In Robert A. CARO’s bio of LBJ, he spends exhaustive chapters in Vol. 2 on the (one of several) stolen election, the Box 13 stolen Senate run, that makes 2000’s Shrub v. GORE look puny. He paints Rethug/Conservative Coke STEVENSON as a noble, high-minded, honest, epitome of integrity and LBJ as the unscrupulous thief. No question. But Coke was a garden variety Conservative. If justice had been done and proper investigation and legal action been honored and Coke the Honest justly installed as Senator, his sincere Conservatism WOULD NEVER HAVE RESULTED in the landmarks of Civil and Voting Rights legislation that the perpetrator LBJ accomplished.
Let this sink in: SOME CONVICTIONS/PHILOSOPHIES ARE ULTIMATELY WRONG. Wingnuttiness is one of these. Tell that to TeaBaggers.
In this book review, the author’s description of MADISON’s “the legislative mind” – compromising, making deals – applies perfectly to CARO’s depiction of LBJ.
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.... ...Mr. Brookhiser sees [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Madison as the epitome of the legislative mind[/FONT]. Madison was the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]man of principles who made deals[/FONT], making sure the words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear in the Constitution, but also paying off his Southern vote-counting brethren with the three-fifths compromise. Slaves were partial “persons” for purposes of exerting political power. This [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]political accommodation[/FONT] jibed with Madison’s statement that slaves were part of his family, but only a “degraded” part. ....
Madison’s idea of the American polity had no place for educated black men and women, let alone the masses of freed slaves that he believed had trouble governing themselves. No matter which biography you read, all of them eventually disclose this fundamental fact: Madison did not believe that white and black Americans could live side by side on terms of equality and amity. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]His failure to imagine a world more capacious and tolerant than his own helps explain a good deal of subsequent history, and America’s resistance to the very practice of equality[/FONT] that Madison otherwise did so much to foster. ....
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