The Path to Power

by Robert A. Caro

  “Is there objection to the request of the Gentleman from Texas?” Rayburn asked. There being none, Rayburn said, “So be it.”

  The story of the naval service of Lyndon Johnson was to prove a very complicated one; as his actions during the war, and his own, private, statements to contemporaries were to demonstrate, it was a story motivated by considerations at least as much political as patriotic. But to Sam Rayburn, to whom some things were very simple, there was nothing complicated at all about a brave young man in uniform going off to fight for his country, perhaps to die. Rayburn was a profoundly silent man, determined that no one ever be able to guess his feelings. But as the coldness of a father toward an estranged son melts in a moment when the boy is in danger, so Rayburn’s coldness to Lyndon Johnson melted now. Their exchanges of friendly letters had long since dried up—there had been none for more than a year—but Johnson wrote one on December 18, a few days before he was to depart for the West Coast. He was worried about the Speaker’s health, he said; he hoped Rayburn would take care of himself. During the next few months, he said, “you must carry a burden that few—if any—men in our country can carry. You have never shirked a duty or failed a responsibility. You won’t now—unless the old physical self cracks up. So take this suggestion from one much less experienced than yourself: ‘Get fitted.’” The letter was signed: “Just one who respects you and loves you—LBJ.” Sam Rayburn folded over that letter several times—until it was small enough to fit into his billfold. He carried it around in his billfold for a long time. Then he placed it in a special drawer in his desk: the drawer in which he kept the letters from his mother. When, eighteen years later, officials of the Sam Rayburn Library itemized the contents of that drawer, the letter was still there.

  IF TO SAM RAYBURN Lyndon Johnson was the brave young man going off to war, there was a brave young wife staying behind, the shy, timid young woman, when he had first met her almost as lonely in Washington as he was, to whom his heart had gone out in paternal fondness—and who had repaid him, and more than repaid him, by making him feel at home in the Johnsons’ apartment.

  After his initial trip to the Coast, Lyndon Johnson returned to Washington. In February, he left again—this time, it was reported, for the South Pacific. He and John Connally, also in Navy uniform, left from Union Station, and Lady Bird Johnson and Connally’s wife, Nellie, went down to the station to say goodbye.

  So did Sam Rayburn. He had abruptly announced that he was going down to the station with them. The giant terminal was, in Lady Bird’s word, a “hubbub,” jammed with sailors, soldiers and marines, their women kissing them goodbye. Amid the tumult, Rayburn stood alone, square and silent as he always stood, well behind the young couple of whom he was so fond. As the Johnsons said goodbye to each other, he said nothing. His face was as expressionless as ever.

  But after the train had pulled out, he came up to Lady Bird and Nellie. His words were not tender; only if you knew Sam Rayburn would you know what was behind them. “Now girls,” Sam Rayburn said, with the gruffness of a man who could never be cheerful no matter how hard he tried, and who knew it, but who was determined to be as cheerful as he could—“Now girls, we’re going to get us the best dinner in Washington.”

  IN UNDERSTANDING what many perceptive men had so much difficulty in understanding—the bond that, for the next twenty years, made Sam Rayburn the ally of a man so utterly opposite to him in both principles and personality—part of the answer lies in Lady Bird Johnson’s sweetness and graciousness, and in the shyness that made Rayburn so fond of her. While Lyndon was away during the war, the Speaker hovered over Lady Bird, paternally protective, smoothing her work as she tried to run her husband’s office in his absence, providing evenings out for her—and for the wives of other young men who were off to war, not only for Nellie Connally but for Elizabeth Rowe, Jim’s wife, for example.

  Of all the proofs of the power of Lady Bird’s graciousness, perhaps none is more convincing than the fact that she made Sam Rayburn feel at home in her home; for the rest of his life he would come to dinner as often as several times a week; the only stipulation he made was that “that blamed television set” be turned off. She had his favorite recipes down pat, and, with her unfailing warmth, made him feel she was happy to prepare them—when the Johnsons acquired a cook, the cook was taught how to make cornbread and chili the way Mr. Sam liked them. The bond between Lady Bird and Mr. Sam was to become strong. Talking of “the Speaker,” she says with a fierceness very unusual for her: “He was the best of us—the best of simple American stock.” In his times of sorrow—when a brother or sister died—her heart went out to him; on the occasion of one death, she wrote him: “We wish we could put our arms around you today. Your sadness is ours, too.” Rayburn was to write her: “Your friendship for me is one of the most heartening things in my life.” During Lady Bird’s pregnancies, the Speaker’s concern about her health was so deep as to amuse those who witnessed it. He was constantly asking Johnson to telephone her to find out if she was all right; once, when Johnson did not immediately do so, he rasped: “Go call her this minute.”

