Clinton on LBJ

The fourth installment of Robert Caro’s exhaustive and brilliantly written biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passsage of Power, has just been published. It covers the period of his life from just before the 1960 presidential election until those months after the tragedy that led to his ascension to the presidency when he managed to cajole a reluctant Congress to pass stalled legislation that completely changed the American political landscape.

The New York Times chose former President Bill Clinton to write the review of Caro’s book, which will grace the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section. I was fascinated with the first part of the review’s concluding paragraph.

"Even when we parted company over the Vietnam War, I never hated L.B.J. the way many young people of my generation came to. I couldn’t. What he did to advance civil rights and equal opportunity was too important. I remain grateful to him. L.B.J. got to me, and after all these years, he still does."