Three men were called: Johnson’s discussion with Baker, Connally, and Rowe is based on the author’s interviews with Connally and Rowe, and on Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, pp. 124–25. In an autobiography Connally “wrote” with Mickey Herskowitz, Connally’s description of some of the incidents described in this chapter sometimes varies somewhat—not in any significant aspect—from the way he described them to me, during three days of interviews with me at his ranch in 1985, and during other interviews with him in Austin in 1986. Since I went back and forth over these incidents with him, trying to make him remember all the details he could, I am using the wording he used with me.
“We were not”: Connally interview. “Your risk”: Connally, Rowe interviews. “He’ll never”: Connally interview. “Hate your guts”; “not a fully committed”; “angry and bitter”: Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, pp. 125–27. Baker quotes himself as making part of this argument to Senator Kerr a few minutes later, but both Connally and Rowe say Baker used the same phrases in the conversation with Johnson. “You’re going”: Connally interview. “A strong”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 125. “He would have to carry”; “I even expressed”: Connally interviews. “I don’t think”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 125. “Suppose you”; “You’re totally”: Connally interview.
“You’ll still have the Speaker”: Connally interview.
“You’re a heartbeat away”: Connally interview. “One heartbeat away”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 125. Rowe couldn’t; “On balance”; “I want”: Rowe interview; Rowe OH II; Senate Daily Diary, July 14, 1960. See also Office of the President Files, Box 8, (Moyers folders), LBJL. “And that one heartbeat”: Rowe interview.
“Quiet”: Connally interview. “Passive”; “Well, I’ll probably”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 125. “Well, I don’t”: Connally interview. “Oh, you can’t”: quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 256. “I was wrong”: Thornberry, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 256; Evans and Novak, LBJ, p. 279.
Rayburn had seen—Roosevelt Garner feud: Caro, The Path to Power, pp. 558–71. “No man”: Caro, Means, p. 558. “This New Deal”: Garner, quoted in Caro, Path, p. 563. “I saw Jack Garner”: Rayburn, quoted in Krock, Memoranda, July, 1960, p. 1, Arthur Krock Papers, LBJL. “The first thing”: Eugene Worley OH. “A premonition”; “They are going”: Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 528. “Obvious”: Clements, quoted in Drew Pearson Papers, LBJL.
“If he were available”: “I asked Lyndon if he were available for the vice presidency. He told me that he was. He then suggested that I discuss the matter with various party leaders while he conferred with his own advisers” (John F. Kennedy, “A Day I’ll Remember,” Look, Sept. 13, 1960). “There are a couple of problems”: Johnson to Hardeman “and others,” July 1960, quoted in Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, p. 441. They write that in this conversation “Johnson said he was committed not to accept without Rayburn’s approval. He had been trying frantically all morning to reach the Speaker.” Couldn’t even think: Krock, Memoranda, July 1960, p. 1, Arthur Krock Papers, “Reference File,” LBJL. Lyndon Johnson was to give many different versions of what had occurred. For example, in a tape recording he made for guidance for the ghostwriters of his autobiography, he said “he wanted me on the ticket. I said, ‘You want a good Majority Leader to help you pass your program.’ I didn’t want to be vice president. I didn’t want to leave the Senate.… I told Kennedy, ‘Rayburn is against and my state will say I ran out on them.’ Kennedy said, ’Well think it over and let’s talk about it again at 3:30 …. The President said, ‘Can I talk to Rayburn?’ … Kennedy talked Rayburn into it …” (“Reminiscences of Lyndon B. Johnson, transcript of tape recording, Aug. 19, 1969,” OH Collection, LBJL). On another occasion, he said that Kennedy had begun by saying “that he had said many times that he thought I was the best qualified for the presidency by experience, but that as a southerner I could not be nominated. He said he felt that I should be the one who would succeed if anything happened to him” (Schlesinger, “Author’s View on How Johnson was Chosen—J.F.K.—’I Held It Out … He Grabbed at It,” Life, July 16, 1965). He gave a similar version to Potter: “He said he hoped I could run with him, that he had said many times …”
Kennedy said he had already checked; “people like”: Jenkins, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 257. If Rayburn had anything: Johnson, quoted in Philip Potter, “How LBJ Got the Nomination,” The Reporter, June 18, 1964. “Senate Daily Diary,” July 14, 1960. This “diary” was kept by Johnson’s secretaries. Based of course on what Johnson told them about this meeting, it says, “Senator Kennedy … did ask Senator Johnson to be his running mate. Senator Johnson told him he was not interested.” Kennedy said: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” “With quick nods”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 126. Whatever had been said: Mazo wrote that the conversation between the two men touched only obliquely on the real purpose of the visit.… Nothing was offered in so many words. It wasn’t necessary. Nor did Sen. Johnson protest his innocence of any desire for the office. That was not necessary either. The two men understood each other, according to their intimates” (NYHT, July 16, 1960). According to Potter, Johnson gave him the following account. “He said he hoped I could run with him.… He said he felt that I should be the one who would succeed if anything happened to him.… I told him I appreciated his offer but thought I should stay as majority leader.… I said I would give it thought, however.…” (Potter, “How LBJ Got”). “We talked mostly”: LAT, July 15, 1960. “You were right”: Connally interview. “He said”: Jenkins, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 257. “That he had just”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 190; Miller, Lyndon, pp. 257–58. The Vice President should be: Jenkins, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 257. Hale Boggs recalls that Corcoran and Foley “told me that President Kennedy had offered the vice [presidency] to Johnson, but that Johnson was going to do whatever Mr. Rayburn told him to do” (Boggs OH).
