The Passage of Power, the fourth installment of Robert Caro's monumental biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, spans the five years from shortly before the 1960 presidential election, through the events of John F. Kennedy's presidency, and ends with the first seven weeks of LBJ's term when he seized the reins of power. The book is a tour de force, particularly its account of Johnson's political acumen and leadership skills that enabled him to get things done in the halls of Congress. Johnson deftly maneuvered bills that had become bogged down in legislative committees onto the floor of the House and Senate where he engineered their passage. These bills included the 1964 Civil Rights Act, vehemently opposed by most southern senators, including many in his own party.
In addition to civil rights legislation, Johnson was able to push through Congress his predecessor's stalled tax-cut bill as well as a budget which he brought in below the previous year's budgetary expenditures. (Over the past 50 years, the U.S. budget has ballooned from $98.7 billion, $733 billion in today's dollars, to $3.78 trillion, over a five-fold increase despite only a 70% increase in the country's population!)
Whereas Kennedy “got Congress to think, LBJ got it to act.” For his War on Poverty, Johnson married his unrivalled knowledge of the legislative process with his unparalleled ability to win over legislators. Caro displays LBJ's genius for flattering, cajoling and bullying powerful people to his cause, including Congressmen, union bosses, civil rights leaders, Wall Street executives, industry titans, newspaper publishers, influential clergy, and foreign heads of state.
On that tragic day in November 1963, LBJ was catapulted into the presidency, handing him the formidable executive powers to match his redoubtable political skills. He quickly went about effecting legislation that transformed America. Caro's book reveals in vivid detail how Johnson used power, embodied not only in his position but also in his personality, to get things done.
President Obama and corporate leaders could learn a lot from LBJ. Obama's legislative initiatives and ambitions including health care, pre-school education, and antipoverty programs mirror much of Johnson's agenda. However, the recent failure to get a watered-down gun control bill through the Senate, despite overwhelming public support, evidences Obama's failure to grasp the art of leadership that Johnson brought to the White House.
As many a CEO has learned, to get things done requires more than making the rational case for the rectitude of your ideas. Leadership entails passion, persistence and, most importantly, persuasion, including the arm-twisting that LBJ perfected. This approach may not come naturally to a chief executive, but if President Obama is to have a successful second term, he should study up on LBJ. Caro's latest biography provides an excellent primer.