The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Part 4

I’m looking at a copy of Robert Caro’s latest, THE PASSAGE OF POWER. This is the fourth book in his series THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON.

One of the themes in the early going of Vol. 4 could be summarized in the words “Johnson dithered.” It is Caro’s view that he might well have won the Democratic nomination for President in 1960 if he had grabbed for it himself with his usual decisiveness and energy. But that would have meant laying groundwork as early as 1958, and engaging in a serious hunt for delegates through 1959. Johnson did neither of those things.  Nor did he close the door on them. 

He dithered.

By January 1960, he finally seemed ready to get busy. His strategy required the Mountain West. He assumed he could go into the convention as the south’s candidate, but to be something more, his natural allies were to be found in the mountain states – on mining and other resource issues, he had a Senate record that found admirers there.

So Caro gives us the following scene from early 1960. An experienced western-states political operative, Irving Hoff, was now working there on LBJ's behalf, and Hoff spoke for example with a key figure in Idaho who had the wonderfully appropriate name Tom Boise.

These are Caro’s words:

In Idaho, where the Hells Canyon Dam was rising day by day, and where political leaders knew who had gotten them the dam at last, the Democratic state chairman, Tom Boise, had told Hoff that, despite all the Kennedy efforts, many party leaders were still considering supporting Johnson. ‘These guys were for Johnson,’ Hoff says, ‘If we had been able to tell them that he was going to run, we’d have had that delegation.’ He explained this to Johnson, and Johnson accepted an invitation to speak in Lewiston, Idaho, and afterwards to have a drink with Boise and his leaders in a hotel suite. But in the suite [Johnson still couldn’t quite bring himself to declare.] He said, ‘What the heck do you think I’m out here for – catching butterflies? Do you see me carrying a net?’ But there were future government positions at stake, careers at stake,  issues at stake – with the convention so close, rhetorical humor wasn’t enough. They pressed him further. But all Johnson would say was, ‘I’ll let you know…You’ll be the first to know.’”  

(p. 74.)

I love Caro’s way of developing – and, you might say, milking – such a scene. He even tells us that Johnson was walking around the living room of the hotel suite in his pajamas while saying these evasive things, and that he was stirring his drink with his big finger. That’s the way to do biography!

Final Quote From Isaacson's Bio of Jobs

I've noted in this blog before that biography is a complicated art form. How to even begin telling a life?

With the subject's birth? Or is there some crucial context to set first? or should you, rather, start by talking about what makes this subject worth a biography? how to start doing that?

Isaacson begins with a discussion of "how this book came to be," wherein he discusses Jobs' solicitation of his services a biographer. Jobs began looking for someone to write his life's story only after Jobs became aware that his cancer was terminal. This allows Isaacson both to begin and to end the book with the consciousness of death.

Here is the ending:

He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds [on a God] out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. "I like to think that something survives after you die," he said. "It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and then it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures."

He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone."

Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices."

Steve Jobs

I've been reading the new biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson.

I'll just cite this one passage about Jobs' brief experience with communal living, for its obvious social-philosophy message.

"Alrthough the commune was supposed to be a refuge from materialism, [charismatic central figure Robert] Friedland began operating it more as a business; his followers were told to chop and sell firewood, make apple presses and wood stoves, and engage in other commercial endeavors for which they were not paid.  One night Jobs slept under the table in the kitchen and was amused to notice that people kept coming in and stealing each other's food from the refrigerator.  Communal economics were not for him. "it started to get very materialistic,' Jobs recalled. 'Everybody got the idea they were working very hard for Robert's farm, and one by one they started to leave. I got pretty sick of it.'"

Wikipedian Puppets

More on wikipedia and and on yours truly.

One regular source of dispute on the wikipedia talk pages is the urgent question, "who is a sock puppet of whom?"

When editors (anyone with an internet connection and an interest in a question under discussion is an 'editor') dispute issues on the Talk pages, it frequently happens that one will try to gang up on the others by pretending to be two or more different people. When Joe says, "we should change the opening sentence of this article," but Moe replies, "No, we should leave that sentence as it is," then Joe creates Larry who says, "Joe is right, the sentence needs more work."

Ideally, that fools Moe into thinking, "gee, if Joe and this other fellow agree, maybe I'm wrong."

That's the simple version, there are endless variants. But in the case I've posited, Larry is a "sock puppet" of Joe.

The accusation "Joe uses sock puppetry" can be a devastating one, and the Joes of wikipedia resist, causing endless brouhahas.

In one endless, or just endless-seeming, debate over alleged socks, somebody wrote that two or more regular posters frequently use the otherwise uncommon phrase "putting lipstick on a pig," which sounds so idiosyncratic that they just must be the same person in reality.

Wiser heads prevailed on that proposed test, though. "Yes, the sampling problem will exist for any sort of style analysis. For example ... the expression 'lipstick on a pig' is not all that uncommon, and it would be hard (maybe impossible) to determine what percentage of editors at large use that expression."

Indeed. It was to prove this point that one of the warring editors cited the work of one Christopher Faille, specifically a book review I wrote in July 2006.

The review was of a book written by finance journalist Gary Weiss, called WALL STREET VERSUS AMERICA. My review, as it happens, was titled Lipstick Brands Change, the Pig's the Same.

As it happens, Gary Weiss himself (the biographical wiki article about him, as well as references to him in various other articles on matters discussed in that book) is the center of much wikipedia controversy. Controversies over what the articles should say quickly become controversies over who is using socks and who is falsely accusing who else of using socks. So the fact that my review was a review of that particular book seems to have made it especially valuable in spreading recognition that "pig/lipstick" is a fairly common trope among those of us who follow and write about financial matters. Putting the idea that sharing this trope makes one editor the puppet of another ... back in the sty where it belongs.

I'm glad to help. Cash will be accepted in lieu of more symbolic expressions of gratitude.

Those of you to whom this is all Greek -- you're missing nothing. Those who think I'm making it all up in the desperate need to create a bogus entry for my blog, your suspicions are easily put to rest.

Olivier Messiaen

I'd like to thank Henry for his comment on my post of yesterday, and in particular for reminding us of the great composer Olivier Messiaen.

For those not familiar with his work, here's a URL to get you started.

http://www.8notes.com/biographies/messiaen.asp

And, because I'm not feeling well today, I'm afraid this'll be it.