Caro laughs. “It’s not going to happen,” he says. “Because I’ll tell you why. Because it’s all outlined. It’s one book. His presidency is Vietnam and the Great Society. They’re not two different things. He’s doing Vietnam and doing the Great Society simultaneously. So the book is definitely one book. In this book, there’s an ending. I have my ending, and I have all the things leading up to it. It’s not just Medicare. In ’65, he passes Medicare, Medicaid, seven different education bills. Everything we think of: student loans, college construction, reforms the immigration bill and does other stuff. At the same time, he’s escalating the Vietnam War. It’s one story.” [...]
We talk some more about perhaps his most enduring theme: power. He’s all too aware of the truisms. “I don’t believe that power always corrupts,” he says. “Power reveals.” His work has shown, over and over, that as people fight their way to power, they often hide what they really think, who they really are. But once they have power, the truth—good or bad, ugly or admirable—inevitably reveals itself.