Ever since Joe Kennedy had forced him to abort his 1959 run for governor in Illinois, Shriver had made no secret of his desire to hold elective office there. But what Shriver really coveted was not a Senate seat but the state house in Springfield. Shriver knew that as a maverick who liked to call his own shots, he might have a hard time in the Senate. As governor, however, he felt he might be effective. But he needed Daley’s blessing before he could make any move in Illinois. After clashing with Daley so many times over Community Action, he didn’t expect this blessing to come anytime soon.
Then, unexpectedly, it did. Daley secretly dispatched Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the leader of the Illinois Democratic congressional delegation, to sound out both Shriver and LBJ about the possibility of Shriver’s running against Dirksen. Johnson gave his blessing and Shriver told Rostenkowski he would be interested in running.
No sooner had Rostenkowski extended feelers to Shriver, however, than President Johnson appeared to get nervous about the idea. The prospect of having to contend with three Kennedys in the Senate (or two-and-a-half Kennedys, if you counted the way Kenny O’Donnell did) for a whole four-year term—all of them likely attacking him from the Left on both Vietnam and the poverty program—was not appealing. Suddenly, Shriver’s name started cropping up in conjunction with vacant ambassadorships as far away as Australia.
Daley, too, was having his doubts—but his were about how the president’s fading popularity would affect Illinois Democrats. Shriver met with Daley and his committee of slatemakers at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. The mayor was worried enough about the top of the Democratic ticket to consider bringing Shriver onto the slate to generate some pizzazz. By the end of January, newspapers were reporting that the Cook County Central Committee was leaning heavily toward running Shriver for the Senate, with Mayor Daley’s strong support. Shriver began talking to old friends and Merchandise Mart colleagues about setting up a political organization and beginning to raise money. Meanwhile, he and some close associates commissioned a secret poll to see where he stood among other possible Democratic candidates and to see how he stacked up against Dirksen. (The poll found him doing better than any other prospective Democrat against Dirksen, but still losing by a significant margin.)
In early February, Governor Kerner announced that he would not be seeking reelection. The leading Democratic candidate to replace Kerner was Adlai Stevenson III, who had been serving as state treasurer. Shriver for senator and Stevenson for governor became the Democrats’ “dream ticket,” the one that would carry the whole Democratic slate to victory in the state.
But if he won election to the Senate, Shriver knew, he would be consigned to live in the shadow of his two brothers-in-law. Regardless of whether or not Johnson beat Nixon in November, it was presumed by many that Robert Kennedy would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. That meant that Bobby would spend the next four years angling for position—and that would mean, in turn, that “anything Shriver did in the Senate, any vote that he cast or speech that he made, would somehow be related by his colleagues and the press to the presidential aspirations of his brother-in-law.” So Shriver let Daley know that he would prefer to be slated for governor. Since LBJ preferred not to have Shriver in the Senate anyway, where he might reopen the battles over the OEO’s budget, Daley began preparing to switch his original plan, running Stevenson for senator, Shriver for governor. Shriver was thrilled.
But in late February, Stevenson declared his opposition to the Vietnam War, saying that if elected to the Senate he would feel morally obligated to oppose LBJ’s foreign policy. Stevenson was immediately removed from consideration for the Senate race: it would never do for Daley to run a candidate (Stevenson) who opposed LBJ’s Vietnam policy against an incumbent (Dirksen) who supported it. Just like that, Shriver’s name was taken out of consideration for the governor’s race and put back in consideration for the Senate. Disheartened, Shriver declined to show up for a Cook County Central Committee “candidate selection board” to which he’d been invited over the last weekend in February, signaling his lack of enthusiasm for taking on Dirksen. The Washington Post headline was: “Daley’s ‘Dream Ticket’ Fading, Democrats Dismayed.”
Several weeks earlier, not long after the OEO budget imbroglio, Shriver had met with the president, who had offered to appoint him ambassador to France. At the time, still hoping for a chance to contend for the Illinois state house, Shriver had said he needed time to think about it. He was more interested in going to Springfield than to Paris. But now that it looked as if his only chance for political office in Illinois was the Dirksen Senate seat, he began to give more serious consideration to Johnson’s offer.
