By contrast, Roosevelt had adapted all his life to changing circumstances. The routine of his placid childhood had been disrupted forever by his father’s heart attack and eventual death. Told he would never walk again, he had experimented with one method after another to improve his mobility. So now, as Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency, he built on his own long encounter with adversity: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
On Election Day, by an overwhelming majority, the people chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt as their president. In a time of national duress, it was Roosevelt’s confident cheer and powerful shoulders—symbols of his resilience—that made it possible for the common people not only to believe and trust him but to identify with him. As a young man, Franklin had daydreamed of ascending step by step to the presidency, but that narrative had been disrupted by paralysis and Warm Springs. There can be found the unlikely fulcrum point of both his ascent to the White House and his activist, experimental, and empathetic leadership. He had come through a dark time. And so would they all.
EIGHT
LYNDON JOHNSON
“The most miserable period of my life”
From his early twenties, Lyndon Johnson had operated upon the premise that if “he could get up earlier and meet more people and stay up later than anybody else,” victory would be his. For a decade he had toiled nonstop. He had no hobbies and had developed no ways to relax. His goal was simply and solely to win. As debate coach, he had led his team to the championship; as secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg, he had earned a reputation as the best secretary on Capitol Hill; as the youngest director of any state’s NYA, he had instituted projects that served as models for the entire nation; as a freshman congressman, he was touted as a “wunderkind” for bringing rural electricity to the Hill Country.
In his run for a Senate seat in 1941, the most important campaign of his life, he lost. Abraham Lincoln’s loss in his first election had neither diminished his hopes nor stifled his ambition. On the contrary, as one “familiar with disappointments,” he had been heartened by the nearly unanimous vote he had received from those who knew him best—the voters in his own small hamlet of New Salem. Franklin Roosevelt considered his lost vice-presidential run “a darn good sail,” an experience that had expanded his contacts and reputation across the nation.
But elections for Johnson were fraught with extra meaning: He felt the Senate loss as a bodily blow, a referendum on his self-worth. He had been weighed by the public and been found wanting. This defeat that should have been merely an obstacle in his political career became, for Johnson, a life-altering ordeal, changing the nature of his ambition and setting in motion a protracted depression he later described as “the most miserable period of my life.”
* * *
How had Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt’s protégé, a man willing and able to work with greater focus and intensity than any of his opponents, failed to secure the Senate seat he coveted with every fiber of his being?
Death had once again opened the door to opportunity and advancement. Four years earlier a headline spied on a park bench announcing the death of Congressman James Buchanan had led to the start of his congressional career. Now, on April 9, 1941, a brain hemorrhage would strike down the senior senator from Texas, Morris Sheppard, calling forth another special election. Johnson’s aide, Walter Jenkins, remembered that when he called Johnson at home to deliver the news early that morning, Lyndon was “immediately interested.”
A cleverly staged scene signaled Lyndon Johnson’s launch into the race. On April 22, Johnson met privately with Roosevelt, allowing reporters gathered for the president’s scheduled press conference to observe the young congressman’s entrance and departure from the Oval Office. Shortly afterward, on the White House steps, Johnson formally announced he was running for the Senate. When reporters were ushered into the Oval Office, a genial Roosevelt awaited them. “Lyndon Johnson just announced he is a candidate for the Senate in Texas,” one reporter began. “Any comment on that?” With a laugh, the president replied, “He told me, too.” “You don’t mingle in these State primaries,” the reporter said, “but I would like to ask if you look with favor upon Mr. Johnson?”
“Wouldn’t that be mingling if I said yes or no? Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?” Roosevelt queried. Laughing along with the president, the reporter countered, “She’s away. That’s the answer to that,” at which point the entire press corps burst into laughter. High spirits prevailed as Roosevelt laid out a three-part recipe: “Now it is up to the State of Texas to elect their own Senator, that is number one. Number two, I can’t take part in the Texas primary. Number three, if you ask me about Lyndon Johnson himself, I can only say what is perfectly true—that he is a very old and close friend of mine. Now don’t try to tie those things together!”
From the very start of the campaign, Johnson sought to fuse his image with that of FDR, as if his mentor had not only schooled but hatched the protégé. “If you really want to continue and help Roosevelt,” Johnson reiterated, “there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to elect me.” Four years earlier, at Lyndon’s first meeting with Roosevelt in Galveston, a picture had been taken showing him reaching over Texas governor James Allred to shake hands with the president. This photo, with the governor erased from the frame, became the signature image of the campaign, the sloganeering jingle of which was “Franklin D. and Lyndon B.” Johnson would need all the presidential boost available, for he faced three formidable opponents, all far better known statewide than he—popular governor Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, five-term congressman Martin Dies, and Attorney General Gerald Mann.
