K-mushy

The local paper's editorial page editor is David Kushma. He writes a Sunday column that he really, really should reconsider. Kushma could be politely described as a middle-brow lightweight, a man whose best talent as a writer is summarising and repeating the statements of others.

In this story, he says that he's been reading Robert Caro's magisterial work on Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate. But then he goes on to try to compare Tennessee's Legislative leaders to LBJ and to try to draw some comparisons. It does not go well for him.

Kushma goes to some length to detail LBJ's style and methods:

Johnson's methods weren't always admirable; they could be
ruthless. He threatened and bullied and wheedled and cajoled
and demanded obedience. You often don't like the LBJ whom
Caro portrays, and you sense he doesn't, either.

He applied every bit of his knowledge of arcane Senate rules and
procedures, his expertise in crafting amendments and bartering
votes on unrelated matters, his genius for political strategy and
tactics, and most of all his iron-fisted ability to get others to
follow him. And he got the job done.

By contrast, Caro goes to great lengths to describe Johnson's
mastery of vote counting, of knowing every time a tally changed.
He would take ostentatious note of any senator, at least in his
own party, who voted against him. There would be a price to pay
later. And Caro's account suggests you wouldn't even think of
lying to him.

Amazingly, Kushma tries to hold this up as a model for a good way to lead! He writes:

But in success or failure, Caro's biography makes clear, he understood
power and leadership, and how to exercise both to good ends.

So, according to Kushma, the ends justify the means. But the most amazing, most jaw-droppingly amazing, part of the column is when he tries to equate the 1964 Civil Rights Bill with Tennessee's income tax "reform."

The centerpiece of the book is Caro's account of Johnson's work
in 1957 to shape and pass the first federal civil rights bill since
1875. That effort seemed at least as impossible at the time as
the prospect that Tennessee's legislature would enact a budget
this year that would distribute the state tax burden more fairly
among all Tennesseans, and support such vital state services as
education and health care adequately....
Just as a lack of leadership in Nashville - not just in the past few
days, but for years - has brought our state to its sad plight.

And Kushma does this with his usual blithe, sincere and clueless style. Utterly amazing.

Until next time, that is all.