The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power is the fourth in Caro’s series on LBJ and covers the years from 1958, when Johnson began his candidacy for the presidency, to his first weeks in the White House in the winter of 1963-64 following the death of John F. Kennedy. It is an extremely interesting and thoroughly researched study of presidential politics, senatorial skill and power, frustration when power is taken away during the Kennedy presidency, and the transition of presidential authority and power following the gunshot in Dallas.
Caro devotes much attention to the conflicting personalities of Robert Kennedy and Johnson. So much of the background sounds familiar: Liberals versus Conservatives; gridlock on the Hill during the Kennedy administration; limits of federal intrusion on the states; government spending; threats of government shutdown with a failed appropriations bill; and a tax cut bill to get a stalled economy going. But the distinctive difference between now and the crisis of the winter of 1963 is Johnson—that is to say his legislative experience as Master of the Senate and his presidential bearing. Within a few weeks, he broke the Washington gridlock using both the memory of the martyred President and his own senatorial skills, sustained the goals of the late President, declared a war on poverty, created the Great Society, and made the presidency very much his own within a few days.