by Nancy Gibbs
Foreign policy is the realm where presidents exercise the greatest power, and where the club can tie its members in knots. However much presidents may disagree with their predecessors on the value of an ally or the danger of an enemy, they are acutely conscious of being the custodians of American credibility, and of the sacrifice of those who have already died for a cause. So just as Kennedy inherited, and mismanaged, Eisenhower’s Cuba policy, Johnson inherited Kennedy’s Vietnam commitment as well as his team and doubled down on JFK’s dubious bet. Pulling back from Vietnam, assistant secretary of state George Ball observed, “would look as though he were repudiating the policy of Kennedy,” which was not an option.
But what to do with this “biggest damn mess,” as he was calling the war by 1965? As he cartwheeled into the commitment that would ultimately sink his presidency and torment the nation for decades, he reached out to Eisenhower and practically rode on his star-spangled shoulders; at one crucial meeting it was hard to tell which president was the actual commander in chief. Somehow Eisenhower, the warrior who had assiduously avoided military adventures throughout his eight years in office, became more bellicose when the decisions were no longer officially his to make. As with Kennedy but especially now with Johnson, Ike was literally the armchair general. “There are only two other men in this nation that fully understand the problems that come to this desk. You are one of them,” Johnson told Eisenhower in the spring of 1966, as the voices of dissent grew louder. “I cannot tell you adequately my gratitude for your wisdom and counsel. And, for the fact that no one has found it possible to divide you and me.”
8
“The Country Is Far More Important Than Any of Us”
—DWIGHT EISENHOWER
President Kennedy was declared dead at 1 P.M. on November 22, 1963; ninety-eight minutes later in the sweltering cabin of Air Force One, surrounded by White House aides in tears and a new widow in a bloodstained suit, Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office for the job he could not have won on his own.
Most men join the club after dreaming of it for decades, campaigning for it for years, and preparing for it for months between victory and inauguration. Johnson realized he was now the president when he walked into the airplane cabin and aides who were like family suddenly jumped to their feet. “It was at that moment I realized nothing would be the same again,” he recalled. “A wall—high, forbidding, historic—separated us now, a wall that derives from the Office of the Presidency of the United States. No one but my family would ever penetrate it, as long as I held the office. . . . It was a frightening, disturbing prospect.”
To one degree or another every president is haunted by those who went before, but few so literally as Johnson. No president had ever witnessed the slaying of his predecessor or endured such a brutal transfer of power. “I always felt sorry for Harry Truman and the way he got the presidency,” Johnson told an aide two days later, “but at least his man wasn’t murdered.”
Here was a man who had hated being vice president, the job Truman had described as being “as useful as a cow’s fifth teat.” It had been like a political death for Johnson, to be reduced to presiding as a figurehead over the Senate he once controlled as majority leader, and acting as a daily reminder of the president’s mortality. “I detested every minute of it,” he told his aide and later biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin. “Every time I came into John Kennedy’s presence, I felt like a goddamn raven hovering over his shoulder.”
But now Kennedy was gone, and Johnson took custody of a nation in anguish. The country was ripped open, heartsick, shamed; the world wondered about American intentions and resolve. Mythology smothered memory as Kennedy was instantly beatified: Cities around the world began renaming streets, bridges, buildings in his honor. Churches in London held so many memorial services the U.S. embassy nearly ran out of flags to lend. More than a quarter million people gathered to pray in front of West Berlin’s City Hall.
Who could hope to compete with that?
“I took the oath, I became president,” Johnson told Goodwin. “But for millions of Americans I was still illegitimate . . . a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper.” His home state of Texas was even the scene of the crime. “And then there were the bigots and the dividers and the Eastern intellectuals, who were waiting to knock me down before I could even begin to stand up. The whole thing was almost unbearable.”
In the Cold War age, the world was on a hair trigger; no one knew if the Russians were responsible, or the Cubans, and the idea that America was rattled, rudderless, vulnerable, was not just disturbing, it was dangerous. And so from his very first hours in office, Johnson moved shrewdly and systematically to signal that he was in control. Hours after his swearing in, Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base. Bobby Kennedy was there to meet Jackie and the body; leaders of Congress from both parties greeted Johnson, some of them, like Hubert Humphrey, the majority whip, sobbing openly. Johnson talked with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as they flew together by helicopter past the floodlit Washington Monument to the White House, where they landed a few dozen yards from Caroline and John Kennedy’s swing set. The secretaries had already cleared the Oval Office of Kennedy’s things, the family pictures, the coconut shell on which he had carved a message after his PT boat sank; eventually Johnson removed the crimson rug and replaced it with one with the Presidential Seal because the old one reminded him of the murder.
That night Johnson decided he’d rather work in his own refuge at the Old Executive Office Building; he wasn’t ready for the Oval just yet. He started making calls, to J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, Senator William Fulbright; he called Truman, his old poker buddy, at 7:05.
But it was Eisenhower he really wanted, and he placed that call five minutes later.
“Mr. President, this is Lyndon Johnson. This has been a shocking day.”
“My heart goes out to you,” Eisenhower replied.
