Two Great Leaders (?) of the 20th Century: Robert Caro Reports, You Decide

Leadership is one of those inexhaustible topics about which one can never learn too much.  The only problem with "learning" about it (at least by reading) is that 98% of what's written about it is either: pluperfectly self-evident; the recitation of charming anecdotes from which it's entirely impossible to draw general observations (and usually featuring Churchill, Lincoln, and a General--Eisenhower, Patton, or Grant); or theoretical pap with the ulterior motive of advancing the author's consulting career.

Then there are the rare authors who actually have something to say, and today we're looking at Robert Caro, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer who talked to Harvard  Business Review about lessons from Lyndon Johnson's leadership style.

Interestingly, Caro not only wrote exhaustive biographies of LBJ, but also of Robert Moses, the famously autocratic czar of New York City public works projects for 44 years, whose mission was to remake the City in his image—and the legacy of whom those of us who live here enjoy, descry, and take for granted every single day.  Caro's blunt in his choice of subjects:

"To use biography [to explain power], of course, you have to pick subjects who understand, and whose lives show they understood, how to acquire power and use it.   I picked two men to write about: first, Robert Moses, because he understood urban political power—how power is used in cities. Robert Moses was never elected to anything in his entire life, but he held power in New York City and State for forty-four years, enough power to shape the city the way he wanted it to be shaped.

"Then I turned to Lyndon Johnson because he understood national political power—understood it better, I think, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. If you pick men like that, and find out and analyze how they got power and how they used it, you can get closer to an understanding of the true nature of power: how it works in reality—its raw, unadorned essence."

Wait a minute, you're saying:  I thought we were talking about "leadership" here, not about "power." 

Caro thinks that, at the highest level, they're indivisible: "Many people want to be leaders, but very few are leaders in the sense that I mean it: using great power for great purposes."

How, then, did LBJ assimilate power unto himself?  By befriending—and more than befriending—the most powerful people in the institution.  First in the Texas legislature it was Alvin Wirtz, in the US House it was Sam Rayburn, and in the US Senate it was Richard Russell of Georgia, leader of the Southern block.  He became, as he himself described it, a "professional son" to powerful men.  He would flatter, he would go out of his way to "just happen to be" in the Capitol every Saturday when Russell, a bachelor and a lonely soul, would be there, he would tell Russell, a baseball fan, that he loved baseball despite LBJ's having no interest in it whatsoever.

Isn't this sheer manipulation?

Indeed; but LBJ employed these tools to achieve what he envisioned:  Civil Rights (surely his finest hour), the War on Poverty (unwinnable, but his heart was in the right place), Vietnam (a searing, scarring, terrible misadventure of wasted and betrayed blood and treasure).   And Johnson knew how to read people (watch their eyes, don't listen to their words). 

Aspects of this exercise (Caro's exercise, that is) in comprehending power and how leaders wield it are profoundly repellent, but we also find ourselves leaning in, responding to the irresistible magnet of the story of a rise to greatness.   Here's how Caro summarizes what he's up to:

"All my books are about power and about how leaders use power to accomplish things. We're all taught the Lord Acton saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the more time I spend looking into power, the less I feel that is always true.

"What I do feel is invariably correct—what power always does—is reveal. Power reveals. When a leader gets enough power, when he doesn't need anybody anymore—when he's president of the United States or CEO of a major corporation—then we can see how he always wanted to treat people, and we can also see—by watching what he does with his power—what he wanted to accomplish all along."

All of my readers, and all of your partners and colleagues, are, I am confident, benevolent, wise, and possessed of the utmost in generous and humane spirits.

But it doesn't hurt to know how two of the 20th Century's greats got where they were, either.