Dallas was probably the most reactionary city in the nation. On November 4, Johnson and his wife crossed the street from the Baker to the Adolphus Hotel and entered the lobby. They were assaulted by an angry, shrieking gaggle of Republican women, the “Mink Coat Mob,” led by right-wing Dallas Republican Bruce Alger. They spat on the Johnsons and hit Lady Bird on the head with a picket sign. While outraged, Johnson knew that the scene was being covered by television, radio, and the press. He ordered the police to leave. “If the time has come when I can’t walk through the lobby of a hotel in Dallas with my lady, I want to know it.” When Lady Bird started to answer a heckler, he put his hand over her mouth. He stretched the stormy voyage through the Adolphus to 30 minutes, guaranteeing that every camera would get prime shots. “Old Lyndon,” Kennedy later told William S. White, “sure took his time taking himself and Bird through that lobby—and it wasn’t by accident; that instinct of his just told him what to do and how to do it.”
While the Kennedy-Johnson ticket carried the nation with only a razor-thin popular margin, the victory in the electoral college was more comfortable—303 to 219. They won seven southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and Texas, the last by a spare 46,000 votes. This was 81 of 128 southern electoral votes. Nixon-Lodge prevailed only in Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia, and a segregationist crowd took Mississippi. Lyndon Johnson had delivered. As George Reedy wrote, “This may have been the only campaign in history where the vice presidential candidate made an observable difference.” But on election night he was extremely depressed with the thought of becoming Vice President. Though he had now won the nation’s second highest office, Leonard Baker wrote, he could not “alter the basic fact: he knew he was stepping down.”2
The power-is-where-power-goes theory of the vice presidency never got off the launching pad. Johnson ran tests in both the Senate and the White House with equally disastrous results.
On January 3, 1961, he was sworn in as senator from Texas, 17 days before his inauguration as Vice President. A few minutes later he put his resignation before the presiding officer and walked out of the chamber.
Senator Mike Mansfield, the majority leader, called the 64 Democratic senators to an organizational caucus that afternoon. Johnson had picked him as whip in 1957 and had promoted him for the leadership. When Johnson said that he wanted to keep his huge office, known as the Taj Mahal, Mansfield quietly moved into a much smaller one. At the meeting Mansfield moved to empower Johnson to preside over the Senate Democratic caucus. Johnson and Mansfield expected this to pass easily.
There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by a strong negative reaction. Objections from a dedicated liberal like Joseph Clark or from Albert Gore, the Tennessee maverick, were hardly surprising because they nursed old grudges. But Johnson and Mansfield were shocked when Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, Olin Johnston of South Carolina, and A. Willis Robertson of Virginia joined in the attack. All were committee chairmen, pillars of the Senate establishment, and had supported Johnson’s bid for the presidency. All the opponents argued the separation of powers. The Vice President was basically in the executive branch and the Senate was in the legislative and the twain must not meet. At a minimum the motion would violate the spirit of the Constitution.
While the Mansfield motion carried 46 to 17, Johnson, who had listened to the debate in numbed silence, recognized that the minority could not be managed. Humiliated, he was compelled to accept the fact that the Senate Democrats no longer wanted him to be their leader. “No other single event in those formative days of the New Frontier,” Evans and Novak wrote, “cut deeper and none more influenced his conduct as Vice President after January 20. Indeed, he retired from the Senate—physically as well as legally.”
Shortly after the inauguration a Johnson aide dropped off a proposed executive order for Kennedy to sign. It would have granted the Vice President general supervision over several important areas, including the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and would have required various departments and agencies to send him reports and policy proposals customarily sent to the President. The White House staff considered this outrageously presumptuous and spoke darkly of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State. Kennedy seems to have been more amused by its clumsiness than concerned with its gravity. The paper was buried and forgotten. Thus, Lyndon Johnson learned very early that he was going to be Vice President and nothing else.