“I have needed you for a long time,” Johnson told him, “but I need you more than ever now.”
“Any time you need me, Mr. President,” Ike said, “I’ll be there.” In fact Ike had already sent a message of support through National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
“I am going to rely on your good, sound judgment and will be calling on you,” Johnson said, “but I wanted you to know how touched I was by your message. It was typical of you and you know how much I have admired you through the years.”
“The country,” Ike replied, “is far more important than any of us.” He was coming to Washington in the morning for the memorials, he said, and Johnson seized the opportunity. “Why don’t you give me a call right after the service is over,” he said. Johnson ordered a Secret Service detail to take up position at Eisenhower’s farm.
Texans Stick Together
You could practically hear the echo of 1945, of Truman suddenly assuming the presidency and reaching back to Herbert Hoover for both public continuity and private counsel. Only it was much easier in Johnson’s case, since he and Eisenhower had a long history. “Us three Texans got to stand together,” Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn used to tease Ike, who had been born in Denison, seventy-five miles north of Dallas. Given Ike’s impregnable popularity, Johnson and Rayburn had figured out early on that they had much more to gain from wooing the Republican president than fighting him. There was no need to oppose Eisenhower on foreign policy, since his own party’s isolationists had already been taking care of that. On domestic matters they were clear with him about what could pass and what couldn’t, amending his proposals just enough that both sides could claim credit. This helped explain how a Republican president with no legislative background got 83 percent of his program through a Democratic Congress—and how the Democrats won back the Senate in 1956, making Johnson the youngest majority leader ever.
“They didn’t want to work with Ike; they wanted to kill him, politically I’m talking about,” explained Eisenhower’s aide Bryce Harlow, of Johnson and Rayburn. “They would have happil
y and joyously, but they couldn’t.” The White House knew that a certain amount of Johnson’s bipartisan outreach was a ploy, but it worked to both sides’ advantage. “Ike,” Harlow said, “was never regarded as a Republican by the American people anyway.”
Plus, the men just got along well. It’s not that Eisenhower especially admired or trusted Johnson: he could see the neediness, the opportunism, the genius for manipulation. But they were the two most powerful men in the country, and if they wanted to get things done, they needed to find common ground. They were arguably a more synchronized team than Ike and his vice president, Richard Nixon.
Johnson had already done the club a great service even before he joined it. In 1957 he made an impassioned plea before the Senate for providing financial support for former presidents, in recognition that even after retirement the American people “still look to an ex-president for advice, for counsel, and for inspiration in their moments of trial.” Truman needed some financial help, he told Rayburn, just “to keep ahead of the hounds.” Republicans dragged their feet: what’s to prevent a former president from using this public money for partisan purposes? they argued. But Johnson led the charge. You sense that by that time he had soaked in the spirit of the presidency, thought about the role, imagined himself in it, even if he feared he could never win it on his own. “No one who fills these functions can ever again be a ‘private’ citizen,” he argued when pushing for the stipend. He cited Hoover’s service to Truman as a heartwarming example of how presidents rise above partisanship in their post–White House years: “Personally, I wish we could find ways and means of making greater use of the services of former Presidents. They have a type of experience and knowledge that can be gained by no other men.” He proposed a $25,000-a-year allowance, office space, franking privileges, a pension for his widow, and office staff. “For the moment we can content ourselves with taking this one step—a step which . . . recognizes the true nature of the greatest office in our land.” It was as though he were honorary club treasurer, and he wanted the American people to pay dues.
So Johnson helped assure that Ike would have a comfortable post-presidency, and Ike often floated the notion that Johnson take his place in the Oval Office. He would warn Johnson against any legislative efforts that might circumscribe or damage the powers of the president, on the grounds that “It’s easily possible that you may be sitting in this chair sometime yourself.”
“No, Mr. President,” said the man from the Texas Hill Country, “that’s one chair I’ll never sit in.”
As the 1960 campaign approached, Eisenhower used to tell aides he thought Johnson was the strongest candidate the Democrats had. When the men would visit during the evening at the White House, Eisenhower would press him: “Why don’t you run, Lyndon? You’re the ablest guy in the party.”
And Johnson would always respond the same way: “Oh, no,” he’d tell Ike.
“Maybe it was just a conversational ploy,” Harlow says of Eisenhower’s kingmaking. “But Ike wasn’t that devious, really. . . . I think it probably was rather genuine.”
Ike’s tantalizing vision became real only in the wake of national trauma. Eisenhower drove down from Gettysburg and arrived at the White House to view Kennedy’s body at 11:15 on November 23, 1963, as boxes of the slain president’s papers were being moved out.
Johnson’s aide Horace Busby recalled the reversal of roles. “Every impulse of the man was to cooperate,” he said of Eisenhower, whom he described as being “modest, undemanding, attempting to be unobtrusive.” After the viewing, Ike met with Johnson and the two men had lunch. They talked about NATO, civil rights, managing the prickly French president, Charles de Gaulle, shaping the budget, which was due in a matter of weeks.
