If journalists did not generally understand the reason for Johnson’s new status, some of them were aware of it. Wrote Alex Louis, a correspondent for a Texas newspaper chain:
When the United States Congress convenes for a new session in January, the familiar face of John Nance Garner will be missing for the first time in more than a third of a century. After a brilliant career as congressman, Speaker of the House, and Vice-President, the bushy-eyebrowed Westerner who rose to higher official position than any other Texan in history will be absent.
Yet one of the eternal charms of politics is that as the old political oaks fall before the axe of retirement or death, sturdy new ones are rising in the forest to take their place. To many a Washington and Austin observer this winter, it seems that one of the sturdiest saplings in the forest—a young one which may grow into a mighty pillar of strength not only for Texas but for the American nation—is 32-year-old Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson of Johnson City.
A member of Congress for the past three years, tall, dark-haired, handsome Lyndon Johnson already has won an enviable position in Democratic circles and national affairs.
A symbolic scene had dramatized Louis’ analysis. John Garner’s last Cabinet meeting—the end of his active political life in Washington—had been held on October 4, and at its conclusion the grizzled Vice President came up to the President and said, “Well, goodbye, Boss.” He clapped the President on the shoulder with one hand and gripped him with the other, appearing, in Ickes’ description, “to be a very pleasant fellow indeed, saying farewell to a man to whom he was deeply attached.” Then he turned and walked out of the room. Ickes was a witness to the farewell because he had been waiting “after Cabinet” to have a word with the President. The word was on behalf of Lyndon Johnson; at the time, Johnson had not yet been given a role in the national congressional campaign, and he had asked Ickes to urge Roosevelt to give him one. Roosevelt had already decided to do so, and he told Ickes this. In the very moment in which the old Texan was making his exit from the national political scene, therefore, arrangements were being made for the entrance onto the national stage of a younger representative of the great province in the Southwest.
LYNDON JOHNSON’S WORK with Democratic congressional candidates had in effect added a new factor to the equation of American politics. The concept of financing congressional races across the country from a single central source was not new, but the Democrats had seldom if ever implemented the concept on the necessary scale or with the necessary energy. “No one before had ever worked at it,” James Rowe says. “Johnson worked at it like hell. People running for Congress in those days never had much money; it had been that way for years, but Lyndon decided to do something about it; he got in it with both feet, the way he did everything, and he raised a hell of a lot of money.” In effect, says Robert S. Allen, “he was being a one-man national committee for congressmen”—an apt analogy; although he was ostensibly “assisting” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, his connection with that body consisted almost entirely of the checks he brought to it; otherwise, working out of his own office and with his own staff, he operated entirely on his own. The scale of money he raised for congressional races was unusually large for his party; his involvement in other aspects of congressional races—liaison with the White House, and, through the White House, with other government departments; furnishing candidates with information—was unprecedentedly active. Almost incredibly—although confirmed by the surviving Congressmen of that era—so was the coordination and financing of speakers’ tours that he undertook. As to the liaison between candidates and White House on approval of public works and other governmental projects, this had not been undertaken on a similar scale even by the better-organized Republicans, possibly because under Republican Presidents, in the pre-New Deal era, the federal government had not sponsored public-works projects on the broadscale basis that existed in 1940. Nor had the liaison-in-reverse that he undertook: the use of Congressmen as sources of information, the rapid collecting of their information, its collating and dispatch to the White House. By the 1980’s, when Democratic and Republican congressional committees would be large-scale operations that furnished services and money to candidates, it would be difficult to imagine an era in which most Congressmen were left to fight their campaigns without significant help from their national party, but before Lyndon Johnson, that was, certainly in the case of the Democrats and to some extent in the case of Republicans, largely the practice. Discussing what Lyndon Johnson did in the campaign of 1940, James Rowe says flatly: “Nobody had ever done this before.”