  Then came the children: Lynda Bird in 1944 and Lucy Baines three years later. Sam Rayburn had wanted a child so badly, but he had had none, and never would. He loved Lyndon’s. He would sit for hours with one of the girls on his lap, patiently listening to her gabble; as soon as Lynda Bird could talk, he taught her a sentence: “We are just two old pals.” He gave them birthday parties at his apartment, inviting perhaps ten or twelve of their friends; the children’s parents stared as they watched the little girls or boys sitting on the Speaker’s lap, or reaching up to hug him—this man whom other men only feared. One of these fathers, the lobbyist Dale Miller, says that he realized watching Sam Rayburn what he had never known—that “He was a kind man, but he would be distressed if he ever thought you had found that out.” Lyndon Johnson’s family became Sam Rayburn’s family—the family he had never had.

  Also cementing the bond between the two men was Johnson’s talent as a “professional son.”

  He knew now how much he needed “Mr. Sam.” For the next two decades, Sam Rayburn held power in Washington. Presidents came and went—Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy—but whoever was President, Sam Rayburn was Speaker; he held the post he had dreamed of as a boy for almost seventeen of the twenty-one years after 1940, more years than any other man in American history. Over his branch of government his power was immense, so great that it spilled over into the government as a whole. Johnson needed him not only at the moment, when he was still only a junior member of the body the older man ruled; he needed him for the realization of his great ambition. And he knew it. If you want to be President, he told William O. Douglas during the 1940’s, “you’ve got to do it through Sam Rayburn.” And, needing the Speaker as his friend, Johnson devoted his energy and his skill to making him one. He reiterated his version of their first meeting (“My dear Mr. Speaker,” he was to write in 1957, “when I was a very little boy in knee breeches and high button shoes, my Daddy told me that ‘there’s a young fellow from Bonham who’s a mighty good friend and don’t you go forgetting it.’ I promised to remember—and that was the smartest promise I ever made in my life”)—reiterated it so often that Rayburn eventually came to believe that he remembered it, too; nominating Johnson for the Presidency in 1960, Rayburn said: “I’m going to present to you today a man that I have known since his babyhood. …” As Rayburn grew old, that story came to mean more and more to him; at one banquet, when Rayburn was seventy-six, Senator Ralph Yarborough was to recall, “Lyndon was telling the story about how Sam had first seen him running up and down the aisles [of the Texas House of Representatives] in short pants. He was telling how ‘he’s been like a father to me.’ I saw tears come out of Rayburn’s eyes at this banquet and roll down his cheeks.”

  When Lynda Bird was born in 1944, Johnson telephoned Rayburn with the news and made a point of telling him he was the first person he had called, even befo
re he had telephoned his own mother. He entertained Rayburn’s favorite sister, Lucinda (“Miss Lou”), on her annual visits to Washington, and, when she was back in Bonham, wrote her to keep her up to date on the Speaker’s health, and sent her presents, including candy in boxes so elaborate that she kept them on her vanity table as decorations. And he did nothing to discourage the bond between Rayburn and Lady Bird. During the first decade of her marriage, Lady Bird was not usually present at dinners at which her husband discussed serious political business—unless the Speaker was present. If he was, she would be brought along—even if she was the only wife there. During the war years, she recalls, sometimes a group of Texans would go out to dinner, at the Occidental, or to Hall’s Restaurant for bluepoints and lobster; “This would be the Speaker, and perhaps Wright Patman, and others. … The other men would leave their wives home, because they would be talking business. There would be three or four or five men and me—for some reason, Lyndon always took me.”

