On Sunday morning, January 19, 1969, Pat and I attended Norman Vincent Peale’s morning service at Marble Collegiate Church, and in the afternoon we boarded the plane Johnson had sent to bring us to Washington.
I spent my last evening as a private citizen putting the final touches on my inaugural address. At about eight o’clock Eisenhower called me from Walter Reed.
“Hi, Dick!” he said. “I want to wish you the best on what I am sure will be a great day tomorrow.” He paused for a moment. “I have only one regret. This is the last time that I can call you Dick. From now on it will always be Mr. President.”
THE PRESIDENCY
1969-1974
On inauguration day, January 20, 1969, I woke at 7:45 A.M. and had breakfast with Pat in our suite. Then we attended a prayer service in the State Department Auditorium before driving to the White House. As our car slowly turned into the driveway, we could see the Johnsons waiting for us on the porch under the North Portico.
We went in for the traditional coffee and rolls in the Red Room. “I think maybe you should deliver my address today, Hubert,” I said to Humphrey in an attempt to keep the mood light.
“That’s what I had planned to do, Dick,” he replied with a smile.
I remembered from 1961 how painful this ceremony could be for a man who had lost a close election, and I was touched by Humphrey’s graceful show of good humor.
During the short ride to the Capitol, Johnson waved to the crowds lining the route and carried on a lively conversation all the way. That night I dictated a note about what he said:
Riding down to the Capitol, Johnson spoke with very strong feeling with regard to Muskie and Agnew.
He said that at a dinner the night before, a group of people were talking about how much Muskie had contributed to the campaign. He, Johnson, had replied that all the press had slobbered over Muskie, but when it came down to votes Muskie had delivered Maine with four votes, whereas Agnew could take credit or at least a great deal of the credit on South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Obviously, he liked Agnew and had very little use for Muskie.
For the swearing in, Pat held the same two Milhous family Bibles that she had held in 1953 and 1957. I had requested that they be opened to Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
After Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the oath, I delivered my inaugural address.
My major theme was peace. I said: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America. . . . If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to greatness.”
When we were ready to begin the inaugural parade from the Capitol back to the White House, I saw that the Secret Service had put the top on the presidential limousine. The agent in charge explained that there were several hundred demonstrators along the route and there had already been some skirmishes with the police and the other spectators.
For the first few blocks the cheering crowds were friendly. Around 12th Street I could see protest signs waving above a double line of police struggling to keep the crowd back. Suddenly a barrage of sticks, stones, beer cans, and what looked like firecrackers began sailing through the air toward us. Some of them hit the side of the car and fell into the street. I could hear the protesters’ shrill chant: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win.” A Vietcong flag was lifted, and there was a brief scuffle as some in the crowd tried to tear it down. Seconds later we rounded the corner onto 15th Street, and the atmosphere changed completely. A loud cheer rose from the crowds on the sidewalks in front of the Washington Hotel and the Treasury Building. I was angered that a group of protesters carrying a Vietcong flag had made us captives inside the car. I told the driver to open the sun roof and to let the other agents know that Pat and I were going to stand up so the people could see us.
That night we attended each of the four inaugural balls. It was about 1:30 A.M. when we returned to the White House. Tricia and Julie found the refrigerator stocked with butter brickle ice cream and Dr Pepper, left by the Johnson girls.
I sat down at the grand piano in the center hall of the Family Quarters and played “Rustle of Spring” and a song I had composed for Pat before we were married.
When we had all gathered on the sofas in the West Hall Pat said with a happy sigh, “It’s good to be home.” Everyone looked up. The White House was now our home.
The White House is both a national museum and a home. The great historical rooms are primarily on the ground and first floors—the East Room, the Green, Blue, and Red Rooms, and the State Dining Room. The private rooms on the second and third floors are known as the Residence or the Family Quarters. Their personality changes with every administration.
In decorating our Family Quarters Pat chose yellows, blues, and golds—sunny, California colors. Tricia, who lived with us until her marriage in 1971, took Lynda Bird Johnson’s room, which looked out over Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Park. The bright and airy third-floor Solarium, which had been a schoolroom for the Kennedy children and then a no-adults-admitted teenage party room for Luci and Lynda Johnson, became our family room.
Yet even in the Family Quarters, history surrounds you. When I asked for a regular bed rather than the large canopied four-poster used by Johnson, the bed that was brought out of storage for me turned out to have been first Truman’s and then Eisenhower’s. I could not help thinking that here was a case in which politics had literally bred strange bedfellows.
From John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt the President and his staff worked in the White House itself. But TR’s family of six children and their menagerie of cats, dogs, raccoons, snakes, a pony, and a bear proved too much and he requested the addition of a West Wing.
The West Wing is actually a small three-story office building. On the ground floor are the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, and another meeting room, which we called the Roosevelt Room. During World War II an East Wing was added to provide additional offices for the President’s staff and the staff of the First Lady.
