I doubt that I shall ever find the time to read Robert Caro’s multi-volumed biography of Lyndon Johnson, mesmerising though it sounds, but it is always fascinating to read the reactions of our current crop of politicians & policy-wonks to this consummately detailed account of power, politics & corruption.
But I shall try to lay hands on a copy of Volume 1, if only to read the ‘hundreds of pages’ in which Caro describes what life was like in the Texas hill country when young LBJ was growing up – years when there was no electricity [Dates?] & life was hard & grim.
I am grateful to Daniel Finkelstein for alerting me to this, in his recent Times opinion piece on the occasion of the publication of Caro’s 4th volume. Finkelstein concludes that the populace – the voters – will forgive, will not even want to know about, the scoundrelly nature, maybe the outright corruption, of those who can deliver such basic, life-transforming necessities.
But that rather begs the question of why such crooked tactics were necessary. The electrification of Britain was late, in comparison with Germany & the USA, & not without its battles & controversies, but otherwise seems to have been achieved in an admirably orderly fashion. How?
The lesson which our politicians should take from this is the vital necessity of this physical form of power to our modern polity & democracy – second only to, a vital component of, national security.
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