  ALTHOUGH THE RELATIONSHIP between Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn was restored, it was to be subtly different than it had been before. Johnson’s actions in the 1940 Garner-Roosevelt fight had lifted from Rayburn’s eyes the curtain of uncritical affection through which he had hitherto regarded the younger man. If Sam Rayburn loved Lyndon Johnson, the love was no longer blind. Men who sat in the Board of Education during the next twenty years were aware of this even if most Washingtonians were not. Says Richard Boiling: “A constant refrain was about his [Johnson’s] arrogance and egotism. He [Rayburn] said to me several times the same words: ‘I don’t know anyone who is as vain or more selfish than Lyndon Johnson.’” He appears to have understood now what drove the younger man; Ramsey Clark says, in words echoed by other men who knew both, “He understood Johnson. I’ve heard him talk about Johnson, and his ambition. I don’t think it was blind love at all.”

  But Clark also says, and Boiling agrees, and so do Ken Harding and D. B. Hardeman and other men who sat, afternoon after afternoon, in the Board of Education as the dramas of power were played out, that while the “love” may not have been “blind,” love it certainly was. Sam Rayburn could criticize Johnson, but he let no one else do so. Once, after Johnson’s 1948 campaign for the Senate, a reporter from Texas was riding in the Speaker’s limousine and remarked that Johnson had stolen the election; Rayburn had the chauffeur stop the car, and ordered the reporter out of it. Says Hardeman: “It was a father-son relation, with all that that implies. … Johnson would just infuriate him, but he would defend Johnson against all comers. He loved him in the way: he’d like to wear the bottom of his britches out.”

  The most significant difference was that, although the relationship was restored, no longer did Rayburn give his love and support to Lyndon Johnson for nothing; he demanded from him, in political matters at least, the respect, even deference, that he received from other men. The door to the Board room on the ground floor of the Capitol was open to Johnson again, but in that room, Rayburn ruled, and Johnson acknowledged that fact. Even in later years, when Johnson was the leader of one house of Congress as Rayburn was of the other, he acknowledged that. The acknowledgment was in the names by which each referred to the other: “It was never ‘Sam,’” says one man. “It was always ‘Mr. Sam’ or ‘Mr. Speaker,’ and ‘Lyndon.’” Says another: “There was never a feeling that they were equals. Never. Even after [Johnson became Majority Leader], Johnson was quite deferential to him. He would argue with him, but always in such a way that you knew who was the boss.” If there was a disagreement, Johnson would preface his argument by saying, “Mr. Speaker, we’re going to do whatever you want, but here’s what I think.” If he did it that way, Brown & Root lobbyist Frank Oltorf says, Rayburn would go along—but he wouldn’t go along otherwise. Even Walter Jenkins, who idolized Johnson, says, “He kowtowed to Mr. Rayburn unbelievably.” What Rayburn demanded, Johnson gave.

  Occasionally, Johnson’s feelings—his true feelings—about what he gave became apparent, but he never let Rayburn see them. When he was in the Senate, he would sometimes say to Jim Rowe, “Oh, Rayburn’s so goddamned difficult—I’ve got to go over there to the Board of Education and kiss his ass, and I don’t want to do it.” But he went over, and did it—afternoon after afternoon, year after year. In 1957, when he was Majority Leader, he attended the dedication of the Sam Rayburn Library in Bonham. While he was talking with several prominent Texans, one of Rayburn’s aides, House Doorkeeper “Fishbait” Miller, came up and told him the Speaker would like to see him. He waved Miller aside twice, and, when Miller persisted, exploded: “Goddammit, I have to kiss his ass all the time in Washington. I don’t have to do it in Texas, too, do I? I’m not coming!” But then he ran after Miller to make sure that the message wasn’t delivered, and hurried off to see the Speaker.

  And in return for giving Rayburn what Rayburn wanted, Johnson got what he wanted. For the twenty years after Pearl Harbor, Sam Rayburn was one of the rocks—one of the firmest rocks—on which Lyndon Johnson’s career was built.

