All the Way with LBJ, Almost: Rolling the Dice

THIS IS THE FOURTH FAT VOLUME in Robert Caro’s series on a failed president who inherited a failed presidency, made it worse, then quit and dumped the whole mess into his successor’s lap. This one, which took Caro 10 years to write, covers the end of the 1950s to 1964, with special focus on Lyndon Johnson’s tenure as John F. Kennedy’s vice president, most of which he spent trying unsuccessfully to expand the powers of his office (something all vice presidents try to do), and learning to eat dirt at the hands of Robert Kennedy and assorted New Frontiersmen.
“During the administration of John F. Kennedy,” writes Caro, “Washington was Camelot [not really, as Bob Tyrrell reminds us, until Mrs. Kennedy dubbed it that post-assassination], and in Camelot, the political world included parties.” LBJ wasn’t on the A-list and often had to finagle an invitation. Caro describes a dinner dance, with music by Lester Lanin, the debutantes’ delight, who introduced “a new, hip-swiveling dance called the twist. Johnson asked the scintillating Helen Chavchavadze (who, as it happened, was one of the president’s mistresses) to dance—and slipped and fell on her, knocking her to the floor.”
“‘He lay on her like a lox,’” said one attendee. “By noon the next day,” writes Caro, “word of Johnson’s fall…had reached Camelot’s most distant frontiers—as Johnson was well aware.”

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/25/all-the-way-with-lbj-almost-ro