The enormous scale of Texas, vaster than all the New England states combined, proved challenging for Johnson, whose gifts of persuasion hinged upon making connections on a human scale. In a statewide race, attempt as he might to shake every hand (as if touch alone could convey conviction and extract a vote), the shortness of the special election and the distance he had to cover worked against him and required a frenetic pace that made his speedy handshakes seem mechanical. In his first congressional campaign in the 10th District, he had spoken extemporaneously before hundreds of small groups, winding up presentations in five minutes in order to leave fifteen minutes for direct talk and contact with individual voters. The 10th Congressional District was one of twenty in which he would now have to campaign and in the majority of those districts he was a virtual unknown. Necessity demanded that in each district he speak before the largest audiences possible, separated from the people by a stage.
In such formal settings, Johnson betrayed a crippling incapacity to speak naturally. His conception of senatorial dignity compelled him to give hour-long speeches, strike an elevated tone, and steer clear of the raw figures of speech that so enlivened his improvisational delivery. Invariably, the crowds began drifting away before his lackluster speeches drew to a close. The same man whose “tremendously commanding presence” could dominate any room he entered seemed ill at ease when framed by the proscenium of the stage, frozen in place.
Lyndon’s confidence was further rattled when a series of early polls showed him badly trailing the four-man pack. Apprehension that he might lose began to take its toll upon his body. “When my mother and wife told me that I was the last man in the race,” he recalled, “my throat got bad on me, and I had to spend a few days in the hospital.” Those two days grew into two weeks, then worsened into “nervous exhaustion,” a condition that the campaign sought to conceal. “He was depressed and it was bad,” Lady Bird recalled. Once before, a collapse during his first congressional campaign had been followed by appendicitis, setting a clustered pattern of ailments—rashes, colitis, ulcers, inflamed bowels—that political stress would wreak upon his anxious body.
His spirits began to lift when a s
trategy was devised to draw more people to his rallies and minimize his speaking deficiencies. During his time as debate coach he had created a carnival aura around the events, providing pep rallies, songs, and cheerleading normally associated with athletic contests. What if traditional political rallies were turned into circuslike entertainment, as if the Henly picnic of his youth exploded into a full-blown variety show and revue?
Such a plan would require a massive infusion of money, which Johnson had access to through wealthy Texans introduced to him by Alvin Wirtz, a group including George and Herman Brown, founders of Brown and Root Construction Company. The Brown brothers put together tens of thousands of illegal corporate dollars, which they categorized as “legal fees” or “bonuses” to their employees, who then made individual contributions to the Johnson campaign. The money allowed the campaign to hire a charismatic radio personality and successful advertising executive to produce and market the theatrical/musical events, write the scripts, hire the talent, and transport the twenty-four-piece jazz band and the cast of singers and dancers from place to place. The evenings, billed as patriotic pageants in a time of war, began with selections from a jazz band attired in white dinner jackets, followed by “America the Beautiful” and other patriotic songs.
With the audience appropriately stirred, Lyndon appeared onstage. Standing in front of a towering image of himself shaking hands with Roosevelt, he “shed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and launched into an extemporaneous talk in which he let his hair down and talked turkey.” He promised to be a senator who could get things done; he pledged to do the job President Roosevelt wanted him to do—had indeed asked him to do. The well-advertised climax followed, the foremost reason no one left their seats: Upon entry, every person had been given a raffle ticket; the numbers drawn from a giant bowl on the stage corresponded to defense bonds and stamps, worth anything from $1 to $100 for the lucky winners.
As Johnson’s crowds swelled in size and enthusiasm, his poll numbers followed suit. From a mere 5 percent at the bottom of the four-man race, Johnson climbed to 20 percent and then to 30 and finally, in the last week, he pulled slightly ahead of front-runner Governor O’Daniel. But polls only told a piece of the story. Texas politics at the time was rife with corruption. In certain counties in South and East Texas, the local bosses could “deliver” whatever votes were needed in a close election. With the money flowing into his campaign, Johnson had easily outbid the others to secure the controlled votes in South Texas. By Election Day, Johnson was confident of victory. Early returns gave him such a healthy lead that a photograph appeared in the press showing him being carried aloft by campaign workers.
It was at this moment that an ebullient Johnson let down his guard and released the purchased precincts that were traditionally withheld until all the official votes were in. The early release widened his margin still further and by the end of the evening, Johnson was ahead by five thousand votes, though paper ballots from rural precincts were still trickling in. “Lyndon Johnson Captures Senatorial Election,” headlined the McAllen Daily Press. The Dallas News suggested, “Only Miracle Can Keep FDR’s Anointed Out.” The next day, that “miracle” came to pass. A large swath of O’Daniel votes suddenly materialized from counties in boss-controlled East Texas. And because Johnson had revealed the hand he held, the O’Daniel campaign knew precisely the hand they needed to win the election. When all the votes were “counted,” O’Daniel was declared the victor by a margin of 1,311 votes.
