Luck plays a big part in presidents’ reputations – and not just in terms of what happens while they are in office (wars give presidents a boost; financial crises don’t). There is also the luck of who writes their biographies once they have gone. In this respect, the luckiest president of the past century has been Lyndon Johnson, the subject of a monumental, multivolume labour of love by the pre-eminent political biographer Robert Caro that has redeemed the ex-president’s reputation. Caro’s LBJ emerges as the ultimate fixer, a politician who knew better than anyone how to get his way in the vipers’ nest of Washington. Because of Caro, it’s Johnson’s wiles that people look to when they ask how Barack Obama could do better in his dealings with Congress. As LBJ’s stock has risen, that of his predecessor has fallen. John F Kennedy has become the man who merely talked about the transformative legislative programme that Johnson turned into reality.
more from David Runciman at The New Statesman here.