According to others who were present at the meeting, Johnson’s acceptance of Community Action was not so immediate. He wasn’t happy that it was just a demonstration program. Nor could he see how it would create jobs—the stuff of political capital—quickly. And the political implications of giving up so much federal and state-level control to local authorities scared him. He flat out rejected Community Action at first, and it took at least a full day of persuading before he seemed to reconsider. As Heller recalled, Johnson kept throwing their proposals back at them, saying “Look, I’ve earmarked half a billion dollars to get this program started, but I’ll withdraw that unless you fellows come through with something that’s workable.” Johnson kept going on about the National Youth Administration and how it had “hard, bedrock content” to it. Also, LBJ initially rejected Community Action because he saw it as a Bobby Kennedy project. Instinctively, to prevent the late president’s brother from accruing any additional political capital, he would have wanted to kill any proposal that Bobby put forth. The problem, however, was that Sorensen, Schlesinger, Bobby, and company had now attached themselves to Community Action—and if Johnson failed to adopt it he would be accused of betraying the Kennedy legacy. As one of his aides recalled, “If he’d said no to it, people would’ve said, ‘Oh, he’s not really sincere, he’s just a Southern racist.’ ”
In early January the Economic Report of the President for 1964 was published, with a full chapter on poverty, most of it drawn directly from the study Robert Lampman had written the previous summer. Echoing Michael Harrington, the report declared that 20 percent of American families were poor. Written with unusual passion for an economic report, it laid out a broadly based strategy for attacking poverty. The list of weapons to be deployed included the tax cut, civil rights legislation, improvements in health care, area development plans, adult education, and Medicare. But in order to stop “poverty from breeding poverty,” the report concluded, the central antipoverty assault would have to be carried out by Community Action programs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Mr. Poverty”
“Pity the poor soul who gets charged with running this.” This was Shriver’s thought as he read accounts of Johnson’s declaration of war on poverty.
When Johnson delivered his first State of the Union address, on January 8, 1964, Shriver was halfway around the world, sweltering in the heat of Pakistan. He didn’t give the president’s declaration of an “unconditional war on poverty” a second thought. He missed his family, whom he had barely seen in the days since President Kennedy had died. He was looking forward to going home.
But when he stopped over in Hawaii on his way back to the East Coast several weeks later, Shriver was surprised to see Bill Josephson waiting for him at the bottom of the steps of the airplane. Ordinarily he would have been pleased to see Josephson, but he worried that his general counsel’s presence in Hawaii signaled some crisis with the Peace Corps. When Shriver got to the bottom of the stairs, Josephson handed him two enormous black briefing books. Shriver asked what they were about, and Josephson explained that several days earlier he had been called into a meeting with Bureau of the Budget director Kermit Gordon, Bill Moyers, and the president. Gordon and Moyers had explained to Josephson what the president had in mind for his poverty program. Johnson then said that he had decided whom he wanted to run his War on Poverty: Sargent Shriver. Johnson knew that Shriver was somewhere in the Far East, but he was impatient to get started. So he handed the briefing books to Josephson and said, “Find Shriver.”
On Friday, January 31, flying home from Hawaii to Washington, Shriver tried but failed to focus on the contents of the briefing books. He had little interest in their contents. He was chagrined to find a White House car waiting for him at the airport in Washington. The president wanted to see him right away.
Johnson received Shriver warmly in the Oval Office. The Peace Corps director launched into an enthusiastic travelog, regaling the president with the story of how he had witnessed the reconciliation of the pope and the patriarch. Then he began reporting on the status of the Peace Corps in the various countries he had visited. “That’s great, Sarge, that’s really wonderful,” Johnson said, cutting Shriver off. “Let’s go for a walk.”
He took Shriver by the arm and led him out through the Rose Garden to the driveway on the White House’s South Lawn. It was a crisp January day, and the trees on the edge of the lawn were laced with snow. Johnson asked Shriver what he had thought of his State of the Union address. Shriver said politely that he liked what he had read in newspaper accounts. He tried to steer the conversation back to the Peace Corps, but Johnson wasn’t interested. Instead, as the two men walked up and down the driveway, Johnson talked about his fierce desire to get his poverty program going. It was appalling, the president said, that in a prosperous and democratic nation, 35 million people should have insufficient opportunity to lead a decent life. As a young man in Texas he had seen poverty, he told Shriver, but he had always thought of it as a rare and isolated phenomenon that was disappearing as the economy grew. Now, the president continued, we are learning that the poor inhabit a nation within the nation, locked into a cycle of despair by lack of skills, poor health, and inadequate education.
“Now you know we’re getting this War on Poverty started, Sarge,” the president said. “I’d like you to think about that, because I’d like you to run that program for us.” Back in the Oval Office, Johnson handed him a sheaf of documents and sent him on his way.
The next day, Saturday, was to have been Shriver’s first free day with his family in a month. But just after lunch, as he was outside playing with Bobby and Maria, he was summoned inside to take a phone call from the president.
“Sarge,” Johnson said, as his Oval Office taping device secretly recorded the conversation. “I’m gonna announce your appointment at that press conference.”
