Genesis of the Nov 4 Miracle

[coberst]

Genesis of the Nov 4 Miracle

If you wish to understand the genesis of the miracle of Nov 4th read or listen to an audio recording of the book “Master of the Senate”. By Robert Caro

[USViking]

I have the book, which is about LBJ's US Senate career.

I read Caro's three prior books on LBJ cover to cover,
but only got 200 or so pages into Master of the Senate.

I guess the threadstarter means that the Civil Rights Movement
formed the genesis of Barack Obama's election, and that LBJ
was a pivotal character in the triumph of the movement.

LBJ was early in his senate career part of the last generation
of obstructionist segregationist Southern Senators who had
formed an impenetrable political phalanx against Civil Rights
since the end of Reconstruction.

Master of the Senate describes a small but significant
concession to Civil Rights, ring-led by LBJ, precursor to
opening the gate wide open in the 1960s to cryingly needed
reformation of race law in the US, especially the South.

LBJ's great legacy was that later, as President, he followed
through and admitted the US Black population, finally,
to "the holy curtain of Democracy" as Caro put it in one
of his earlier books on LBJ.

LBJ's great role in the Civil Rights struggle is all but
forgotten now.

Maybe Caro will revive appreciation of that role in
his next and presumably last book on the subject.

I do not think what happened during LBJ's lifetime
was miraculous, and I do not think what has happened
during Barack Obama's lifetime is a miracle either.

I do think it was a sort of negative miracle that it
took us so long to get things right.

I do think that Obama's election means that things
are now, finally, right

[coberst]

In this book you will learn to love and to hate LBJ and also to love and to hate the US Senate. You will also learn why LBJ is essentially the man who made the Nov 4th election of Obama possible.

Amazon.com Review
Robert Caro's Master of the Senate examines in meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson's career in that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after 12 years in the House of Representatives) until his election as JFK's vice president in 1960. This, the third in a projected four-volume series, studies not only the pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who wielded influence with both consummate skill and "raw, elemental brutality," but also the Senate itself, which Caro describes (pre-1957) as a "cruel joke" and an "impregnable stronghold" against social change. The milestone of Johnson's Senate years was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage he single-handedly engineered. As important as the bill was--both in and of itself and as a precursor to wider-reaching civil rights legislation--it was only close to Johnson's Southern "anti-civil rights" heart as a means to his dream: the presidency. Caro writes that not only does power corrupt, it "reveals," and that's exactly what this massive, scrupulously researched book does. A model of social, psychological, and political insight, it is not just masterful; it is a masterpiece.

[rjamortega]

...

I do think that Obama's election means that things
are now, finally, right

:confused: How so?!?

[coberst]

I suspect that you might broaden your ability to envision the matter if you were to read the book. One must have a comprehension of American history to recognize the movement of American attitudes from 1957 to 2008.

[rjamortega]

I suspect that you might broaden your ability to envision the matter if you were to read the book. One must have a comprehension of American history to recognize the movement of American attitudes from 1957 to 2008.

One must!;)

I was only questioning the idea that the nation gained a new understanding on Nove 4. I think the threshold was probably crossed ten or twenty years ago.

[USViking]

:confused: How so?!?
Here is how:

I take it that the Presidency is the ultimate height
to which ambition can strive.

I take it as an inference that any lesser height is
also attainable to members of a ethnic group whose
number includes a successful presidential candidate.