  IN AUGUST, 1961, Sam Rayburn, seventy-nine years old, virtually blind but still Speaker of the House, was dying of cancer, so racked by pain that he was finally forced to curtly inform a shocked and silent House—while giving it no hint of the true nature of his illness, which he had long concealed—that although Congress was still in session, he was going to leave Washington and return to Texas for medical treatment. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was in Berlin, dispatched there by President Kennedy to reassure that city of American support. (On August 17, when Kennedy had telephoned Johnson to ask him to go to Berlin, he had reached him at Rayburn’s apartment at the Anchorage, and Johnson had replied that he had been planning to go fishing with Rayburn that weekend. Rayburn had interrupted to tell him to go to Berlin; they could go fishing another weekend, he said.)

  On August 21, Johnson returned to Washington. Lady Bird, at Andrews Air Force Base Airport to greet him, suddenly looked around and to her surprise saw Sam Rayburn standing there behind her, as he had stood at Union Station so many years before.

  Dear Mr. Speaker [Lady Bird wrote],

  As I stood by that airplane in the gray, grizzly morning waiting for Lyndon, I looked up and saw you and my mind went back to so many times and so many trouble-fraught situations when you have stood by our side. You were dear to take the trouble to come out and I wanted to drop you a line and tell you so.

  Next April is my twenty-fifth anniversary as a wife of a member of Congress. This quarter of a century of our lives has been marked most by knowing you.

  On August 30, Sam Rayburn wrote back, stilted and formal even now. “Dear Bird,” he wrote, “Your note was very refreshing and highly appreciated by me. You know that no two people are closer to me in friendship and love than you and Lyndon. It has been a great heritage to have known you so intimately and well.” Although the pain was very bad that day, the hand that wrote that letter did not shake. There was not a tremor in the name “Sam Rayburn.” The next morning, Rayburn went home to Bonham to die. A friend who spent time with him during his last days explained why he did not stay in Washington, where he could have gotten better medical assistance: Rayburn, the friend wrote, thought that “Washington was such a lonely city for a country boy to get sick in.”

  37

  The “Perfect Roosevelt Man”

  PEARL HARBOR was to derail Lyndon Johnson’s career.

  He had expected to run against Pappy O’Daniel again in just a year—in the Democratic primary that would be held during the summer of 1942 for the full six-year term in the same Senate seat. He hoped for Roosevelt’s backing in 1942, and the President’s negative response to Rayburn’s request for an interview for Gerald Mann was not the only indication that this hope was to be granted. When, in October, 1941, Wright Patman asked for an appointment to solicit the White House support to which he felt his record entitled him, Roosevelt wouldn’t even see him. In 1942, moreover, Johnson would be starting not as an unknown candidate but as one whose n
ame had been made—through hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising—almost a household word in Texas. The statewide Johnson-for-Senator campaign organization established and perfected in 1941 was champing at the bit for 1942. He would have Brown & Root behind him again, which meant that he would again have all the money he needed. He was confident that he would win. But the outbreak of war—and his pledge to serve in it—made running in 1942 an impossibility. It would be seven years before he got another chance.

  And when, in 1948, he got this chance, there would be a slight alteration in the platform on which he ran. In 1941, his platform had been “all-out,” “100 percent” support of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. In 1948, he no longer supported the principles and programs for which Roosevelt had stood.

  With a few exceptions, he opposed them.

  Even before Roosevelt’s death, the change had begun, for even before Roosevelt’s death, Johnson had decided that the power in Texas—the power that could enable him to move up to the second rung on his three-rung ladder—lay not with the people of Texas, who loved the President, but with the state’s small circle of rulers, who hated him. In February, 1943, Johnson sent them a signal. One of their voices in Washington was House Un-American Activities Committee Chairman Martin Dies, to whom the New Deal was a Communist conspiracy. An effort was under way in Congress to end the Committee’s existence. Johnson voted to continue it, and to increase the funding for its work.

  Harold Young, a dedicated liberal, was astonished when he heard of this vote by the man he had so ardently supported, and telephoned Johnson, “You mean to tell me you voted for that son-of-a-bitch to get more money?” Admitting that he had indeed done so, Johnson said, “I never claimed to be a liberal.” “Well,” said Young, “you sure fooled hell out of me.” Then and there, he coined a new nickname that he felt epitomized the cowardice before powerful forces of the man he had previously admired: “Lyin’-down Lyndon.”