Pappy’s speech embodied the ignorant and vicious side of Texas conservatism; it was the essence of everything that Lyndon Johnson had convinced his liberal friends in Washington he was fighting against in Texas; indeed, during his 1941 campaign against O’Daniel, he had had Pappy’s speech recorded and sent to Washington to convince Corcoran and Rowe (and Franklin Roosevelt, for whom they played the record) that Johnson’s opponent was a “Neanderthal” and that therefore their support of Johnson’s candidacy should be increased. (This device had worked; says Rowe: “That speech was the most unbelievable thing I ever heard.”) When liberal or moderate Texans gave their reasons for despising Pass-the-Biscuits-Pappy O’Daniel—and they despised him quite deeply—they often did so by quoting “Pappy’s Speech.”
Because the twelve-thirty slot on the Texas Quality Network had become identified with O’Daniel, and because farm and ranch families had grown accustomed not only to listening to it, but to believing what was said on it, that time slot was, recalls Horace Busby, “the great prize in Texas politics.” It was controlled by a group of Dallas reactionaries, and was not available to any liberal politician—or, indeed, to any politician who refused to tug his forelock to them: when an unapproved candidate tried to buy the time, the network simply said it was not for sale.
Early in August, 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark’s brother Robert, a Dallas lawyer who represented the men who controlled that time slot, approached Lyndon Johnson with a simple proposal. They would support him—and give him the time slot—if he used it to deliver “Pappy’s Speech” as if it were his own. Of course, Clark explained, they didn’t want him to give the speech just once; they wanted him to give it over and over, day after day, every day until Election Day, just the way Pappy would have done it. Lyndon would not even have to write it, they said. Pappy’s old speechwriters would write it. All Johnson would have to do was read it, over and over, as evidence of his good faith, as public proof that he truly subscribed to Pappy’s philosophy, which was, of course, their philosophy.
Horace Busby was in Amarillo with Johnson, staying in the same hotel, when the candidate received the first script. Having known nothing of Clark’s proposal, the young aide had been surprised when he had noticed in the schedule that Johnson was to give a speech in that prized time slot.
No campaigning had been arranged for that morning, as Busby recalls: “He had a morning alone.” Busby was in his own room, and Johnson summoned him. When he arrived, the candidate was looking through the script. “It was as though he had no life in him,” Busby recalls. “He would sit down at a table, and … he would turn the pages. He would get up and pace and sit down again. Finally,” Busby says, “he motioned me over [and said], ‘Look at this stuff.’ ” Busby read the speech. He cannot recall the exact words but, Busby says, “it equated unionism with mobs. All about ‘goons’ and ‘goon squads’ and ‘pineapples’ [grenades] being thrown into the homes of honest union reformers, and extortion. The language was very rough.”
“I don’t know about that,” Johnson said. “Sometimes politics asks too much.” For what Busby describes as “an extended period of time,” the candidate “was going through just an intense personal debate with himself.” He paced back and forth, stopping every so often and staring at the ceiling, absent-mindedly jingling the change in his pocket—as if unable to decide whether or not to give the speech. He gave Busby some of the background.
He named the men who were involved. He never said exactly what they had done. They had bought the time. They had put up the money. He said some of the largest employers in Texas had done this. Had defected from Coke and said if he would do these speeches that they would not only pay for it but that they would go to work with their people and get a turnout.
All the arrangements had been made, he said; in fact, one of Carr Collins’ men was downstairs to handle the broadcast. But, repeating that “Sometimes politics asks too much” of a man, he also said, several times, “I’m going to call Bob Clark and tell him to forget it.”
That call was not made. Instead, there followed what Busby calls “the rationalizing.”
Johnson said to me: “That man [Coke Stevenson] ought not to be Senator. He’s the kind of isolationist who got us into this war, and he’ll get us into another one.… The labor unions should not be supporting a man like Coke Stevenson who was against everything they were for; the unions were selling out the working people.…”
Suppose he refused to give the speech, he said; what would happen?
