Up From Purgatory : THE TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY OF LYNDON JOHNSON, <i> By Joseph A. Califano Jr. (Simon & Schuster: $25; 360 pp.)</i>

If things can be said to be looking up for a dead man, then things--at long last--are looking up for Lyndon B. Johnson.

For close to a quarter-century now, the 36th President of the United States has dwelled in a political and historical purgatory: hounded from office, reviled in retirement by journalists both liberal and conservative, raked over the coals by keepers of Camelot’s flame, ignored by his political party as an old embarrassment, hatcheted by author Robert Caro as if guilty of perfidy, selfishness and scheming with his every breath.

Lord knows ol’ Lyndon had many a wart, and as Joseph A. Califano Jr. reveals in his new book, many were of L.B.J.’s own making and can never be scraped off. But Califano’s “The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson”--as did Robert Dallek’s recent “Lone Star Rising”--reminds us anew that there was more to L.B.J. than Vietnam blunders, chicanery and vulgar hoo-hawing. Perhaps a tiny movement has begun to look at L.B.J. with both eyes, not just through hostile one-eyed squints.

Considering Lyndon Johnson’s dedication to helping minorities and the poor, generally trying to make life better for the American masses--his unmatched successes along those lines are perhaps rivaled only by F.D.R.--it is difficult, in the absence of the passionate turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s, to rhyme L.B.J.’s sorry reputation with his energetic and worthwhile work. One reason for the disparity between perception and reality was that L.B.J. had the misfortune to follow a handsome, stylish and martyred President; another was that the people Johnson most tried to set free used their new freedom to expect more and demand more. And a third reason was that poor ol’ L.B.J. was so eager to be appreciated that he made improbable claims, and in so doing often shot himself in the foot. One who was critical of Lyndon Johnson during his turbulent lifetime has come to believe that L.B.J. deserved better than he received, and I am not speaking here of Joseph A. Califano Jr. My own writings against Johnson--in Harper’s, the Progressive, the Texas Observer and elsewhere--viewed across the years now seem strident, harsh and ill-willed. Surely, if we can easily resurrect, rehabilitate and reconsider Richard M. Nixon, then we can afford a softer second look at the big man from Texas.

To be sure, Joe Califano as one of L.B.J.’s closest White House gurus might be expected to look upon his old boss with a certain charity: President Johnson’s record, to some extent, also was Califano’s. And Califano saw Johnson’s agony up close, a behind-the-scenes mitigation unavailable to most of us. But Califano has written no adoring whitewash: Those famous warts are visible in his book; they just don’t seem as important as they did in a time of greater passions, when weighed against the Johnsonian accomplishments.

In the 89th Congress alone, L.B.J. pushed to passage 181 domestic bills of 200 he sought; perhaps F.D.R. equaled that percentage in the first desperate “one hundred days” of the New Deal, but otherwise the record makes other Presidents look like sloths. Nor were these mere “toilet paper and ice water” bills--minor measures long on public-relations rhetoric but short of legislative teeth. No sir, included were 18 education bills, 24 medical-care bills, 20 conservation bills, bills to attack poverty, secure minority voting rights, establish model cities, mass transit and drug rehabilitation clinics, award rent supplements; bills to assist consumers with truth-in-packaging, hazardous substances, unsafe toys, highway- and auto-safety laws.

Lyndon Johnson also appointed the first black Cabinet member (Robert Weaver), the first black Supreme Court Justice (Thurgood Marshall) and the first black mayor of a major American city (Walter Washington of the District of Columbia); many of his Great Society social programs were directed at benefiting blacks, Hispanics and to some extent women. How much concern for these have been shown by recent Presidents? You don’t have to answer if you are white and embarrass easily.

Why, then, do we dislike Lyndon B. Johnson so much? The answer perhaps was given by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson when L.B.J. plaintively asked, “Dean, why don’t folks like me?” and Acheson bravely said, “Mr. President, you simply are not a very likeable man.”

That “unlikeable man” makes his appearances in Califano’s work: cursing his hard-working staffers and pouting if any of them shared the tiniest corner of the public spotlight; lying; bragging; compromising a Supreme Court Justice--Abe Fortas--by using him to assist Administration goals without worrying, apparently, over the Constitutional separation of powers. “Men are moved by love and fear,” L.B.J. told his intimates--and, often, he seemed to manipulate them for no reason other than to prove his theory.

But there are glimpses, too, of the “good” L.B.J. and L.B.J. the political master as he goes to work to attain his legislative goals. Califano provides many examples of Johnson’s manipulations--in detail, in the specifics--as he worked his will in the intricate Washington maze. These are probably as close as we’ll ever come to seeing Johnson in action with our mind’s eye, thanks to Califano’s descriptions and care. Here we see the L.B.J. who was part Machiavelli, part Falstaff, part Fagin, part Robespierre, part Robin Hood and part American Original. The view is worth the price of admission.

Joe Califano worked in the Kennedy, Johnson and Carter administrations, always near the seats of power. He knows the system, how it works, and--often--why it does not. Not many will give you a better tour of political Washington, or such an intimate look at the big, flawed man who was Lyndon B. Johnson.

AP NEWSFEATURES BOOKMARK: For an excerpt from “The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson,” see the Opinion section, Page 3.