Eisenhower told Johnson to “be his own man.” He mentioned that there was “uneasiness, if not fear,” around the country at the tactics used by Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department, including charges that the IRS was being deployed against the Kennedys’ adversaries in business, the universities, and foundations. Let a decent interval pass, Eisenhower advised, but then clean house and appoint your own team.
“It is better to be a good president for a year,” he told Johnson, “than to hold the job for six years.”
By the time they had finished, Johnson asked him for a memo, with specific advice for the days ahead. Eisenhower went into Johnson’s outer office, picked up a legal pad, and began writing out ideas. He asked if a secretary he’d known, Alice Boyce, was still working at the White House; he trusted her, and so she was called in to take dictation. He asked that she burn her notes and make only two copies, one for Johnson and one for himself.
He recommended people for Johnson to reach out to, like Ike’s treasury secretary, Robert Anderson, and Andrew Goodpaster, who was then working as an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They could help restore the “organizational machinery” of the executive branch.
Next, Eisenhower told him to call a joint session of Congress, and practically dictated the outline for what Johnson should say. “Point out first that you have come to this office unexpectedly and you accept the decision of the Almighty,” he suggested, then assure everyone that “no revolution in purpose or policy is intended or will occur.” Instead it would be Johnson’s mission to carry out “the noble objectives so often and so eloquently stated by your great predecessor.” And he should vow to work closely with Congress, business, and labor to do it.
That was remarkable advice: a Republican former president urging an uncertain Democrat to continue and build on the policies of a Democratic icon. Eisenhower knew what the country needed at that moment; it was not a time for partisan positioning. He did, however, take the opportunity to press the case for a sound fiscal policy.
“I had to convince everyone everywhere that the country would go forward,” Johnson recalled. “Any hesitation or wavering, any false step, any sign of self-doubt, could have been disastrous.” Besides Eisenhower, Truman came to the White House as well that day, so Johnson could ensure that he was photographed with both presidents. Pictures too of him with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy were all released to the networks in time for the evening news, to show the world that the machinery of government was firmly in his hands.
Johnson rocketed to a 79 percent approval rating, as he stood before Congress five days after Kennedy’s death and followed Eisenhower’s guidance to underline continuity—from the tax bill Kennedy had championed to the one on civil rights. “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long,” he said. Eisenhower’s advice even made an appearance: “I pledge that the expenditures of your government will be administered with the utmost thrift and frugality,” he said. Most fatefully, in the spirit of living up to Kennedy’s legacy, he also vowed: “We will keep our commitments from South Vietnam to West Berlin.”
On Christmas Day, one month into his presidency, an exhausted Johnson called Eisenhower from the ranch. I not only followed your advice in my speech, he told Eisenhower, but I sent you a leather-bound copy with your initials on it. Then Lady Bird got on the phone, and told Ike how fondly she remembered the days when he and her husband worked together, “and I sure hope we can have more of that in times to come.”
Friends in Need
“Of all men in public life, Lyndon Johnson is one of the most friendless,” author Teddy White once observed. “Those who come in contact with him are accepted as cronies, or partners, or supplicants, or men he can use—as servants. But of real friends, he has few, for, above all else, he lacks the capacity for arousing warmth. Of all the things to which Kennedy was born and which Johnson lacked—wealth, background, elegance—Johnson probably envied Kennedy most his capacity for arousing love and friendship.”
Indeed Johnson tended to build alliances rather than friendships: “I was always very lonely,” he told Doris Kearns Goodwin, a condition mad
e worse by his sudden ascension to an office where power acts as a force field, attracting attention but precluding intimacy. The temptation is virtually irresistible for advisors and acquaintances alike to place themselves at the center of action and brag about their access. “One of the burdens of the president’s is if he talks to anybody, the news is spread as fast by that individual as he can,” observed Ike’s treasury secretary, Robert Anderson, whom Johnson did indeed call the day after Kennedy’s murder. “And from my own associations with every president I’ve known well, he’s a human being and he needs somebody to talk to . . . somebody who won’t talk about them even to the point of saying, ‘I talked to the President.’”
Johnson’s isolation was also fed by his sense of deficiency, which turned every encounter into a test of manhood, often literally. Johnson was famous for interrupting meetings at the White House with the suggestion that he and his guests—whether publishers, preachers, business leaders—go skinny-dipping in the White House pool. He took meetings in the bathroom. Guests at his Texas ranch were handed rifles and dared to go bring down a deer or antelope, or subjected to a bloodcurdling ride in his convertible. “I want people around me who would kiss my ass on a hot summer’s day and say it smells like roses,” he would say.
But relations with Eisenhower were different and always had been. Eisenhower was a hero, a man of action, not words, who like Johnson had received his share of condescension from the Eastern establishment. Being treated as an equal by one so formidable as Eisenhower was like a full body massage for the ego. “I never saw Lyndon Johnson talk to President Eisenhower like he would talk to me, leaning over and pointing at me and things like that,” Ike’s press secretary, James Hagerty, said. “They talked just like friends, only all they’re doing is talking about problems that affect the lives of the whole world. Outside of that it was like friends talking.”