* * *
As he prepared to return to his seat in the House, Johnson feared a diminution of the respect and affection he had gained over the years in Washington. From his vantage, the psychic landscape of the House he had left was not the same he returned to now in defeat. He felt he had disappointed, even embarrassed, President Roosevelt, who had gone out of his way to support his candidacy. “We gave him everything we could, everything,” Roosevelt adviser Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran recalled, but “he didn’t win.” So disquieted was Johnson, feeling he had lost favor with the White House, that he refrained from calling on the president. “I felt that I had written too many checks on my rather wobbly account,” he confided to Governor Allred. “I had overdrawn, and I did not want a check to bounce back in my face.” Eventually, Roosevelt reached out to Johnson and, in a private meeting at the White House, tried to lift Johnson’s spirits with a teasing remark: “Lyndon, apparently you Texans haven’t learned one of the first things we learned up in New York State, and that is when the election is over, you have to sit on ballot boxes.” Despite Roosevelt’s continued support, Johnson remained despondent. He was no longer the boy wonder; he no longer saw a limitless future before him. He was simply one of 435 congressmen consigned to remain in a place where everyone, including his overburdened staff, knew he had failed.
To consider Lyndon Johnson’s 1941 electoral loss as a catalyst for a crucible event on the order of the debilitating depression that led Abraham Lincoln’s friends to remove all knives, scissors, and razors from his room, or the deaths of a wife and mother that confronted Theodore Roosevelt on the same day in the same house, or the polio that left Franklin Roosevelt a paraplegic and threatened all his dreams, seems an exercise in hyperbole—unless Lyndon Johnson’s insecurity and the fusion of his public and private life are taken into account.
Politics had consumed Johnson from earliest childhood when he had eavesdropped on the political stories his father swapped with cronies on the side porch. The boy trailed his father through the statehouse and blissfully accompanied him on the campaign trail. While he momentarily and gratuitously considered leaving public life after his Senate defeat, he had no political alternative but to keep the congressional seat he still retained after the special Senate election loss. Nor could he find solace in his private life, which essentially existed to propel his public life. He had cultivated few pastimes that did not overlap with public affairs. Even the act of eating was essentially gobbling nutrition to move from place to place. Lyndon Johnson ate, drank, and slept politics.
In the months after the collapse of his dream of making Illinois an economic model for the country, Abraham Lincoln was able to resume the practice of law, a profession that provided the camaraderie for which his gregarious nature yearned while also giving him time and space to read books, to listen and learn and hone his storytelling skills. Inherited wealth allowed Theodore Roosevelt to purchase land and cattle and build a comfortable ranch in the Badlands, where his depression gradually lifted as he rode his horse sixteen hours a day, joined in the five-week roundups, hunted game, explored the natural world, and transformed his body. Sara Roosevelt provided the means for Franklin to purchase and develop the treatment center at Warm Springs, where he found the healing he sought in the persona of “Doc Roosevelt,” head counselor and spiritual director of a unique therapy program that combined work with play, restoring in polio patients the optimism and the sense of fun that he himself had never lost.
Each of these three men emerged from a catastrophic turn of fortune with an enlarged capacity for leadership. But what if adversity leads to a darkening of temperament, to mistrust and anger? What if grief and loss result in a shrinkage of genuine empathy and give way to a single-minded drive to accumulate power and wealth? Such was the case with Lyndon Johnson. The loss exposed and magnified negative aspects of his nature that would compromise his leadership until a massive heart attack renewed old priorities, reset his course, and reestablished the determination he had first shown at Cotulla to use the power he accumulated to better the lives of others.
* * *
The tailwind Franklin Roosevelt supplied young Lyndon in his first congressional term had obscured a fundamental mismatch between the institutional structure of the House of Representatives and the leadership gifts Lyndon Johnson possessed. President Roosevelt’s interest, access, and tutelary spirit had bestowed upon the freshman congressman an opening to be productive in a deceptively swift and impactful way. Upon his return to Congress after
the failed Senate bid, with the president increasingly preoccupied, distracted by the ever-enlarging world war, Johnson was left adrift in an organization that proved increasingly uncongenial to his temperament.
The Congress of the 1940s rewarded a slow and steady accretion of power within a seniority system based solely on longevity. Key congressmen had invested years, even decades, to facilitate their rise to leadership positions. In such an institution, one requiring an extended period of resigned waiting, Johnson’s strengths (his instinctive ability to seize an opportunity, his capacities to work harder and faster than anyone else) were neutralized.
Simply put, the House was no institution for a young man in a hurry. Sam Rayburn had been in the House for a quarter of a century before becoming speaker at the age of fifty-eight. Fear of dying young exacerbated Johnson’s characteristic sense of urgency. Johnson men shared a history of heart disease. Lyndon’s father’s health had begun to decline when he was in his mid-forties. He had suffered his first heart attack in his mid-fifties and died days after his sixtieth birthday. His uncle George, who had secured Lyndon’s teaching job at Sam Houston High, had died from heart disease at fifty-seven. If family history held true, Lyndon could not afford to spend decades moving upward at a snail’s pace.
Leadership Page 25