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After reading volume 1 of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, I'm struck by how simple parts of (Caro's description of) Johnson's rise were.
Johnson got elected to the House and stayed there primarily because of one guy at one law firm which had the network to set state fundraising records, and did so for Johnson primarily because of a single gigantic favor he did for them[1].
Johnson got a great deal of leverage over other Congressmen because he was the one to realize Texas oilmen would give prodigiously if only they knew how to buy the results they wanted, and he convinced them he was the only reliable source of advice on how to do so (which he could get away with partially because the man they truly trusted, Sam Rayburn, lent his credibility to Johnson instead of leveraging it himself).
If this story was a movie, or a book shorter than 3000 pages (and counting) I would be sure it had been simplified for run time. I'm not ruling that out. But other parts of the book are more complicated than this, so I have to consider that politics can be simpler than I thought.
I'm sure he did other favors for them and their clients over the years, but as presented the relationship was set when he rescued New Deal funding for a dam.
I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with my point (that Johnson's rise had fewer moving parts than I expected) or just sharing an additional interesting fact.
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Disagreeing because it really wasn't that simple. He had to masterfully play multiple key people, it wasn't just "win the dam, win the day".
TBC I agree with you that becoming president was more complicated than win the dam, win the day. But that more complicated story is still much less complicated than I expected it to be.