Two events strongly influenced Shriver’s decision. The first occurred one warm Saturday in early March, when Shriver’s mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, went to Timberlawn for the day to visit with her grandchildren. After lunch she said, “Sarge, I’d like to take a walk with you.” Shriver and Mrs. Kennedy, as he always called her, were extremely fond of one another. Mrs. Kennedy knew how highly her husband thought of Sarge, and she seemed to see that he shared many of her husband’s best qualities. Rose was closer to Shriver than she was to any of the other Kennedy in-laws, and he treasured that favored status.
Shriver’s relationship with Mrs. Kennedy made him give anything she told him serious weight. As they strolled the Timberlawn grounds together on this day, with dogs scampering around their heels and Maria visible on her pony in the distance, he listened intently to what she had to say. “I understand the president has asked you to be the ambassador to France,” Mrs. Kennedy said. Shriver said that was true, but that he had not yet told LBJ whether he wanted it. Why not? she wanted to know. Shriver explained that he still had hopes that something would materialize for him in Illinois or, if not, that he could be of greater service to the country by staying in Washington. “I want to tell you something, Sarge,” he recalled her saying to him. “Getting offered the opportunity to be ambassador is the best thing that could happen to you and your family. When Joe became ambassador to Great Britain, it was marvelous for our children. You’ve got an opportunity here to do for your family what Joe was able to do for ours.”
They kept walking, and Mrs. Kennedy continued. “It’s a tremendous compliment that the president has asked you to fill this position.” Shriver replied that he knew that. “Well, Sarge,” Rose said, “then why haven’t you told him you’re ready to go?”
Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy had begun contemplating something rash: jumping into contention for the Democratic presidential nomination against Johnson and Eugene McCarthy. For almost two years, Kennedy’s opposition to LBJ’s Vietnam War policy had been growing—and his contempt for Johnson personally had not waned. For the most part Johnson and Kennedy had maintained something of an outward truce; it served neither of their interests, nor those of the Democratic Party, for them to be sparring publicly. In 1964 Johnson had even campaigned with Kennedy in New York. Still, their intense dislike for one another was no secret. Thus, even as Kennedy’s conviction grew that the continuing escalation of war in Vietnam was morally wrong, he felt inhibited from publicly attacking the president. Such an attack, he feared, would not only create a damaging rift within the Democratic Party but also risked being written off as motivated more by personal animosity than by moral conviction.
But by the summer of 1966 it had become clear to Kennedy that force of logic would never be sufficient to sway LBJ on Vietnam. Johnson, Kennedy and his advisers felt, was “wholly impervious to argument. The only thing he understood was political opposition.” So Kennedy—along with Dick Goodwin, Arthur Schlesinger, Ken Galbraith, and others—took their arguments public. Although still trying to avoid direct conflict with the president, they voiced their arguments in books and articles and (in Kennedy’s case) Senate debates, trying to influence public opinion. The strategy partly worked, although not in the expected manner. Johnson seemed unmoved by any shift in public opinion, and his Vietnam policy did not
change; but by late in 1966, Kennedy had become the clear focal point for Democratic opposition to LBJ, not only among the disaffected Kennedy administration alumni but among rank-and-file party members who opposed the war in Vietnam. When Gallup Polls asked Democratic voters whom they favored in 1968, more of them said Kennedy than Johnson. Kennedy’s “rise in political appeal,” Gallup concluded, had been “spectacular.”
Kennedy continued to avoid a public break with Johnson. Early in 1967 prominent Democrats had warned him that if he were to venture an assault on Johnson in the primaries the following year, he would be as good as handing the presidency to the Republicans. But by the fall, US involvement in Vietnam had increased to more than half a million troops—and some polls had Kennedy leading Johnson by as many as twenty percentage points. Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, moreover, declared on November 30, 1967, that he would be running against Johnson as an antiwar candidate in the Democratic primaries. If Kennedy were to enter the race now he could be accused of cowardice in waiting to follow McCarthy, but at least he couldn’t be blamed for initiating the split in the Democratic Party.