Well, what it comes down to, Buzz, is this: I can [refuse to] make this speech and when I’m out of office I can go over to the union headquarters [in Washington] and tell them what a noble thing I did. And when I get over there, the receptionist is going to say, “Lyndon who?” And she’s going to call upstairs, and then she’s going to say, “Who are you with?” And then she’s going to say, “I’m sorry, but there’s no one who can see you.”
And there followed what Ed Clark and others familiar with Johnson would call the “working himself up”—getting himself not only to believe what he was saying but to believe it enthusiastically. “He went off on a kind of ‘rights of the people’ soliloquy: ‘Does Coke Stevenson care about the man who works for a living?’ … The unions were selling out the working people—he really got pretty steamed up thinking his way through about the working people.” When he had finished, Johnson picked up the script and walked out to give the broadcast. Busby, who believed he was so expert at reading Johnson’s moods, knew that “when he pushed his hat back, he was in a good mood.” To Busby’s surprise—understandable surprise in view of the “intense personal debate” he had just witnessed—as Johnson picked up the script, “he pushed his hat back.” Also “to my surprise,” Busby, listening to the broadcast, realized that “he didn’t try to cover up on any of the offending lines”; that, in fact, “he was expressive,” reading the script very well, better than he read most speeches.
The reactionaries had demanded a stiff price for their support. Johnson paid it in full.
THE RESPONSE was all the candidate could have wished. Following the speech, he returned to the hotel, and, again while Busby was present,
There was a call from Bob Clark. Bob Clark had a gathering, and I could tell from Lyndon’s end of the conversation that [everything had gone well]. And he was speaking with enormous respectfulness to them. And they were saying, We never expected you to do it, but you can count on us.
And there were more calls that night. The talk brought the ultra-conservatives in behind him. They just in effect joined the campaign.
… This gave a beneficial turn.… Before the end of the week, I felt enough electricity in the air that I thought we could win. And he did, too.
The polls showed that Johnson was indeed gaining. Now, when he called to ask John Connally, “What do you hear?,” Connally had good news to report; “Particularly when Johnson got on the radio with the labor stuff, they [the polls] showed Johnson gaining,” he recalls. The trend was especially strong in rural areas; Connally, an expert on rural voting, felt that the O’Daniel time slot—and the O’Daniel speech that Johnson was making in it—was, day by day, greatly increasing his share of the rural vote.
JOHNSON’S PRESENCE in the O’Daniel slot was a signal to Texas conservatives that he was approved by the conservative upper echelons. So the broadcasts, Busby says, “turned money that would have gone to Stevenson.” Since the former Governor’s campaign financing had always come from conservatives, the flow of Stevenson’s funds, already drastically reduced, was cut off almost entirely. This, as Busby says, was important, because, by the middle of August, Coke Stevenson had had enough.
For three months, Stevenson’s advisers had been pleading with him to defend himself against Johnson’s attacks, trying to make him understand that Johnson was hurting his reputation, and, in the last few weeks, also telling him that Johnson was pulling dangerously close. For three months, they had been pleading with him with
increasing urgency to attack Johnson, to make the public examine his record. For three months, Stevenson had refused to do so.
Two new developments appear to have made him change his mind. One was the insinuation that he was a Communist tool; according to one aide, the turning point came when, in a small town one day in early August, a farmer handed him a copy of the Johnson Journal. The other was the realization that although attacks on his reputation had never worked before, Johnson’s attacks were working, that Texans were coming to believe that he was a Communist front, a “do-nothing” Governor who had accomplished nothing for the state, and an opportunistic politician without firm principles or beliefs who would trim his sails to the prevailing wind. After a grim meeting at Center, George Peddy’s hometown, where twenty-five key Peddy supporters told him, “Coke, this thing is a lot closer than you think!,” Stevenson agreed to say the things his supporters had for so long been wanting him to say.
