Opinion | Remembering the Johnson Treatment (Published 2002)

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Publication of Robert Caro's magisterial ''Master of the Senate'' -- it is the third volume in his biography of Lyndon Johnson and covers 1949 to 1960 -- has reignited interest in the singular man who gave us the great Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- and then Vietnam. Mr. Caro concludes from long and deep study that when Johnson's vivid sense of compassion came into conflict with his powerful ambition -- he wanted not just to be president but to surpass his hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt -- ambition won out.

Probably so; and most of us who saw the master of the Senate at work in the 1950's, even as he fought for the 1957 civil rights act, would likely agree. But that conclusion does not quite account for the well-authenticated story about the night Congress finally passed a more sweeping civil rights act, in 1964 -- a bill that, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is the true charter of citizenship for many Americans.

Bill Moyers, then a young White House staff assistant, is said to have called President Johnson to congratulate him on this triumph. Silence ensued; then L.B.J. replied: ''Bill, I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.''

Johnson died in 1973. The South was lost to the Democratic Party for longer than perhaps even he expected. I can imagine no president since, and few before, who would have pushed, pulled, cajoled, conned, argued, dealt and rammed any legislation past Congress at such a high political price.

Ambition? Compassion? Does it matter?

On the other hand, not authenticated at all but considered characteristic was a story well known in President Johnson's Washington. He liked to drive himself about his ranch and vicinity and supposedly was stopped for speeding one day by a Texas patrolman. When the cop saw who the driver was, he gasped, ''My God!'' Whereupon, as the story had it, the president replied: ''And don't you forget it!''

Who'd tell such a tale about George W. Bush, a different kind of Texan?

Clashing ambition and compassion was not the only contradiction in Lyndon Johnson's remarkable self. The glowering, near villainous-looking figure who took the nation so deeply into Vietnam could be charming, a funny and eloquent raconteur. His hand-wringing, quaver-voiced mimicry of Adlai Stevenson, for example, was no doubt unfair, but hilarious and memorable.