On January 31, 1968, the Tet Offensive destroyed any remaining credibility LBJ had with liberal Democrats and lost him the support of the American people generally. After months of Johnson’s insisting that the war in Vietnam was soon to turn in the United States’ favor, 67,000 North Vietnamese troops had penetrated deep into South Vietnamese territory. Suddenly, the imminent American victory that Johnson had promised seemed very distant, even impossible. Eugene McCarthy’s anemic campaign got a sudden boost of energy, as he became the repository for Democratic hopes for ending the war. To Shriver, it seemed quite likely that Bobby would enter the race. This made him hope more ardently that the way would be cleared for him to run for governor in Illinois. Being in Springfield would take him out of the fray of national politics in a way that being in the Senate would not. The problems posed by a potential Senate campaign would be magnified if Bobby were campaigning for the presidency: Would Shriver run on his record in the Johnson administration (which Bobby would be attacking) or would he run as a Kennedy candidate (thereby inviting attack from Johnson)? The situation would be untenable.
As Shriver debated whether to go to Paris, Kennedy debated whether to oppose Johnson. Most of his Senate staff believed he should run; most of the old hands from Jack Kennedy’s White House, along with Ted Kennedy, believed he should not. Shriver monitored the situation closely. The moment Kennedy entered the Democratic race against Johnson—if he in fact chose to do so—Shriver would immediately find himself in the position of being a Kennedy family member in the camp of the declared enemy. As early as 1965, Bobby had already conveyed to Shriver that he looked askance on his staying on in the Johnson administration. But as long as there was the veneer of a truce between LBJ and RFK, Shriver could stay on with impunity. Once that truce was broken and Kennedy was openly vying with Johnson for the presidency, Shriver would be seen by the Kennedys as sleeping with the enemy.
By the fall of 1967, Shriver had become convinced that Bobby would run. Shriver’s own loyalties remained divided. He had always supported the Kennedy family’s political aspirations, even though he never felt as favorably toward Bobby as he had toward Jack. But he was still working for Johnson and believed it was his patriotic duty to serve the president’s interests, and so he continued to serve as the administration’s resident expert on what Bobby was thinking. On December 8, 1967, Califano wrote a memo to LBJ: “Bill Moyers called to tell me … that Shriver believed Bobby Kennedy was getting ready to run against you in 1968.”
Shriver was in a no-win situation. Neither Johnson nor Kennedy fully trusted him, as each suspected him of being an agent of the other. So Shriver was stuck with a dilemma. Should he abandon the president to help Kennedy? Or stick with Johnson and risk further alienating his brother-in-law?
Johnson stepped up the pressure on Shriver to accept the Paris appointment. It was bad enough for Johnson that a Kennedy who had once served in his administration was now running against him; he didn’t want another Kennedy, one who was still serving in his administration, to join the enemy campaign. He wanted Shriver out of the country—and out of RFK’s orbit.
In the second week of March, Shriver told Johnson he would accept the Paris appointment, pending the approval of the French government. Then he left with Eunice for a vacation in Spain. Just a few days later, on March 16, LBJ’s worst fear was realized: Robert Kennedy announced that he would contend for the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, March 22, Secretary of State Dean Rusk called Shriver in Madrid to tell him that the French government was amenable to his appointment as ambassador. But Rusk wanted to make certain: Are you sure you still want the president to submit your name to the Senate for confirmation? Rusk and Johnson were worried that RFK’s announcement would cause Shriver to reconsider going to Paris. But Shriver didn’t hesitate. He said he had made up his mind; he would go to Paris.
Johnson was delighted. According to Califano, “LBJ was tickled that he could hold a Kennedy brother-in-law out of the race; to him the appointment of Shriver as ambassador to France was made in political heaven.” Johnson gleefully advertised to the press that Shriver had accepted the nomination, despite being given an opportunity to back out after Bobby had declared his presidential candidacy. People close to the family wondered how Eunice, the most politically competitive of all the Kennedys, could bear to move to Paris, so far away from the action of her brother’s campaign.