Kerr and Baker: Baker, Wheeling, pp. 126–27.
Whether Johnson would mind: Arthur Schlesinger, during interview with Robert Kennedy, Feb. 27, 1965, quoted in Guthman and Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words, p. 24.
“The idea”: Guthman and Shulman, eds., In His Own Words, pp. 20, 21. “You just”: Guthman and Shulman, eds., In His Own Words, pp. 24, 25.
A “gesture”: Charles Bartlett, “On Choosing a Vice President,” WES, March 10, 1964. “I just held it out like this … and he grabbed it:” Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 49. In an oral history he gave the LBJL, Bartlett related Kennedy’s words this way: “He said, ‘I didn’t really offer the nomination to Lyndon Johnson. I just held it out to here’—and with his hand he gestured two or three inches from his pocket.” In this oral history, Bartlett says that Jack Kennedy said even more: “He said, ’I hear your editors are upset because you said that Symington was going to be vice president. Well, you can tell them that if you’re surprised, so am I.” In another oral history, given to the JFKL (p. 49) he quotes Kennedy as having told him, “ ‘I didn’t offer the vice presidency to Lyndon.’ He said, ‘I just held it out to here …’ They told him this was a gesture that he had to make, and then he went down and made the gesture, thinking he’d get it over with early in the morning.… When he went down there he didn’t think there was a reason in the world to believe that Lyndon would accept the thing.” “Shocked” when Johnson “seized”: Robert Kennedy used the word “shocked” when, not long after the Bartlett article appeared, he was interviewed by Philip Potter.
Schlesinger’s repeating: His acceptance of Robert Kennedy’s version as accurate began in 1965, with his article (an excerpt from his book, A Thousand Days, which would be published that year), “Author’s View on How Johnson was Chosen—J.F.K.—’I Held It Out … He Grabbed at It,” Life, July 16, 1965. Kennedy, Schlesinger wrote, “decided to do this [offer the vice presidency to Johnson] because he thought it imperative to restore relations with the Senate leader.… He was certain that there was practically no chance that Johnson would accept.… Kennedy returned to his own suite in a
state of considerable bafflement.” This view is, of course, also in Robert Kennedy and His Times, published in 1978. Contrary views were assailed with his customary vigor. Responding to one by the journalist Tom Morgan in American Heritage, he wrote, in a letter to the editor, “In fact, as Robert Kennedy’s oral history makes clear, the offer of the vice-presidential nomination was pro forma; the Kennedys never dreamed Johnson would accept the offer and when he did, John Kennedy sent Robert Kennedy to do his best to persuade Johnson to change his mind.” (Among his other published reiterations of this view is “Correspondence,” American Heritage, Dec. 1984). Others have repeated it so often that it has been accepted. Hugh Sidey, in Time, July 25, 1988, says “Boston-Austin Was an Accident.” But there are Jack Kennedy statements that lead to the other view. For example, the columnist Peter Lisagor says that on the Kennedy campaign plane after the convention, “I said to him, ‘Boy, that was either the most inspired choice for vice president or the most cynical.’ Jack Kennedy said, ‘Cynical!’ He bristled at the word cynical. He said, ‘It’s not cynical at all. Democrats have always done this—an eastern candidate and a Southerner.’ He even went to Al Smith, and he said, ‘He chose Joe Robinson from Arkansas. So Democrats have always done this. It wasn’t cynical at all.’ He wanted to win. He said, ‘I don’t think it was cynical.’ And he took great umbrage at the word cynical. It led me to believe that in the continuing controversy over whether he wanted Lyndon Johnson or not … I’ve always felt as a result of that conversation that he had thought it out fairly thoroughly, and maybe he had toyed with some other people, but the idea of winning some southern states prevailed, and he hoped that Lyndon Johnson would take that” (Lisagor OH, JFKL).