“What press conference?” Shriver asked, clearly confused and a little peeved.
“This afternoon,” Johnson said.
Shriver was shocked. A press conference? To announce his appointment to lead the War on Poverty? That couldn’t be. He had had no time to prepare. He wasn’t an expert on poverty. He hadn’t told his executive staff at the Peace Corps; that agency would be thrown into turmoil if it were suddenly announced, he was leaving.
“God,” Shriver said, “I think it would be advisable, if you don’t mind, if I could have this week and sit down with a couple of people and see what we could get in the way of some sort of plan.” If you announce me before I know what the hell I’m doing, Shriver told him, I’ll be forced to contend with questions from reporters that I’ll have no idea how to answer.
“Just don’t talk to them,” Johnson told him. Go into seclusion and figure out what you’re doing before you talk to the press. And you can “work out your Peace Corps” any way you want. Keep running the Peace Corps through your deputies.
Johnson was keen to move ahead quickly. For one thing, he didn’t want to give Shriver time to back out. For another, he knew that it was politically important to seize the moment. Kennedy’s death had rendered Congress especially receptive to Johnson—especially toward anything that he could present as continuing the Kennedy legacy. But Congress’s eagerness to please would not last, Johnson knew, and he felt also that it was important to generate visible movement on the poverty program while the well-received words of his State of the Union address were still ringing in people’s ears.
“I want to announce this and get it behind me, so I’ll quit getting all these other pressures,” Johnson told him. “You’ve got to do it. You just can’t let me down. So the quicker we get this behind us, the better. Don’t make me wait until next week.”
Of course, the biggest pressure on Johnson came from Bobby Kennedy. The president’s concerns were several. One was that he knew Bobby had come to feel strongly about doing something to alleviate poverty. Johnson didn’t want Bobby staking a claim to the antipoverty program, and
he thought he could preempt such a claim by appointing Shriver. Johnson had to walk a fine line here: Walter Heller had presented the poverty program to him as a Kennedy initiative, and Johnson had himself been promoting it as such. But he wanted very much to make the poverty program his own—a “Johnson program.” Making Bobby director would certainly have demonstrated the poverty program’s connection to the Kennedy family—but it would also surely have weakened Johnson’s own imprint on it.
Shriver responded. “Number one: I’m not going to let anybody down, least of all you. You’ve been terrific to me.” But he continued to try to buy some time. “Second, I would like to have a chance to prepare the [Peace] Corps.”
“But that’ll leak out over forty places,” Johnson said. “Why don’t I tell them you are not severing your connection with the Corps?”
Shriver agreed that was better but he still thought a more cautious announcement, one that didn’t commit him to anything long term, would be best. “Could you just say that you’ve asked me to study this?” he asked.
“Hell no!” Johnson said. “They’ve studied and studied. They want to know who in the hell is going to do this.… I want to say that you’re going to be Special Assistant to the President and executive in charge of the poverty program.”
“The problem with that is that it’ll knock the crap out of the Peace Corps,” Shriver said.
“Not if you tell them you’re not severing your identification with the Peace Corps,” Johnson retorted.
Shriver was still concerned, though. “I think it would be better if you would say that I’m going to continue as director of the Peace Corps.” The Peace Corps was his baby, it was running well, and he worried that if he were to leave it in someone else’s hands so soon after Kennedy’s death, its long-term survival would be endangered.
To Johnson, however, the Peace Corps was clearly of secondary importance here. “I’m going to make it clear that you’re Mr. Poverty, at home and abroad, if you want it to be. And I don’t care who you have running the Peace Corps. You can run it? Wonderful. If you can’t, get Oshgosh from Chicago and I’ll name him.… I want you to get rid of poverty, though. The Sunday papers are going to say that you’re Mr. Poverty, unless you’ve got real compelling reasons which I haven’t heard.”
Shriver protested feebly that based on what he had read about the poverty plan, the program would be best administered out of HEW, rather than as a new, wholly independent agency. Soon he would be arguing fiercely against this very proposition, but now he was grasping for anything that would enable him to escape the responsibility Johnson was trying to saddle him with. Johnson dismissed Shriver’s HEW proposal. And when Shriver continued to express concern about the impact the announcement would have on the Peace Corps, the president questioned Shriver’s energy. This is a promotion, Johnson yelled. “You’ve got the responsibility, you’ve got the authority, you’ve got the power, you’ve got the money. Now you may not have the glands.”
“The glands?” Shriver didn’t know whether the president was referring to his manliness or making an unfortunate reference to the Addison’s disease that had afflicted both Eunice and Jack Kennedy, preventing their adrenal glands from functioning normally. Either way, it was insulting. “I’ve got plenty of glands,” he said.
“I’d like to have your glands then,” Johnson said. Trying to defuse Shriver’s anger, he joked that he would have the White House doctor inject him with some goat glands.
But Shriver was still annoyed. “I would have much preferred to have had forty-eight hours” to prepare myself, he said.