Even after Pat had warmed the Oval Office with a rich blue and gold rug and vibrant gold sofas and curtains, it was still undeniably formal. I decided, therefore, to have a second and more comfortable office in the old Executive Office Building, which is next to the White House, separated from it by a narrow closed-off street. Reporters usually referred to the EOB office as my “small hideaway office,” but it was almost as large as the Oval Office. Pat filled the shelves with my favorite books and decorated it with some of the mementos I had collected over the years. There were many family photographs, but the one that meant the most to me was a picture of Pat, Tricia, Julie, and me, taken on the day we moved back to California after I lost the 1960 presidential election. Julie once wrote to me, “I like to think that the reason you kept it on your desk was that it symbolized the happiness that we felt as a family in the midst of a difficult defeat and a difficult new start for you in private life after serving so many years as congressman, senator, and Vice President.” I preferred working and thinking surrounded by these personal things rather than by the formal atmosphere of the Oval Office.
From the first days, I also used the Lincoln Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House for the work I did at night after dinner. It is a small room that was used as an office by Lincoln’s secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. Pat added a few special touches to the decoration, including my favorite old brown velvet easy chair and footstool that I had brought from my study in our New York apartment.
For the Oval Office I requested the antique desk that I had used in my ceremonial office in the Capitol when I was Vice President. For the EOB office we brought in the desk and chair Eisenhower had used in the Oval Office. It had been in storage since Kennedy decided to r
eplace it with a desk Franklin D. Roosevelt had used during his presidency.
Above the mantel in the Oval Office, Johnson had a portrait of FDR holding the Atlantic Charter. I replaced it with a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Following White House tradition, I personally selected portraits of three predecessors for the Cabinet Room. I chose Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Lyndon Johnson had been captivated by gadgets and electronic equipment and he felt a constant need to know what was being said about him in the press and on television. Standing against the wall of the Oval Office to the left of his desk was a large specially constructed cabinet with insulated sides and a thick glass top, housing two constantly clattering wire service news tickers. Next to it, a long low cabinet concealed three large-screen color TV sets arranged side by side. Using a special remote control device, Johnson could watch the three networks simultaneously while switching back and forth among them for the sound. There was a similar three-set console in the small office adjacent to the Oval Office, and still another in the President’s bedroom. I told Haldeman that I would like a single set put in the small office, and that all the others were to be removed, along with the wire service machines.
I discovered a mass of wires and cables underneath Johnson’s bed. I was told that some were for his telephones, some were remote control wires for the TV sets, and some were for tape recording equipment connected to the phones. I asked that they all be removed.
One other piece of Johnsonian paraphernalia was the shower in the President’s private bathroom in the Residence. It consisted of half a dozen different jets and showerheads, controlled by a complicated panel of knobs. My first few attempts at using it nearly flung me out of the stall, so I asked that it be replaced with a regular overhead fixture.
I slept only about four hours my first night in the White House, and was up at 6:45 A.M. While I was shaving, I remembered the hidden safe that Johnson had shown me during our visit in November. When I opened it, the safe looked empty. Then I saw a thin folder on the top shelf. It contained the daily Vietnam Situation Report from the intelligence services for the previous day, Johnson’s last day in office.
I quickly read through it. The last page contained the latest casualty figures. During the week ending January 18, 185 Americans had been killed and 1,237 wounded. From January 1, 1968 to January 18, 1969, 14,958 men had been killed and 95,798 had been wounded. I closed the folder and put it back in the safe and left it there until the war was over, a constant reminder of its tragic cost.
On February 17 Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin came to the White House to pay his first official call.
I told him that I wanted to have completely open communications with him and with the leaders of his government.
“Both you and I, Mr. Ambassador, recognize the very fundamental differences that exist between us,” I said. “We may or may not be able to settle them. I hope that we will. But you and I must at least make sure that no differences arise between us because of lack of communication.”
Kissinger had suggested that we develop a private channel between Dobrynin and him. I agreed that Dobrynin might be more forthcoming in strictly private and unpublicized meetings and we arranged for him to arrive unseen through a seldom-used East Wing door so that no one need know they had met. Within a short time they were meeting weekly, often over lunch.
When Dobrynin said that his government wanted to begin talks in the area of arms limitation, I expressed my feeling that progress in one area must logically be linked to progress in other areas.
“History makes it clear that wars result not so much from arms, or even from arms races, as they do from underlying political differences and political problems,” I said. “So I think it is incumbent on us, when we begin strategic arms talks, to do what we can in a parallel way to defuse critical political situations like the Middle East and Vietnam and Berlin, where there is a danger that arms might be put to use.”
Before Dobrynin left, he handed me an official seven-page note from Moscow which indicated that the Soviets were prepared to move forward on a whole range of topics, including the Middle East, Central Europe, Vietnam, and arms control.
This note seemed to augur well for our policy of linkage. The major question, of course, was whether the Soviets would follow up on their words with action.