He said them in two speeches in East Texas, each delivered in the traditional setting, on the lawn of a Courthouse in a county seat, one in Center, and one in Conroe. Despite the blazing heat, he spoke with his suit jacket on and buttoned.
The speeches combined a defense of his record with questions about Johnson’s.
I don’t like to make speeches like this, Coke Stevenson said. He had never made “a charge against any of my opponents.” But, he said, “since things were said of me, I’d like to ask a few questions.” And the questions he asked were the ones his advisers had been begging him to ask—the questions that had never been asked in public about Lyndon Johnson.
First, Stevenson listed seven major topics that Johnson himself had said urgently needed—and had needed, for some time—national action: an increase in old-age pensions; construction of more farm-to-market roads; control of inflation; reductions in income taxes; conservation of soil and water; control of Communist activities; investigation of Communist espionage. During his eleven and a half years in Congress, Coke Stevenson asked, had Lyndon Johnson ever taken any action on any of these problems? More specifically, had he ever introduced legislation that addressed any of these problems?
Stevenson went through them one by one.
When Lyndon Johnson had appeared before you, Coke Stevenson reminded his audience, when he “landed his helicopter on this very spot,” the Congressman had talked—as he had been talking throughout the campaign—about the need for farm-to-market roads. Well, Stevenson said, during his own administration as Governor, hundreds—thousands—of miles of farm-to-market roads had been built all over Texas. But, he asked his audience, when Johnson spoke to you, did he mention anything he had ever done to get farm-to-market roads built? And, specifically, did Johnson tell you he had ever introduced a bill to help with the farm-to-market road program?
When Johnson spoke to you, Stevenson said, he talked about the need for increased old-age pensions. Well, during his own administration as Governor, old-age pensions had been tripled. Did Johnson mention anything he had ever done to get pensions increased? And, specifically, did Johnson tell you he had ever introduced a bill on the subject of old-age pensions?
Stevenson went through the other topics in similar detail. During his eleven and a half years in Congress, he asked, had Lyndon Johnson taken any action on such national problems? Had he introduced any bills to deal with them? And Stevenson asked a larger question. “When he was here,” Coke Stevenson asked, “did my opponent tell you that he ever introduced any [such] bill in his entire life? Did he mention any law he offered in the eleven and one-half years he has been in Congress—any bill for the general welfare? When my opponent landed his helicopter on this very spot, did he tell you of any bill he ever introduced in Congress? Did he ever pass a bill which would aid the average citizen of the United States? Did he ever introduce a bill—a single bill? I can’t find one. I can’t find a single bill to help the average citizen that Lyndon Johnson introduced in eleven and one-half years. Ask him if he ever introduced a bill.”
I don’t like to make speeches like this, Stevenson repeated. I’m just giving you my record, and contrasting it with the absence of a record for the other candidate. “I’m just asking you if he had told you about introducing any legislation, and I think the answer is no.”
WHEN, for the first time, public emphasis was placed on Lyndon Johnson’s legislative record, the phrase summarizing that record—or the lack of it—was so dramatic that it leapt out of newspaper articles, even in pro-Johnson papers. “In the strongest speech of his entire campaign, [Coke Stevenson] lambasted his opponent, Lyndon Johnson, and demanded to know of ‘one single bill’ Congressman Johnson ever introduced in Congress,” reported the Houston Post. The lead in the Dallas News said: “Lyndon Johnson, in eleven and a half years in Congress, never introduced a single bill which would contribute to the welfare of the people, Coke Stevenson charged.” Some version of the phrase “not one single bill … in eleven and one-half years” appeared in virtually every daily newspaper in Texas.
