Free Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro Page A

lured him to the White House on the pretext that an angry President wanted to give him a dressing down, trading humorous notes with Fortas over the relative excellence of Texas and Tennessee pecans, organizing get-togethers (“He was a great one
     for spur-of-the-moment parties,”Elizabeth Rowe remembers. “He’d call up and say, ‘I’m about to leave the office. Get ol’ Jim and come on out.’ ”), he was, in Mrs. Rowe’s word, “fun.” “He could take a group of people and just
lift
it up. That’s what no one understands about Lyndon Johnson—that he
was fun!”
Women were very aware of him,
     of his big hands that were always touching shoulders and arms in a friendly manner, of theenergy that made them describe him as “handsome” despite the outsized ears and nose, of the vivid contrast between the milky white skin and the piercing dark eyes and heavy, wavy coal-black hair and eyebrows. As for men, when they didn’t hear from Johnson for a few days, they missed him. Once, Rowe telephoned Johnson’s office “to
     see,” as he wrote him, “if you had fallen in front of a train.” “There has been a deadly silence around here for some time,” he added. “Miss Gilligan [Rowe’s secretary] says it makes this office very dull.”
    And he was more than fun. He was a dominant figure because of his physical presence—over six feet three inches tall, with long arms and huge hands, that aggressively jutting nose and jaw, and a flashing smile and eyes.
    Adding to the dominance was an air of command. He had been giving orders for years now—to his assistants and, before that, to officials of the Texas N.Y.A. He was accustomed to being listened to: he carried himself with authority. And he had, as well, an air of belief. A superb raconteur, he was always ready with the latest inside stories about the great figures of Congress, mimicking them hilariously. And when he talked about two worlds of which his friends
     knew nothing—the world of Texas politics and vivid figures like Ma and Pa Ferguson, and the world of the TexasHill Country—he spoke with a passion they never forgot, his voice now soft and confiding, now booming: the voice of a natural storyteller. Bill Douglas, an ardent outdoorsman and no mean conversationalist himself, loved to hold forth about the furies of nature he had witnessed on his Western trips; even Douglas’s stories paled when
     Lyndon Johnson was talking about the rampages of the Pedernales or of Hill Country “gully-washers.” And when Johnson spoke about the poverty in the Hill Country—and about what the New Deal’s programs meant to his constituents—then,saysElizabeth Rowe, “his belief in what he was fighting for just poured out of him and it was very impressive.” As the tall, skinny figure strode awkwardly back and
     forth in those narrow Georgetown living rooms, with clumsy, lunging strides, awkwardly flailing his arms to emphasize a point, he was, in the words of his friends, “eloquent,” “spellbinding.”
    He was equally eloquent in explaining to these ardent liberals why, although he believed in liberal programs, he quite often didn’t vote for them—and almost never fought for them. “I would reproach him very bitterly,”Virginia Durr recalls. “Johnson would put his arm around me—Lyndon put his arm around all the girls—and say, ‘Honey, I know you’re right. I’m for
     you.… But we haven’t got the votes.’ ” He didn’t want to be associated with too many lost causes, he made clear. Says Jim Rowe, “Once I was pushing him for something liberal, and … he said, ‘Just remember our old friendMaury Maverick isn’t here any more. Maury got too far ahead of his people, and I’m not going to do that.’ ” But
     Johnson’s attitude went beyond caution. He ridiculed—intensely and harshly—politicians who fought for ideals and principles. SaysHelen Gahagan Douglas, the stunningly beautiful and intelligent actress who became part