Free Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro

had been at the center of this circle, in part for practical, political reasons. 1 He possessed something these young men needed: access to Speaker of the HouseSam Rayburn. During Johnson’s early years in the House, they had watched in amazement as he leaned over and kissed the bald head of the Speaker, whose grim mien, fearsome temper and immense
     power made most men wary of even approaching him. And by the time, in 1939, that that entrée had been somewhat curtailed, Johnson had learned the levers of power in the House, and hadcultivated the friendship of other House leaders. These young men from the executive branch were in constant need of information from the closed, confusing world of Capitol Hill, and Johnson obtained it for them. “I would call and say, ‘How do I handle
     this?’ ” Rowe remembers. “He would say, ‘I’ll call you right back.’ And he would call back and say, This is the fellow you ought to talk to.’ ” Then, during the 1940 campaign, they, and many Washington political insiders, had suddenly realized that the young Congressman possessed access to another valuable political commodity: cash and checks from those Texas oilmen and contractors for use in the campaigns of other
     congressmen; he was the conduit—the chief conduit—to sources of campaign financing of which the rest of Washington had barely even been aware.
    Rowe, who had been the liaison between the White House and the revitalized Congressional Campaign Committee, had been impressed not merely with the money Johnson raised but with the astuteness with which he doled it out, and with which he handled a hundred other campaign chores from a single, centralized office. “Nobody had ever done this before,” Rowe was to say. The members of this little circle were very good at politics; some were already, and some
     would eventually be, among the master politicians of the age. A master of a profession knows another when he sees him. “Counting” Congress—estimating the votes on bills important to them—was a frequent pastime at their parties. “He was a great counter,” Rowe says. “Someone would say, we’ve got so many votes, and Johnson would say, ‘Hell, you’re three off. You’re counting these three guys, and they’re
     going to vote against you.’ ” “He was the very best at counting,” Fortas says. “He would figure it out—how so-and-so would vote. Who were the swing votes. What, in each case—what, exactly—would swing them.” And he was more than a counter. “He knew how things happened, and what made things happen,” Fortas says. These men knew they had a much better formal education than he did, but
     they knew that in the world of politics it was he who was the teacher. Once they were discussing a problem, and what a book said about it, and one of the group said, “Lyndon hasn’t read that.” “That’s all right,” someone else replied. “We can tell him what the books say, and then he can tell us how to solve the problem.” Money made him important to them in other ways, too; when, for example, Corcoran suddenly found himself out
     of the White House and looking for clients in his new law practice, Johnson saw to it that he was placed on retainer byBrown & Root, the Texas contracting firm, owned by George and Herman Brown, that had lavishly poured money into his campaigns.
    Johnson was at the center of this circle for reasons not merely of politics but of personality. “There was never a dull moment around him,” Fortas says. “If Lyndon Johnson was there, a party would be livelier. Themoment he walked in the door, it would take fire.” Quick wits flashed at these parties, and none flashed quicker than his. Grabbing little Welly Hopkins and pulling him up on a table in a Spanish restaurant to
     dance an uninhibited “flamenco,” arranging elaborate practical jokes that included a surprise sixtieth birthday party that Franklin Roosevelt gave forSam Rayburn after Johnson had