Telephoning Bobby: Potter, “How LBJ Got”; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” pp. 191–92; Salinger OH. “Plus Texas”: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” “How many electoral votes?”: Salinger, quoted in Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p. 48; Salinger OH. “Yes, we are”: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” “Thereupon”: Salinger OH.
Meeting with northern bosses: This account is based on Salinger, P.S.: A Memoir, pp. 80–81, Salinger OH; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” pp. 191–92; and Potter, “How LBJ Got.” Had telephoned Lawrence; “I don’t want to go”; “authorized”: McCloskey interview with Donaghy, Nov. 2, 1970, p. 3, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh. The “old pros”: WP, July 15, 1960. “It looked as though”; “All of them”; “I could have belted”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 192. “Now Nixon”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 192. “Wait a min-ute”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” pp. 192–93. “I’m forty-three”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 193. “You get”: O’Donnell OH. “He wanted”: O’Donnell, quoted in Potter, “How LBJ Got.”
“Jack Kennedy had made”; “he was perhaps,” etc: O’Brien OH I. O’Brien puts the time of his summons to Kennedy’s suite at “6 A.M. or something” like that, but it is clear from his description of what happened when he arrived that it occurred after John Kennedy’s meeting with Johnson.
“Sam was in”: Patman, quoted in Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 530. “Johnson was going to do”: Boggs OH I. The exact same words were used by Corcoran in one of his interviews with the author. “Rayburn was adamant”: Clements OH. Boggs told Corcoran: Krock, Memoranda, July 1960, p. 1; Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, p. 442; Boggs OH; Boggs, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 256. “reiterated strongly”: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” Poignant: The closest Rayburn came to giving voice to those feelings was during his conversation with Johnson immediately after Jack Kennedy had left his suite. He said, according to Johnson, that “He would not be happy without me on the Hill” (Potter, How LBJ Got”). Rayburn said he would; “I think”: Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, pp. 441, 442.
“John, I’ve got”: Holton interview. Holton gave a slightly different version of these quotes to C. Dwight Dorough, in Dorough’s Mr. Sam, p. 569. “I told him”: Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, pp. 443, 519.
“Positively exuberant:” Boggs, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 257. He told O’Brien and other aides: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” “Briskly”: DMN, July 15, 1960. “I don’t”: Connally interview. “A wiser man”: Potter, “How LBJ Got.” Johnson was to give a longer version of this remark in his “Reminiscences”: “Because I’m a sadder and wiser and smarter man this morning than I was last night” (“Reminiscences of President Lyndon Baines Johnson,” Aug. 19, 1969, p. 8).
“And then”: Connally interview. “It is a trap”: White, The Making of the President, 1964, p. 86.
Number of meetings conflict: Jim Rowe says (OH II), “I finally concluded that where everybody misses what actually happened was that there were three periods of conversation between Johnson and Kennedy, and most people got them down to two. That is why I think all this confusion exists.” But it is only part of the reason that confusion exists. Schlesinger says: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 209. Connally says: “He [Bobby Kennedy] came not once—he came three times.” Transcript, “An American Profile,” C-Span, July 1, 1991, p. 11; Connally interview. Johnson was to say, “He came to my room three times to try to get me to say we wouldn’t run on the ticket” (Johnson, “Reminiscences,” p. 6). Juanita Roberts, in her Pre-Presidential Daily Diary, in effect a log of Johnson’s activities, lists only two trips that Robert Kennedy made down to the Johnson suite.