EUROPE AND de GAULLE
On February 23 I left Washington for an eight-day working visit to Europe. I wanted this trip, my first abroad as President, to establish the principle that we would consult with our allies before negotiating with our potential adversaries. I also wanted to show the world that the new American President was not completely obsessed with Vietnam, and to dramatize for Americans at home that, despite opposition to the war, their President could still be received abroad with respect and even enthusiasm.
Most important, I felt that President de Gaulle’s cooperation would be vital to ending the Vietnam war and to my plans for beginning a new relationship with Communist China. France had diplomatic relations with Hanoi and Peking, and Paris would be the best place to open secret channels of communication between us and them. But de Gaulle had become seriously alienated from America during the last several years. In 1966 he had NATO headquarters removed from France. Whether we would be able to use Paris as a site for our diplomatic overtures would depend on my ability to overcome the estrangement that had grown up between us and to establish a relationship of trust and confidence with de Gaulle.
The first stop was Brussels, where I set the tone for the trip when I told the North Atlantic Council, “I have come for work, not for ceremony; to inquire, not to insist; to consult, not to convince; to listen and learn, and to begin what I hope will be a continuing interchange of ideas and insight.”
In London I had a luncheon with Queen Elizabeth, and a long informal conversation with nineteen prominent British citizens. I had a private talk with Prime Minister Wilson in a comfortable room at 10 Downing Street. A warm fire cast a glow over the room and after a few minutes Wilson leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. He was wearing carpet slippers. Our conversation ranged from America’s position in Vietnam to Britain’s role in Europe. Wilson had met the Soviet leaders when he visited Moscow, and he offered his impressions of their different personalities. He said that if Brezhnev had been born in Britain he probably would have ended up Secretary General of the Trades Union Council, and if Kosygin had been an Englishman he would likely have become Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries.
A potentially awkward situation arose when Wilson gave a small dinner party for me at 10 Downing Street. In 1962 the British magazine New Statesman had described my defeat by Pat Brown as “a victory for decency in public life.” John Freeman, who had then been the magazine’s editor, had recently been appointed British ambassador in Washington. That evening at Downing Street would be the first time that he and I would be in the same room in an intimate social setting.
I decided to relieve the tension by addressing it directly. In my toast after dinner I said that American journalists had written far worse things about me than had appeared in Freeman’s magazine. It was now a part of the past and best forgotten. “After all,” I said, “he’s the new diplomat, and I’m the new statesman.”
The men thumped the table and called, “Hear, hear.” When I sat down, Wilson slid his menu to me. On the back of it he had written: “That was one of the kindest and most generous acts I have known in a quarter of a century in politics. Just proves my point. You can’t guarantee being born a lord. It is possible—you’ve shown it—to be born a gentleman.”
We had feared antiwar demonstrations, and a few took place during this trip, but none could mar the overwhelmingly friendly reaction of the large crowds that greeted us everywhere we went in London, Paris, Bonn, Brussels, Berlin, and Rome. Whenever possible, I took impromptu walks or plunged into the crowds to shake hands and meet people.
The high point of this trip
personally and substantively was my series of meetings with de Gaulle. When Air Force One taxied to the terminal at Orly Airport, I could see him standing coatless at the foot of the ramp. I had been told that the temperature was just above freezing, but I immediately took off my overcoat. As we shook hands, de Gaulle greeted me in English—a virtually unprecedented personal gesture for him.
When we met privately that afternoon at the Elysée Palace, the first topic of discussion was the Soviet Union.
He said that the central fact of life for postwar Europe was the Soviet threat, but he believed that the Soviets themselves had become preoccupied with China. He said, “They are thinking in terms of a possible clash with China, and they know they can’t fight the West at the same time. Thus I believe that they may end up opting for a policy of rapprochement with the West.” He thought that the Russians’ traditional fear of German armies would give added impetus to whatever inclination they already had toward détente.
“As far as the West is concerned,” he continued, “what choice do we have? Unless you are prepared to go to war or to break down the Berlin Wall, then there is no alternative policy that is acceptable. To work toward détente is a matter of good sense: if you are not ready to make war, make peace.”
“If the Russians made a move,” I asked, “do you think they believe that the United States would react with strategic weapons? And do the Europeans have confidence that we would move in answer to a Soviet attack, or the threat of an attack, by massive conventional ground forces?”
“I can only answer for the French,” he replied. “We believe that the Russians know that the United States could not allow them to conquer Europe. But we also believe that if the Russians marched, you would not use nuclear weapons right away, since it would imply a total effort to kill everyone on the other side. If both the Russians and the United States were to use tactical nuclear weapons, Europe would be destroyed. Western Europe and the United Kingdom would be destroyed by Soviet tactical weapons, and East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary would be destroyed by American tactical weapons. Meanwhile, the United States and the Soviet Union would not be harmed.”
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