Interview
What Robert Caro learned about power after studying it for 50 years
- Robert Caro anticipates completing his four-volume Lyndon Johnson biography will require more than 40 years, extending from his start in the 1970s, a timeline he would not alter despite his current age.
- Caro plans to deposit his archive, comprising 700 interviews and extensive notes, at the New York Historical Society to prioritize scholar accessibility over a higher financial offer from the University of Texas.
- Future researchers are expected to utilize the archive to gain new insights into Sam Rayburn, the evolution of New York, and the history of the Texas Hill Country, including detailed notes on frontier loneliness previously cut from published works.
- Historians are predicted to conclude that major domestic laws passed between 1963 and 1965, specifically regarding civil rights and anti-poverty, would not have been enacted had John Kennedy won the 1960 election and Lyndon Johnson remained Majority Leader without the presidency.
- A future "Moses-type" figure is not expected to emerge who is ruthless or dismissive of public opinion, though such an individual with a "Moses-type attitude" could potentially overcome modern safeguards to build large-scale infrastructure.
- Without a singular visionary leader, society may rely on working around bureaucratic obstacles to construct major projects, similar to the rapid railway construction observed in China.
- Infrastructure development is projected to stall for decades due to property owner opposition until a "political genius" arrives to facilitate sudden construction.
- The "great tragedy" of Johnson's presidency is identified as the Vietnam War derailing his domestic achievements in education and poverty reduction.
- The motivation behind Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War remains an unresolved mystery that Caro continues to investigate.
- Caro expresses a strong internal drive to continue writing material he believes is necessary, even if he anticipates it will eventually be cut from the final work.