In fact, Kennedy was sensitive to Johnson’s deep ache over his loss of power. “After all,” he told Schlesinger, “I spent years of my life when I could not get consideration for a bill until I went around and begged Lyndon Johnson to let it go ahead.” Sending Johnson a birthday greeting, he said, was like “drafting a state document.” But he liked Johnson, respected his advice on many matters, and insisted that his own staff, including his brother, treat the Vice President with dignity. Johnson recognized the President’s efforts and reciprocated by becoming a loyal Vice President.
Kennedy went out of his way to find tasks for Johnson to perform, to keep him informed (“we will not conduct meetings without the Vice President”), and to put him into the limelight. He became chairman of the Space Council, which oversaw the burgeoning space program, and mediated disputes between civilian NASA and the military. He was chairman of the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which had the task of eliminating discrimination in employment in the federal service and among federal contractors. He regularly attended White House cabinet and National Security Council meetings, breakfasts with the Democratic congressional leadership, and the early morning briefing sessions prior to presidential press conferences. At the last Johnson always sat next to Walter Heller, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. As Heller said, “they hit it off from the very beginning and were on a first-name basis within a couple of months.” Heller gave him copies of his briefing notes and also sent him copies of many of the memoranda he wrote to the President. The economist thought it was his responsibility to keep Johnson informed and also hoped to win his support for council positions within the administration. The Vice President also had his picture taken endlessly at White House photo opportunities.
Later, Johnson told Doris Kearns about his dreams. At 15 he had dreamt that he was confined in a small cage and could not break out. When he awoke, he “escaped” from home by running away to California. When he was Vice President, he dreamt that he was seated at his desk in the Executive Office Building signing stacks of letters. At the end of the day he could see crowds hurrying home from work. He thought it would be nice to join them and, for once, have an early dinner with his family. He started to stand but could not because his legs were bound to the chair by a heavy chain. He tried to break it, but failed. He took another stack of mail and returned to work. Now, forty years later, he again escaped by running away to foreign lands.
During his vice presidency Johnson made 11 trips abroad to 33 different countries. Constrained at home, he unleashed himself overseas. He was, Kearns wrote, “once again the spoiled, demanding, and exuberant child.” He carefully put together the list of his needs—an oversize bed, a needlepoint shower head, two dozen cases of Cutty Sark, 500 boxes of pens, six dozen cases of cigarette lighters. In the slums of Indian cities and the markets in Thailand he passed out pens and lighters inscribed “LBJ,” shaking hands, barnstorming as he would in rural Texas. The Foreign Service did not quite know what to make of it.
There were two important incidents, one bizarre, the other significant. In a tour of Karachi before huge crowds Johnson got out of his car to shake hands and met Bashir, the camel driver. He talked with Bashir as he stood by his beast and said casually through an interpreter, “I hope some day you will have the opportunity to visit our country.” The next day an imaginative columnist for a leading newspaper praised Johnson for inviting Bashir to come to the U.S. and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York! The pressure built and Johnson eventually caved in. People-to
-People bought Bashir an airplane ticket to America; he, indeed, stayed at the Waldorf; the State Department provided an interpreter; and the Vice President invited him to the ranch on the Pedernales. As a devout Muslim, Bashir watched what he ate and used his fingers. At a luncheon in Dallas, Liz Carpenter counted the presidents of four banks and Neiman-Marcus stuffing fried chicken, celery, and potato chips into their mouths with their fingers to make “the camel driver feel at home.” As a going-away present, the Ford Motor Company gave him a pickup so that he could retire his camel.
On the other occasion he was more than an ambassador of good will. In the fall of 1961, after the East Germans had begun to build the Berlin Wall, Kennedy sent him to West Berlin. Johnson delivered a powerful speech before a crowd of at least 380,000, pledging American support for the city. As a show of good faith, the President ordered elements of the 1st Battle Group of the 8th Infantry down the Autobahn, and the Vice President greeted them emotionally as they entered West Berlin.