Telephone conversations conflict; Graham says four: They are enumerated in Graham Memo. Rowe says three: In his OH II. In his “Private Memorandum, Sept. 22, 1960,” p. 2, Arthur Krock says Jack Kennedy “twice sent his brother, Robert F., to Johnson …” (Arthur Krock Papers, LBJL). The description of these meetings in this book is based on the author’s interviews—repeated interviews, in an attempt to clear up the discrepancies between the various accounts—with Busby, Connally, Corcoran, Hardeman, Hol-ton, Jenkins, Reedy, and Rowe. The only people alive present that day who refused to talk to the author about it were Bobby Baker and Bill Moyers. Baker’s description comes from his book, Wheeling and Dealing.
Another principal source for this section is the memorandum, “Notes on the 1960 Democratic Convention,” dated July 19, 1960, written by Philip Graham and hereafter referred to as “Graham Memo.” Philip Potter interviewed Johnson, both Jack and Robert Kennedy, O’Brien, and O’Donnell, for a detailed account, “How LBJ Got the Nomination,” that appeared in the issue of The Reporter dated June 18, 1964.
First meeting: The account of this meeting is based on Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, p. 443, and interviews with Connally. Also BS, July 16, which quotes Rayburn as saying to Bobby not “Shit!” but “utter nonsense.” The Sun said that “Robert was advised that Johnson and his lieutenants were in negotiations with his brother and not with him.” The paper said that “Young Kennedy refused tonight to confirm or deny this, asserting that he had no desire to contradict an ‘elder statesman of the party.’ ” “I don’t want”: Connally interview; transcript, “An American Profile,” C-Span, July 1, 1991, p. 11. Were waiting … “for the obvious”: Graham Memo, p. 16. “His hair all hanging down”; “told me”: Rayburn, quoted in Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, p. 443. “ ‘We’ve got to’ ”: Connally interview. Democratic National Committee offer: Graham Memo, p. 16. The Rayburn and Connally version of this meeting is supported by Earle Clements, who was in the Johnson suite when Rayburn and Connally emerged from this meeting. Clements says that both Rayburn and Connally told him at that time “that Bobby said there was great opposition from Labor and wouldn’t Johnson become chairman of the National Committee …” He says that when Rayburn refused that offer, “Bobby said ‘Then he’ll be the nominee for vice president.’ ” The uncertainty in the Johnson camp about Jack Kennedy’s true feelings is shown by a remark Lady Bird made to Clements a few minutes later: “Do you think they really want him?” (Clements OH). “ ‘Shit’ ”: Graham Memo, p. 16; Connally interview; on a television program, he cleaned up the quote, saying,
“He just kind of spit and used an expletive” (Transcript, “An American Profile,” C-Span, July 1, 1991, p. 12).
“Lady Bird intervened”; “felt L.B.J.”: Graham Memo, pp. 8, 9. Connally says she said, “Lyndon, I hope you won’t do this” (Connally interview).
“Agreeing with her; You don’t want it”: Graham Memo, p. 9. “ ‘All of us were pacing’ ”; And “finally”: Graham Memo, p. 9. “By which, it soon turned out, Johnson meant”: Connally, Rowe interviews. Rayburn went back; “Then it’s Lyndon”: Rayburn interview with Hardeman, quoted in Hardeman and Bacon, Rayburn, p. 444; Connally interview. Juanita Roberts, in her Pre-Presidential Diary, says: “Bob Kennedy said, ‘Well, it’s Jack and Lyndon.’ ” “Suddenly”: DMN, July 15, 1960.
“As witness”: Graham Memo, p. 9.
“He said something”: Graham Memo, p. 9. “Both agreed”; “Jack was utterly calm”: Graham Memo, p. 10. This account is supported by David Lawrence’s son, Gerald, who says that his father was writing the nomination speech (Gerald Lawrence OH, interview with Donaghy, July 16, 1973, Michael P. Weber Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh).
“Come with me!”; “And there was Bobby Kennedy”: Busby, Connally interviews. None of them would ever: Busby, Connally interviews. Rowe and Holton heard about Rayburn’s remark a few minutes later.
Rayburn refused to see him; “It’s getting worse”: Connally interview. In another version, in Transcript, “An American Profile,” C-Span, July 1, 1991, p. 12, Connally says Bobby said, “He’s [Johnson’s] just got to do it. I said, ‘Well, Bobby, he’s not going to do that,’ so he left. Ten minutes later, he’s back … had been back down to see Rayburn … and had said Jack would phone directly.”
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