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A. Johnson insisted that he built up his Texas radio and television empire without back-room help from the Federal Communications Commission. That's a blatant lie. When New Deal loyalists Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson wanted to buy their first Austin station, KTBC, the FCC had been blocking a conservative Austin publisher from purchasing it. The Johnsons were quickly approved. In later years, FBI wiretaps show Johnson talking to political fixer Tommy Corcoran about seeing this or that FCC commissioner on his behalf. Other Texas cities of similar size eventually had two or three television stations. For decades, the Johnsons' single Austin station never had a competitor.
Q. You and Robert Caro disagree dramatically in your accounts of Johnson's 1948 Senate race against former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, a crucial moment in Johnson's political career. Why?
A. Mr. Caro sees Stevenson as a man of absolute integrity, which makes Johnson's vote stealing even more unsavory. My research shows that Stevenson had a long history of manipulating votes. He and others helped Texas Governor "Pappy" O'Daniel change more than 6,000 votes in East Texas to frustrate Johnson's first try for the Senate in 1941. Stevenson was a reactionary and a racist, hardly a saint.
Q. Considering all the lawbreaking involved, was it worth getting Lyndon Johnson to the Senate and eventually to its leadership?
A. I think he was the greatest Senate majority leader in history. His personal power made the position important. The Johnson "treatment" is legendary. He'd back you into the corner, press his nose against yours, tower over you, put his arm around you. He also understood when to speed up or slow down debate, when to settle things in a back room. He knew what each Senator liked to eat and drink, needed politically, wanted personally. He changed the seniority rules and provided choice assignments to younger Senators. That was good for the Senate, and it obligated them to him. He brought vision to the job. He helped create NASA to keep the space program away from interservice military rivalry. There's no better example of his vision than the 1957 civil rights law. People have said it was more symbolic than substantive, which is true. But Johnson understood that symbolism had to precede substantive change. We hadn't had a major civil rights bill since 1875. This opened the door.
Q. What about Johnson's presidential ambitions?
A. One striking revelation I've come across is that Joe Kennedy sent Tommy Corcoran to Texas in 1955 to ask if Johnson would be willing to try for the presidency in 1956 with Jack Kennedy as his running mate. The Kennedys would provide the funds. Johnson turned it down flat. He knew the Kennedys hoped only for a respectable loss that would neutralize the Democratic Party's worries about Kennedy's Catholicism. It would be the end of Johnson's presidential ambitions. When Bobby Kennedy heard that Johnson had refused, he threw a fit. I think this was the beginning of the Bobby Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson feud.
Q. If Johnson had such fierce presidential ambitions, why did he give up his powerful Senate position for the powerless vice presidency?