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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

If you have never read the Power Broker, or say "Master of the Senate" (the 3rd LBJ book) and you have any interest in politics or American history.. well you should! So much of the discussion of the problems of the American city is informed by the Power Broker. Before that people I really don't think many people thought about it.

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The Johnson books are really amazing looks into a uniquely American person. The Power Broker is amazing and overshadows the Johnson books. Robert Moses’s arc is like a real life Darth Vader.

Johnson is...different the books made me uncomfortable, as LBJ is both loathsome and inspired, visionary and corrupt. It’s hard to like someone literally hiring folks to bring suitcases of corrupt money back to his home... but then again he was able to make civil rights a reality, in the face of the racist establishment that controlled the Senate.

You have to read the first two also, of course! The second one includes a great sub-biography of Coke Stevenson, a former governor of Texas. LBJ beat him when he ran for senate by stealing and buying votes.

Yep. The infamous ballot box number 13 determined the course of American history. Without that stolen box, LBJ would not have become a senator and would not therefore not have become president. His means to power were always corrupt (he stole elections at the student body president level and the congressmen assistants organization) but once he attained it, he was surprisingly effective. From electrification of the rural Texas Hill country from which he hailed to enacting legislation for the civil rights movement.

History may have been different but to say LBJ wouldn’t have found a way to power via the senate or even the presidency is impossible to say. He knew how to survive amidst setbacks...who knows what would’ve happened if he lost that race.

Having read these books I think there are two ways to look at it. On one hand, in Means of Ascent you see how LBJ became a congressman against terrific odds by sheer force of will, brains, and excellent advisors / supporters. On the other hand, you see that later in life he either takes fewer risks or is more complacent by the time of the 1960 presidential campaign. The democratic nomination was his to lose, and if he had pushed for it he would have gotten it, not Kennedy.

So if LBJ had lost that Senate race in 1948, which aspect of his character would dominate? What is so great about those books is how they reveal the complexity of an individual's character.

The first 100 pages of that book (Master of the Senate) is the best history of the tensions of the US that I've ever read. At this point, if someone wants to discuss some of the more charged topics with me, I insist they read that first.

On a similar note, I'd argue that if you read The Power Broker, you get a whole new level of understand of why New York City is the way it is.

I just ordered it! Looking forward to it.

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