xxxiv.

42 LBJ II, xxxiii.

43 LBJ II, xxxiv.

44 This, Caro tells us, is precisely why his multivolume Johnson biography is entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson (LBJ IV, xvi–xvii).

45 LBJ III, 55.

46 LBJ II, 12.

47 LBJ I, xviii.

48 LBJ I, 273.

49 LBJ II, 180.

50 See, for instance, the story of “The Dam,” LBJ I, 369–85. See also LBJ 1, 598–99 as well the “brown paper sack” in LBJ II, 274.

51 LBJ III, xxiii.

52 LBJ I, 294.

53 LBJ III, 154.

54 LBJ I, 448–49, 458–60; LBJ III, 162, 207–12, 475.

55 LBJ I, 533.

56 Moses, 360.

57 Moses, 466–67.

58 Moses, 761. See also 475–76.

59 Moses, 18.

60 LBJ III, 585.

61 LBJ III, 137.

62 LBJ II, 15.

63 LBJ III, 471.

64 LBJ I, 453.

65 LBJ III, 401, 463.

66 LBJ I, 285, 361. For one of the most extraordinary stories on Johnson's genius for manipulation, see LBJ I, 557–605.

67 LBJ I, xxi, 606–17.

68 Moses, 739–54.

69 Moses, 1011.

70 Moses, 18.

71 LBJ III, 677.

72 LBJ III, 124–25.

73 LBJ III, 439.

74 LBJ III, 413.

75 LBJ II, 368. See also LBJ III, 681–82.

76 LBJ III, 439.

77 LBJ III, 472.

78 LBJ III, 599–600, 866.

79 LBJ III, 454. For Johnson's brilliantly crude comparison of himself with Humphrey, see LBJ III, 459.

80 LBJ III, 485. For the payoff, see 600.

81 LBJ III, 485. See also 461.

82 LBJ III, 130.

83 LBJ III, 599.

84 LBJ III, 508.

85 LBJ III, 510.

86 LBJ III, xxii.

87 Moses, 631.

88 Moses, 614.

89 Moses, 623.

90 Moses, 629.

91 Moses, 624.

92 LBJ I, 607. Johnson did this time and again throughout his life. For a litany of early examples, see LBJ I, 175, 281–90, 345, 360, 397.

93 LBJ III, xxii.

94 LBJ III, 489.

95 LBJ III, 493–95.

96 LBJ III, 496, 514.

97 LBJ III, 416, 490.

98 LBJ III, 505.

99 LBJ III, 563.

100 LBJ III, 507–11.

101 LBJ III, 558–60.

102 LBJ III, 560–62.

103 LBJ III, 577.

104 LBJ III, 575.

105 LBJ III, 597.

106 LBJ III, 595.

107 LBJ III, 579.

108 LBJ III, 308.

109 LBJ III, 59. See also 659.

110 Moses, 632.

111 Moses, 218.

112 Moses, 423.

113 Moses, 424.

114 Moses, 16.

115 Moses, 17.

116 Moses, 16–17.

117 Moses, 630.

118 Moses, 141.

119 Moses, 141. See also 625.

120 Moses, 141.

121 Moses, 632.

122 Moses, 662.

123 Moses, 663.

124 LBJ II, 351. See also 335.

125 For examples of his genius in parliamentary procedure, see LBJ III, 399 and 795–96.

126 LBJ III, 103.

127 LBJ III, 105.

128 LBJ III, 578.

129 LBJ III, 315.

130 LBJ III, 427.

131 LBJ III, 429. For other examples, see LBJ I, 268, 395–96. An especially illuminating case is to be found in LBJ III, chap. 13, “No Time for a Siesta.” But the most remarkable (and possibly the most cruel) episode is the Leland Olds reappointment hearing (LBJ III, chap. 10, “Lyndon Johnson and the Liberal”).

132 LBJ III, 577.

133 See Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 30–34.

134 Emerson, “Plutarch,” 318.

135 See Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 34–45.

136 The “practice of virtue, Plutarch maintains, is to be aided by an understanding of vice” (Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 46).

137 LBJ II, xxxiv.

138 See LBJ I, 442, 551; LBJ III, 114.

139 LBJ I, 258, 518–28.

140 For a subtle tension between principle and success, see LBJ III, 389.

141 For Plutarch, “ambition . . . can lead to great deeds, but also to disaster” (Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 86).

142 Moses, 5.

143 Moses, 4.

144 LBJ I, 225.

145 LBJ I, 229.

146 LBJ I, 275.

147 LBJ I, 601.

148 LBJ II, 15. See also LBJ I, 189, 273–77.

149 LBJ IV, 9.

150 See LBJ III, chaps. 31 and 32.

151 Moses, 656–57.

152 On his earlier betrayals, see LBJ I, 571 and LBJ III, 286–87.

153 LBJ III, xxiii.

154 LBJ IV, 465. See also LBJ III, 868–70.

155 LBJ III, 562.

156 LBJ IV, xiv.

157 Moses, 5.

158 Moses, 19.

159 Moses, 19. See also 655.

160 LBJ I, 201.

161 LBJ I, xix.

162 LBJ I, 200.

163 See LBJ II, 357.

164 LBJ III, 563.

165 LBJ II, xxx.

166 LBJ III, xxi.

167 LBJ II, xxvii.

168 LBJ IV, 581.

169 LBJ II, xxii.

170 LBJ II, xxi.

171 Moses, 20.

172 Moses, 348.

173 Moses, 848.

174 LBJ III, xxiv (italics added). See also 612, 722, 797–98, 838, and LBJ IV, 490.

175 Moses, 21.

176 LBJ II, xxxiv.

177 Plutarch is also interested “in the morally paradoxical possibility that actions which are virtuous in themselves may in fact harm the state as a whole, and bad actions contribute to its well-being” (Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 264). And, similarly, “it is this high valuation of success, a success achieved sometimes at the cost of strict morality or without the benefit of a correct psychological configuration, which makes some Lives so interesting and so problematic” (ibid., 98).

178 “Plutarch invites us to address moral issues, but simple answers, simple paradigms, are not always forthcoming” (Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 71).

179 McGrath, “Robert Caro's Big Dig.”

180 LBJ III, 807.

181 McGrath, “Robert Caro's Big Dig.”

182 Life of Alcibiades, in Plutarch's Lives, 1:269.