How could you not have been prepared? Johnson asked him. Many newspaper reports had been published speculating that Shriver would be appointed.
“I didn’t know beans about it, because I’ve been overseas,” Shriver explained.
“Well, you don’t need to know much.… You’ll have an international Peace Corps—one abroad and one at home.”
Shriver asked if he could at least have Bill Moyers back to help him. (Moyers had by now gone back to Johnson’s staff, full time.) Johnson explained that the White House needed Moyers: “I need him more than anybody in the world.… He’s good for Shriver here.” Shriver asked if he could have Mike Feldman, who was deputy special counsel to Johnson, and with whom both Eunice and Sarge had good working relationships. “Now don’t go raiding the White House,” Johnson yelled. “Go on and get your own damn talent.”
“For Christ’s sake,” the president continued, “if your wife—if the Kennedys had—they wouldn’t have this fortune if they had as many baby-sitters as you’ve got in the Peace Corps. You’ve got 10,000 people and you’ve got 1,100 administrators. There’s not a Kennedy compound that’s got a baby-sitter for ten. And you’ve got it in the Peace Corps around the world. All right, I’ll see you later, and good luck to you. And happy landing!”
Happy landings indeed, Shriver thought bitterly.
He hung up the phone and told Eunice about the conversation. “I don’t really want to run this thing,” he told her. She responded that he should be honored that the president wanted him to run his new program. But if you really don’t want to do it, she told him, you should make that clear.
At 2:25, just a half hour before Johnson’s scheduled press conference, Shriver called the White House and was put through to the president in the Cabinet Room, where he was meeting with aides. Shriver again protested that it was a bad time for him to be abandoning the Peace Corps. I’ve just traveled the world trying to get volunteers charged up, Shriver said. What kind of message will it send if I leave now?
The president spoke softly, so others in the Cabinet Room wouldn’t hear. “You can stay in the Peace Corps and do this other thing at the same time.… You’ve got the Peace Corps under control. And this new thing, there’s nothing to run yet. We just want you to put it together and get it through Congress. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
Shriver again asked for just “a few more days” to prepare himself. “I want to do it successfully for you and I just feel that if I get stuck out there today in a position where I am completely exposed—”
The president cut him off. “Why don’t you let me leave it where we were? Now I’m here with all this staff trying to get ready for the three o’clock meeting.… I need it for very personal reasons.”
Shriver immediately called Warren Wiggins at Peace Corps headquarters and broke the news. Shriver explained that he didn’t want the appointment Johnson was giving him—but “I don’t seem to be able to stop him.” Shriver had Wiggins compose a cable to be sent to all Peace Corps countries, announcing his appointment and explaining clearly that he would not be leaving the agency. “Explain that this is just a study group” Shriver told Wiggins. Still unable to believe that Johnson would really make the announcement so soon, Shriver told Wiggins to hold off on sending the cable until Johnson actually made a formal announcement. “If he announces [my appointment], send the telegram. If he doesn’t, tear it up,” Shriver said.
A few minutes later, Shriver watched the president’s press conference on television. Johnson declared how happy he was that Sargent Shriver would be heading the War on Poverty. Shriver felt, he recalled later, like Homer’s Ulysses: finally home after twenty years of wandering but now having to strap on his armor to depart for another Troy.
When the press conference ended, Shriver called the White House again, got Bill Moyers on the line, and began expressing his displeasure at the assignment. He wouldn’t mind being made secretary of HEW, he said, “or this vice president thing.” But he didn’t want Johnson to send him “screwing around doing one job after another” that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. “I don’t know whether I maybe ought to go out to Illinois and run for governor.”
Just then, the president got on the line. LBJ explained that he hadn’t been able to speak freely earlier, because of all the advisers and cabinet members milling about. None of these people, Johnson implied, thought Shriver was the right man
to launch the poverty program. “Now I don’t want to make you feel bad, because you’re too successful and I’m too proud of you to ever pour cold water on you,” Johnson said patronizingly. “But up to one minute before I appeared [on television], I was meeting violent protest to naming you. Now I couldn’t let that grow and continue.” Hence the precipitous timing of the press conference.
Johnson did not let up. He told Shriver that high-ranking insiders, “about as powerful people as we have in this government,” had backed other candidates for the poverty post—implying that Bobby Kennedy had not only personally opposed but actively campaigned against Shriver’s appointment. “They all think that you’re a wonderful man,” the president granted, “but one of them said this morning, ‘He’s never had anything to do with anything like this. As a public relations expert, he’s the best.’ ” Johnson emphasized “public relations expert,” knowing that this moniker had dogged Shriver for several years—and hoping that it would fuel Shriver’s ire against whoever had said it. The president continued. “But I think that as an administrator and as a candidate that you have great potentialities.”
Johnson’s intention here seemed clear: to create a polar opposition between Bobby’s team and Lyndon’s team. Bobby’s team (Johnson was saying) thinks you’re a mere public relations guy, not up to the task of running a new program. Lyndon’s team thinks you’re not only a good administrator but also a potential vice presidential candidate. Pick my team.
Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver Page 45