Poetry

dull; he has an eye for the clarifying detail and vivid anecdote (as in his two chapters on Richard Russell). His crucial shortcoming—and it has hampered him since he published his first biography more than thirty years ago—is that he lacks any historical sense. As with most liberals, everything and everyone has to be fitted into a simple-minded dramatic scheme of heroes, villains (largely conservatives and big businessmen) , and victims (primarily blacks and Hispanics). A more complicated reality, and more complicated human motives, always pass him by.

He seems completely unaware, for example, that many of his heroes early in the book, midwestern and western Progressive senators like Hiram Johnson and Burton Wheeler, who made the New Deal possible, were also leading isolationists, a group he roundly condemns as reactionaries. Likewise, Richard Russell emerges as a racist bigot in one chapter because of his support for segregation, but then turns into Caro’s hero because he helps to prevent Republicans and Douglas MacArthur from toppling the Truman administration over the Korean War. Caro never attempts to explain the discrepancy, or to understand why Russell makes the political decisions he does. The only standards Caro attempts to apply to the actions of others are his own. This turns history into a moral minefield, in which the Good Guys in one chapter are instantly transformed into Bad Guys in the next, depending on whether they happen to support a progressive cause or oppose one.

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Poetry

dull; he has an eye for the clarifying detail and vivid anecdote (as in his two chapters on Richard Russell). His crucial shortcoming—and it has hampered him since he published his first biography more than thirty years ago—is that he lacks any historical sense. As with most liberals, everything and everyone has to be fitted into a simple-minded dramatic scheme of heroes, villains (largely conservatives and big businessmen) , and victims (primarily blacks and Hispanics). A more complicated reality, and more complicated human motives, always pass him by.

He seems completely unaware, for example, that many of his heroes early in the book, midwestern and western Progressive senators like Hiram Johnson and Burton Wheeler, who made the New Deal possible, were also leading isolationists, a group he roundly condemns as reactionaries. Likewise, Richard Russell emerges as a racist bigot in one chapter because of his support for segregation, but then turns into Caro’s hero because he helps to prevent Republicans and Douglas MacArthur from toppling the Truman administration over the Korean War. Caro never attempts to explain the discrepancy, or to understand why Russell makes the political decisions he does. The only standards Caro attempts to apply to the actions of others are his own. This turns history into a moral minefield, in which the Good Guys in one chapter are instantly transformed into Bad Guys in the next, depending on whether they happen to support a progressive cause or oppose one.