For the rest, his performances abroad were mixed—highly successful in the Third World and dismal in much of Europe. “His appearance,” Reedy wrote, “touched off massive and exuberant demonstrations among the illiterate and poverty-stricken hordes in Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Iran. … The people understood him and he understood them.” But Scandinavia was “a veritable disaster.” He insulted the Danes by ordering the furniture removed from his room to provide space for his oversize bed. It was the work of a noted Danish craftsman. In Norway he interrupted a state banquet by blocking the pathway of the waitresses in a meaningless conversation. His persistent tardiness offended the punctiliously prompt Swedes. He shocked the Finns by walking on the graves of those who had been massacred at Rovaniemi.
In fact, Johnson was an extremely unhappy Vice President. He felt unwelcome in his former home, the Senate. His old friends, like John Connally and Robert Kerr, seemed to desert him. Kennedy and his staff were disappointed because, with a few exceptions, he declined to help on legislation. Harry McPherson, who had worked for him in the Senate, “met him on the elevator as he returned from a meeting of the Smithsonian board, where he had found a discussion of the National Zoo—the Zoo! Johnson!—fascinating.” He felt culturally inferior to the Kennedys and the “Harvards,” loathing the White House functions for artists and writers, where he stood in a corner with his hands in his pockets. Despite his extensive foreign travel, Kearns thought, Johnson seemed to inhabit a coccoon and learned little about the nations he visited. He was often morose about the future. Perhaps John Kennedy would not endorse him in 1968, turning instead to Johnson’s nemesis, Robert Kennedy, in order to create a dynasty. He spoke vaguely about quitting in 1964 and becoming president of his alma mater, Southwest Texas Teachers College in San Marcos. The trouble was that damn vice presidency. When he was elected, he asked Norman Edwards, his chauffeur, to continue working for him. Edwards had been driving majority leaders since Joe Robinson in FDR’s time. He gleamed in their reflection because they have “real power.” Edwards did not want to drive for a Vice President because “he doesn’t have any power at all.”3
“It all began so beautifully,” Lady Bird Johnson wrote in her diary. “After a drizzle in the morning, the sun came out bright and clear.” The procession moved into Dallas. President and Mrs. Kennedy, along with Governor John and Nellie Connally, were in the lead car. The second vehicle was full of Secret Service men. “And then our car with Lyndon and me and Senator Ralph Yarborough.”
The streets were lined with people and there was a festive mood, “the children all smiling, placards, confetti, people waving from windows.” For years Mary Griffith had handled the alteration of the clothes Mrs. Johnson bought from Neiman-Marcus. She looked up and there was Mary, “leaning out of a window waving at me.”
Lady Bird heard “a sharp, loud report,” soon followed by two others. Both the President and Governor Connally had been hit. The Johnsons were driven to the Parkland Hospital. When presidential assistant Kenny O’Donnell entered the room Lady Bird knew instantly that the news was very bad. He said, “The President is dead.” Shortly after, Mac Kilduff, the White House press man, came in and addressed her husband as “Mr. President.”
Lyndon Baines Johnson had become the 36th President of the United States.4
I
CARETAKER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY’S LEGACY
1
Fifteen Days
AT approximately 1 p.m. on November 22, 1963, Father Oscar L. Huber administered last rites to John Kennedy, and Dr. W. K. Clark pronounced him dead. At that moment Lyndon Johnson became President of the United States, but he did not know it. A few minutes later presidential assistant Kenny O’Donnell came to the Johnsons and said, “He’s gone.” O’Donnell told the Secret Service that they should take the Johnsons to Washington immediately. Johnson asked him what Mrs. Kennedy’s wishes were. O’Donnell said she would not move from the hospital without the body and was waiting for a casket. Johnson asserted that he would not leave without her, if that was her wish, but would go to Air Force One to wait for her and the body.