A HALLMARK OF JOHNSON’S CAREER had been a lack of any consistent ideology or principle, in fact of any moral foundation whatsoever—a willingness to march with any ally who would help his personal advancement. His work with the congressional campaign committee brought this into sharper focus. Because Democratic congressional candidates in the one-party South had no opposition in the November elections, he was providing money only to Democrats in the North—who were primarily liberals. But the money came from men who were not liberals. Some of them, in fact, were arch-conservatives; among the “Texas friends” who had provided funds for Lyndon Johnson to distribute were men who would be bankrollers in 1944 of the “Texas Regulars,” Texans who bolted the party rather than support Roosevelt. He was helping New Dealers with the money of men who hated the New Deal.
In dealing with these men, Johnson did not make the slightest effort to paper over this conflict in his fund-raising efforts, nor was it necessary for him to do so. Political philosophy played not the smallest role in his appeals for money. During the next congressional campaign in 1942, after Ed Flynn had again attempted to freeze him out but had again been thwarted by Johnson’s control over Texas money (replied oilman G. L. Rowsey to a Flynn plea for funds: “My delay in replying is due to the fact that I expected to be in contact with our congressman, Honorable Lyndon Johnson … I desire to know his wishes in this matter and to make my contribution to or through him”), Johnson, exasperated by Rayburn’s continued failure to understand the new realities, wrote the Speaker that “these $200 driblets will not get the job done.” What was needed, Johnson said, was to “select a ‘minute man’ group of thirty men, each of whom should” raise $5,000, for a total of $150,000. … “This should be done between now and next Wednesday. … There isn’t any reason why, with the wealth and consideration that has been extended, we should fall down on this.” The logic behind that advice was the logic of Mark Hanna. Mobilizing the business community against the threat of Bryan and the populist philosophy embodied in his candidacy, the Boss of Ohio raised political contributions to a new level in 1896 by transforming campaign financing, in the words of his biographer, “from a matter of political begging… into a matter of systematic assessment according to the means of the individual and institution,” an assessment in which each great insurance company, railroad and bank would “pay according to its stake in the general prosperity of the country. …” “Dollar Mark” made campaign financing, in other words, a political levy upon wealth based straightforwardly upon gratitude. For past government help in acquiring that wealth and upon the hope of future government protection of that wealth, and of government assistance in adding to it. Johnson’s fund-raising, not being for a presidential race, was on a much smaller scale than Hanna’s, but it was based on the same naked philosophy of pure self-interest: “the wealth and consideration that has been extended.” And, as had been true in the case of Hanna, who raised millions more for a presidential campaign than had ever been raised before, Johnson’s logic was irresistible to those—oilmen and contractors—at whom it was directed. His confidence that the $150,000 could be raised in five days was justified; it was, and it was distributed just as rapidly to those candidates Johnson selected.
IF HERMAN BROWN regarded the campaign contributions he funneled through Lyndon Johnson as an investment, he received a healthy return on it.
Neither Herman
nor his brother George had ever seen a ship being built. “We didn’t know the stern from the aft—I mean the bow—of the boat,” George recalls. Nonetheless, in 1941, at about the time that their Corpus Christi Naval Air Station contract was rising toward $100,000,000, the brothers were awarded a lucrative Navy contract to build four subchasers. (The brothers established a new corporate entity for the purpose: says George, “They needed a name to put on the contract, and I said, ‘Brown Shipbuilding.’ That was all there was to it.”) When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the four subchasers were not yet completed, but a Navy Department official told the brothers, “We’ll put you in the destroyer business.” During the war, Brown Shipbuilding—under contracts with provisions so favorable that profits were all but guaranteed—would carry out $357,000,000 worth of work for the Navy.
AND WHAT OF THE RETURN reaped by the oilmen on an investment in Lyndon Johnson that, as years passed, was to grow and grow? What did they want from government?
They wanted a lot: not only continuation of the oil depletion allowance and of other tax benefits, and of exemption from federal regulation but new benefits, and new exemptions—and other new, favorable, government policies. As the future will demonstrate, they wanted government favoritism on a scale so immense that it would become a significant factor in the overall political and economic development of the United States.
