A Texas-Size L.B.J. Obsession

By R Z. SHEPPARD

Lyndon Baines Johnson may have been larger than life, but since his death 16 years ago, he has been getting bigger. The growth spurt is due largely to the diligence of Robert A. Caro, the biographer and political historian who has made L.B.J.'s saga into an obsession and virtually a life's work. Caro is one of the best known of a small breed of long-distance writers who appear from their orbits of research to offer big books on big subjects. Among others in the select group, most of whom tend to be, like Caro, journalist-scholars: Richard Kluger, author of the civil rights classic Simple Justice (1976), and J. Anthony Lukas, whose Common Ground (1985), a social history of ethnic Boston, was well worth the wait.

Caro began work on his Texas-size biography of L.B.J. 14 years ago. The choice of subject was a natural progression from his first marathon, The Power Broker (1974), a 1,200-page study of New York City master builder Robert Moses. The Power Broker is an obligatory book for understanding modern urban politics. In turning to L.B.J., Caro shifted his focus from how New York City works to what makes the nation run. The answer is not surprising. As Franklin Roosevelt's factotum Tommy ("the Cork") Corcoran responded when Caro asked how the young L.B.J. gained power, "Money, kid. But you'll never be able to write about it."

Caro's first Johnson volume, The Path to Power, was published in 1982 and proved Corcoran wrong. In comprehensive and forceful detail, it followed Johnson from the lonely Texas hill country, out from under the humiliating shadow of his failed father. The book ended with his unexpected defeat in a 1941 race for the U.S. Senate. The Path remained a best seller for three months and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.

Last week Volume II, Means of Ascent, began to run in the New Yorker. The excerpt details a shameless pattern of deceit in L.B.J.'s early career. Among the juicier disclosures is how Johnson, as a noncombatant in World War II, was able to parlay 13 minutes under enemy fire into a Silver Star, which he then had repeatedly presented to himself at public ceremonies. Alice Glass, who according to Caro was Johnson's mistress as well as the lover of one of his most influential supporters, had a more realistic view of Lyndon's war. "I can write a very illuminating chapter on his military career in Los Angeles," she later revealed to a friend, "with photographs, letters from voice teachers, and photographers who tried to teach him which was the best side of his face."

As many as six further excerpts are expected to appear in the magazine, covering the founding of L.B.J.'s fortune and his controversial election to the Senate in 1948. Knopf will issue a first printing of 200,000 copies in March.

To Caro, Volume II is already history. He is well into the making of Volume III, which will take Johnson from his reign as Senate majority leader to his swearing-in as President after John F. Kennedy's assassination. A fourth, final volume is planned. Meanwhile, the work moves slowly. Caro and his wife Ina, who is also his research assistant, spent four years living in Texas, driving tens of thousands of miles to interview sources. "It took me two years to realize what I was hearing," says Caro. The young Johnson's role in bringing electricity to his constituents filled the author with populist enthusiasm. But later, going through some of the 34 million documents stored in the Johnson Library in Austin, he recalls a letdown. "I thought Johnson was going to be like Al Smith. But a different picture started to emerge in the library, and I realized, with depression coming over me, how he got to be F.D.R.'s man in Texas."

Caro insists he is more interested in Johnson's power than in his personality. "The basic concern of all my books is how political power works in America," he says. "I don't think there is an adequate understanding of that. Look at the effect Johnson had on so many lives. If you were a young black American getting an education, Johnson had a lot to do with that. And if you were a young man drafted off to Viet Nam, he had a lot to do with that too."

At 53, Caro could spend the rest of his working life wrestling with the enigma of L.B.J. With his hefty book contract and a $1 million movie deal, he can afford the commitment. Yet to see Caro in his Manhattan office, one might think he was a struggling small businessman out of the 1950s. He works amid a makeshift table, an old desk and stained bookshelves. There is no word processor, only an electric portable.

He often observes from the U.S. Senate gallery, where he finds the routine business of Government thrilling. Sometimes he is an audience of one, as if, he says, "the Senate were being staged only for me." Caro is less anonymous at the Johnson Library. Since The Path to Power, Lady Bird Johnson has become uncooperative, and her former press secretary Liz Carpenter occasionally glares from behind a glass wall as Caro makes his notes.

Caro is understandably reluctant to give away findings that he has worked years to uncover, and for which his publisher and the New Yorker have paid good money. When asked about the basis of Johnson's wealth or about the 1948 election, the biographer responds teasingly, "I think I can add something to our understanding." Judging from that answer, the only surprise would be if future installments indicated that Johnson got rich through his business acumen and won his first Senate term fair and square.