Robert Johnson Follow

This is about five years too late to serve as a timely book review, but lately I've been losing sleep reading Master of the Senate, the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. Point #1: Johnson invented power where none existed before. Inventing anything new is such a difficult, rare skill. Inventing power is difficult even to imagine. We don't usually think of it as fluid - you either have it or you don't. But like an alchemist, Johnson created it. He pulled it out of nowhere. As far as everyone else was concerned, one day he was that nice new kid who always asked them for advice, and then all of a sudden, there he was, in charge. Point #2: He was bad. Leaving aside his bad family values, which were basically par for the course, he stole his Senate election, funneled cash to his cronies, gained the trust of anti-Communists by destroying a guy who he knew perfectly well wasn't a Communist, gained segregationist trust by kissing segregationist butt, wheedled the powerful, threatened the kindly, and hoodwinked everybody. Yet over the course of the book, at the same time Lyndon is rising, we see again and again how nice guys go down in flames or get locked into little corners of ineffectiveness. Is it impossible to be an effective politician and to make change if your first and last consideration isn't protecting your own neck? (Like in the airplane, where they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before you help your little kid.) Is this true for all forms of leadership? Could anybody invent power the way LBJ did, or does the time and place have to be exactly right? And do you have to be willing to be a total jerk to get it done? Also, how great is this picture? The rule we see here being practied is, if God gives you great height, use it to lean into someone's personal space and make them feel uncomfortable. Let's everyone think for a moment - what are the special ways YOU know how make others feel uncomfortable?