In 1940, they had not yet achieved what they wanted. But they were asking too early, that was all.
Lyndon Johnson wasn’t their Senator yet.
33
Through the Back Door
IN ORDER TO REAP THE FULLEST BENEFITS from his work with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Johnson kept working after Election Day. Among the implements he employed were letters—letters with the Johnson touch. These letters, written to powerful officials, all shared a single theme: each official was told that it was he—and he alone—who had made it possible for Johnson to participate in the 1940 campaign. Each official was thanked—humbly, gratefully—for giving a young man his great opportunity. And each official was flattered—with flattery custom-tailored by a master of the art.
Johnson had noticed how entranced Henry Wallace had been at Longlea by his stories about Texas. To the Vice President-elect, Johnson wrote:
When Texas was fighting for its independence there were several squirrel-shooters from the hill country who heard the news and wanted to get into Sam Houston’s army.
They couldn’t find Old Sam himself, because he was busy out-maneuvering the enemy, leading him into a trap. But they had friends who took them in hand, set them out over the right trails and landed them at San Jacinto where they could witness the action and, in their small way, participate.
I am a successor of some of those squirrel-shooters and in 1940, 104 years afterwards, I was in a similar quandary. Not very strong, but smarting to add my few grains of powder to the battle fire.
I have not forgotten that you showed me the right trail and helped set me out on it.
With congratulations, and assurances of my confidence in and affection for you,
Sincerely,
Lyndon Johnson
John McCormack had a tradition he was proud of—the Massachusetts tradition, which included Bunker Hill—and to the Majority Leader, Johnson wrote: “You helped me get in line and to see the whites of a few enemy eyes. I shall not forget it.” (“Until I ran across you,” Johnson also wrote, “it looked … as if the undersigned Texas boy from the hill country wasn’t going to be able to get in with his few rounds. … The big guns were all roaring [and] I didn’t know whether I was going to find a loophole through which to point my muzzle-loader.”) The key to Sam Rayburn was the Speaker’s protective, paternal feeling for young men who depended on him, and Johnson wrote Rayburn (after telling him that it was only through “your good offices that I had the chance” to participate in the campaign) that some young Congressmen “would have been out in the bitter winter wind without firewood if you and other veteran hands hadn’t pitched in, accomplished the necessary and effected their rescue.” Letters from this prince of flatterers went not only to men who, like McCormack, had indeed helped him get into the fight, but to men who—as he was well aware—had tried to keep him out of it; to Ed Flynn, he sent a letter of “felicitation and appreciation.”
The fighters in the ranks give thanks not only for the victory but for the leadership which brought them the victory. As one of the infantrymen, I rejoice in the victory, and in my officers who arranged it.
And I thank you warmly for your consideration, in the midst of an incredibly busy time—consideration which made it possible for me to get in my few licks.
Call on me at any time I can do anything and remember me. …
The most important of these letters began with the simple salutation: “Sir,” and told Franklin Roosevelt:
There wasn’t much I could do to help when the battle of 1940 was raging, although I smarted to do something.
I know I should have been utterly out in the cold except for your good offices. You made it possible for me to get down where I could whiff a bit of the powder, and this note is to say “Thank you.” It was grand. The victory is perfect.
During the 1940 campaign, Roosevelt and Johnson had had several discussions. Now they were to have more. The President and the young man talked together in the Oval Office—one can only imagine Lyndon Johnson’s feelings during those conversations in that bright, sunny room in which he had for so many years longed to sit. And they talked together in the upstairs, private, quarters of the White House. Johnson had breakfast in Roosevelt’s spartan bedroom, the President sitting up in bed with a blue Navy cape around his shoulders. He had lunch in the President’s private study, a comfortable room with chintz-covered furniture and walls so full of naval paintings that they seemed almost papered with them, dining with Franklin D. Roosevelt off a bridge table. Johnson, describing the President as a lonely man whose wife was often traveling, is quoted as saying, “He’d call me up” and “I used to go down sometimes and have a meal with him.”