During the next few days, moreover, Stevenson began to focus on aspects not only of Johnson’s past record but of his present campaign. “It is no secret to any informed person that the other candidate is waging what is probably the most expensive political campaign in the history of Texas,” he said on August 19. Where, he asked, was this money coming from—and why? “Could his money,” he asked, “be coming from a few millionaires who owe [him] past political debts and hope for future political favors from him?” Stevenson even hinted—accurately—at another source of Johnson’s money: “Could it be coming from the CIO?” Indeed, he said, part of “the huge expenditures” to elect Lyndon Johnson to federal office were being made with what were, in the last analysis, “federal taxes.” As for himself, Stevenson said, he had kept his own campaign “on a very modest scale,” as he had in the past. “I’ve never had a sideshow or a brass band in my campaign. I was raised up in the ranch country, where a man is known for his character and the adornments he has,” not the “adornments” he could buy. But, he said, he did not believe that Johnson’s expenditures would make any difference. He believed that Texans would have enough intelligence to understand why the contractors and Hughes Aircraft were supporting Johnson. And he believed that Texans understood that he, Coke Stevenson, would never be “an errand boy” for contractors or oil companies. “I do not believe you are ready to sell the office of United States Senator to the highest bidder,” he said. “I do not believe you want as your Senator a man who is able to call on secret sources for the multiplied millions of dollars that are being spent on behalf of the other candidate.” These statements, too, received good play.
Good, but brief—too brief to be effective. “Repetition—that was the thing,” Paul Bolton says, and the Johnson speechwriter is right. For Stevenson’s charges to have significant impact on the campaign, Stevenson would have to repeat them in a series of radio speeches, and in advertisements on the radio and in newspapers, daily and weekly. They would have to be repeated in mailings of postcards and letters and brochures. They would have to be repeated in conversations, the conversations of “travelers” and other campaign workers.
Stevenson’s advisers wanted repetition. Now that the Old Man had finally agreed to attack, they eagerly anticipated putting the attack on the air. But airtime cost money. Boyett and Roberts asked for money from the conservative businessmen who had previously backed Coke’s campaigns. But their contributions, already slowed by the doubts Johnson had planted about Stevenson’s stance on Taft-Hartley, had all but dried up because these were the men, many of them from Dallas, who had listened with Robert Clark to Lyndon Johnson reading “Pappy’s Speech.” During the last ten days of the campaign, Stevenson was indeed on the radio—but not often enough, and, except in a few instances, not to a sufficiently large audience. “We would have a statewide radio address scheduled,” Boyett recalls, but often there would not be enough to pay all the stations to carry it. Frantically, he and other Stevenson loyalists would
telephone county managers and ask them to raise the money to pay for their local station to carry it, but all too often this didn’t work, either. “We would have to cut off stations.” Stevenson’s speech on Johnson’s “huge expenditures,” for example, was scheduled for statewide airing at 6:45 p.m., August 19, but at the last minute so many stations cut it off the air that substantial parts of the state never heard it. Stevenson’s advisers had anticipated examining Johnson’s record as a Congressman in a newspaper advertising campaign, and effective ads were written and designed; one asked Johnson, “If you have ‘energy, initiative and independent judgment,’ please refer us to one piece of legislation passed by the Congress during your eleven and one-half years that bears your name.” But the number of such ads that appeared was pathetically small compared with the volume of Johnson ads that were appearing everywhere. Bolton was right: “Repetition—that was the thing.” But Johnson had “turned” his opponent’s money; his opponent couldn’t afford repetition. The concept “not one single bill in eleven and one-half years” was a dramatic one, but it would not become generally known to the voters of Texas—because there was no money to make it known. Connally (“You have to say something over and over to get voters to be aware of it”) explains scornfully: “So Coke makes a speech—so what? With one speech you couldn’t sell anyone that Johnson wasn’t an activist in the Congress. He had a reputation of being an activist.… One-day play is all you get out of any speech. He didn’t make a big issue out of it. So the press might be aware of it, they might write a story about it—but nobody knew about it. With one speech, you can’t sell anyone.”
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