When the Shrivers returned from Spain, the situation got more complicated. Bobby’s advisers recognized that Shriver’s participation in the campaign would strongly boost Kennedy’s chances against Johnson. Emissaries from the Kennedy campaign approached Shriver and asked him if he would help organize Citizens-for-Kennedy, as he had done for Jack in 1960, or if he would be willing to help organize the Kennedy effort in the Indiana primary on May 7. The request put Shriver in an awkward position: In withdrawing from the French ambassadorship and campaigning against the administration, Shriver would be striking a double blow at President Johnson. Also, he wondered why, if Bobby really wanted his assistance, he didn’t just pick up the telephone himself and ask him for it. That’s what Shriver himself would have done in Bobby’s position. After all, Shriver was forever calling up people—even people he had never met before—and asking them to come and work for him. But that’s not how Bobby operated, particularly in relation to his brother-in-law. He always felt more comfortable working through intermediaries, perhaps because his fear of being rejected was mitigated that way. Shriver took this as a mild affront, or at least as a statement about where he stood in his brother-in-law’s eyes. Thus he responded noncommittally to these initial tentative overtures from the Kennedy campaign.
Donald Dell, a former professional tennis player and captain of the US Davis Cup tennis team, was a lawyer who had worked as Shriver’s right-hand man for a year at the OEO before stepping down to campaign for Robert Kennedy. In the spring of 1968, Dell was coordinating advance work for the Kennedy campaign in some primary states. On Sunday, March 31, Dell went to church and played tennis with Bobby’s family at Kennedy’s Hickory Hill estate in Virginia before getting on an airplane with Bobby and Ethel in the evening to fly to New York.
When the plane landed, Dell went up to the front of the plane to clear away any press so that Ethel, who was six months pregnant, could disembark without being photographed. But when Dell got to the front of the plane, “a guy comes barging through and I block the aisle, don’t let him through, while we’re waiting for Ethel to come out of the bathroom.” But the man refused to be deterred. “Look, I’m the State Democratic Chairman,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to the senator. Lyndon Johnson just announced he’s withdrawing, he’s on television, there’s 20,000 people outside.” (It was true; that evening, while Senator Kennedy’s plane was in the air, Lyndon Johnson had gone on television and declared: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the n
omination of my party for another term as your President.”) Dell recalled, “So I turned around and I looked at Bobby and he just stared up at me with those steel-blue eyes and he just sort of smiled, and I said, ‘This is for real, Senator.’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”
Johnson’s withdrawal from the presidential race stunned the nation. It also instantly changed the political calculus of Shriver’s going to Paris. Although LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, would soon announce his own candidacy and pick up the dropped Johnson mantle, Shriver’s loyalty to the current president no longer impeded him so strongly from joining the Kennedy campaign. Recognizing this fact, Bobby’s people tried once again to reach out to Shriver. The campaign dispatched Dell to do the recruiting.
In early April, Dell flew from the West Coast to Washington, to have dinner with the Shrivers. Before dinner, he joined Shriver at Timberlawn for cocktails. Sitting in a room overlooking the expansive back lawn, Dell said, “Look, Sarge, I’ve been asked by Bobby’s group, would you change your mind about going to Paris and stay here in Washington and play a major role in Bobby’s campaign? You could run Citizens-for-Kennedy from here in Washington and you could help us tremendously.” As Dell recalled, “Sarge and I talked about it for maybe ten minutes. And there was some real interest on his part.… He was certainly willing to listen about it.”
And then, as Dell recalled: “Out of the blue, in walks Eunice. And she says, ‘We got to go to dinner, darling. What are you two talking about?’ She could tell we were having some kind of conversation of seriousness. And I said, ‘Well, you know Bobby and everybody—John Nolan, Joe Dolan [two of Bobby’s advisers]—they all asked me to come out and talk to you and Sarge about Sarge having a major role in Bobby’s campaign.’ ” Dell explained what Shriver might do to contribute to the campaign, and how valuable his participation would be. Eunice fixed Dell in her gaze and said, “We’re going to Paris as the ambassadors.” She turned to her husband. “Sarge, you accepted that with Lyndon, right?” Sarge said he had. “Well, that’s where we’re going then, to Paris,” she said. “Now let’s go have dinner!” “I’m not saying Eunice made the decision for him,” Dell said. “But it was clear that she was really looking forward to going to France.”
Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver Page 62