External evidence reveals that one subject they were discussing was Texas, for Roosevelt was, more and more, making Johnson his man in that state: the individual through whom political matters relating to Texas were cleared. These included minor details seemingly far removed from Johnson’s immediate interest. A note requesting a letter of presidential greetings for an East Texas banker was referred by the President not to Sam Rayburn or Jesse Jones—or to the banker’s Congressman, Lindley Beckworth—but to Johnson, with a covering note: “Do you think this is all right to do?” (Johnson’s suggested reply was followed exactly.) And they included matters not minor at all, and very close to Johnson’s heart. With Garner departed, and Rayburn tarred, Johnson’s major remaining rival for the role of the President’s man in Texas was Reconstruction Finance Corporation Chairman Jesse Jones. A symbolic confrontation came on Jones’ own turf: financing that involved RFC bonds. The bonds in question were those of Alvin Wirtz’s Lower Colorado River Authority, $21 million of which had been purchased by the RFC to help the Authority get under way. Superlatively safe investments (because the Authority’s now ample revenues were pledged, through unbreakable bond covenants, to pay the interest and amortization), high-yielding, tax exempt—these bonds were coveted by investors; “I think every bond house in the United States is waiting to get its hands on the Lower Colorado River Authority bonds,” Wirtz was to write to Johnson. Wirtz had his own, favored, bond house in mind, but Jones had another, and he had the power to sell the bonds to whom he chose—and was about to exercise that power when, at a Cabinet meeting, the President handed him a scribbled note:
Private
J.J.
Don’t sell the Lower Colorado River Auth. bonds without talking with Father.
FDR
“What this meant was that some moodier had been to see the President, looking for an inside deal,” Jones wrote in his memoirs, “meddlers wanti
ng to muscle in for a little private smoosh.” He also wrote that he defied the President and sold the bonds to the highest bidder, but in fact Roosevelt’s intervention dissuaded him from making the sale he had intended, and eventually the bonds, and the “smoosh,” went to the firm favored by Wirtz and Johnson. What else Roosevelt and Johnson talked about we don’t know, just as we don’t know how often they actually talked alone. Did they talk politics—this master of politics who had persuaded a mighty nation to grant him ultimate power for an unprecedented span and this wonder kid of politics who was searching for every possible handhold on the path to power? Did they talk personalities, these two matchless readers of—and manipulators of—men? No one really knows. All we know is their reaction to their discussions, reactions revealed to others. Lady Bird Johnson says her husband saw Roosevelt “often.” She says, “I of course know nothing” about what transpired between them at these meetings, “but I know the mood they left him [her husband] in—which was one of high excitement. … Every time he came from the White House, he was on a sort of high.” As for Roosevelt, he was convinced—quite firmly convinced—that the young Congressman believed in the things he himself believed in. Moreover, Franklin Roosevelt’s initial impression of Lyndon Johnson—the feeling that he was “a most remarkable young man”—had evidently been reinforced by familiarity; in the opinion of James Rowe, the presidential aide with the best opportunity to observe the interplay between Roosevelt and Johnson, the principal reason for the growing rapport between the two men was the President’s belief that Johnson was not only committed but capable. “Johnson was in many ways just more capable than most of the people Roosevelt saw. We’re talking about a very capable man. … You’ve got to remember that they were two great political geniuses.” The President told Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, who worked in congressional liaison for the White House: “I want you to work with that young Congressman from Texas, Lyndon Johnson. He’s a comer, and he’s a real liberal.” The President tendered Johnson the ultimate compliment. He told Harold Ickes that Johnson was “the kind of uninhibited young pro he would have liked to have been as a young man”—and might have been “if he hadn’t gone to Harvard.” And, Ickes recounted, Roosevelt had also said “that in the next generation the balance of power would shift south and west, and this boy could well be the first Southern President.”
The Path to Power Page 100