When Mac Kilduff addressed Johnson as “Mr. President,” “I must have looked startled,” Johnson wrote later. “I certainly felt strange.” Kilduff wanted to announce President Kennedy’s death and asked for Johnson’s approval. With Secret Service assent he directed Kilduff to wait until they left the hospital. Surrounded by agents, the Johnsons were driven in separate cars to Love Field and hurried into the airplane.
Johnson immediately phoned Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who said that the FBI did not yet know whether the assassination was the act of an individual or part of a conspiracy. Johnson wanted to know whether he should take the oath of office at once and, if so, wanted the exact wording. Kennedy said he would check. He phoned back shortly to say that the oath should be taken now and that it could be administered by any judicial officer of the United States. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach dictated the oath to Johnson’s secretary.
Johnson then phoned Irving Goldberg, a Dallas lawyer and old friend. They agreed that Judge Sarah Hughes, recently appointed by Kennedy to the district court in Dallas, should administer the oath. She was on the airplane in a few minutes.
Shortly a small plane approached. Bill Moyers, formerly on Johnson’s staff and now deputy director of the Peace Corps, had been doing advance work for a big fundraiser in Austin the next day. As soon as he heard of the assassination, he chartered the plane and flew to Love Field to be at Johnson’s side.
Jack Valenti, who ran an advertising agency in Houston, had worked for Johnson on political campaigns and had done the advance work that produced big crowds for Kennedy in Houston the preceding day. He had then joined Johnson on Air Force Two for the flight from Houston to Dallas. The next morning he rode in a staff bus downtown behind the motorcade and wound up at the Parkland Hospital. Overcome with grief, he stood in a stairwell and wept. Cliff Carter, who ran Johnson’s office in Austin, tried to console him and said, “The Vice President is waiting for us.” A Secret Service agent drove them to Love Field and they boarded Air Force One.
Liz Carpenter, also on Johnson’s staff, had been on the same bus following the motorcade at the time of the shooting. A veteran newspaperwoman, she realized that Johnson would need to say something when he landed in Washington. She penciled out a brief statement and she, too, got on the airplane.
Cecil Stoughton, a White House photographer, told Carpenter, “This is a history-making moment and, while it seems tasteless, I am here to make a picture if he [the new President] cares to have it and I think he should have it.” She relayed the message to Johnson and he nodded. Kilduff came aboard and told her that a press pool—Merriman Smith of United Press International, Charles Roberts of Newsweek, and Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting—wanted to cover the event. She asked Kilduff what he recommended and he burst into tears. She shook him and demanded an answer. He recommended the pool. They asked Johnson, who said, “Of course, put the pool on boar
d.”
Some time after 2:00 Jacqueline Kennedy entered the cabin. “I was shocked by the sight that confronted me,” Johnson wrote. “There stood that beautiful lady, with her white gloves, her pink suit, and her stockings caked with her husband’s blood. There was a dazed look in her eyes.” The Johnsons tried to comfort her as they saw her to a bedroom. The casket, accompanied by Kennedy’s devoted assistants, Larry O’Brien and Kenny O’Donnell, was taken to the rear of the airplane. Shortly, Mrs. Kennedy returned.
Lyndon Johnson, with his wife to one side and the wife of the slain President on the other, repeated the words of Judge Hughes in what Roberts described as “a low, but firm voice.” “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He added, “So help me God.” He noticed that the Bible on which his hand rested was a Catholic missal. Larry O’Brien had found it on the plane. Stoughton stood on a couch in a corner to take the photograph.
At 2:41 p.m. the new President ordered the plane to take off. He made calls to Rose Kennedy, the dead President’s mother, and to Nellie Connolly to comfort them. Johnson asked Moyers, Valenti, and Carpenter to draft a statement and they seem to have come up with something like Carpenter’s note. The President made a few changes. He also instructed Kilduff to see to it that the television cameras focused on him as he read the statement.
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