LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  The Offer JFK Could Not Refuse

  The phone call the previous evening from Johnson or Rayburn was apparently an ultimatum delivered to Kennedy, and a request for a meeting, either late that night or early the next morning. Raskin wrote that the short list of running mates was “precipitously and totally discarded” when Kennedy met with Johnson and Rayburn, at which he was given “an offer he could not refuse.”54 JFK’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, was also aware of what happened. She told Anthony Summers that Hoover had been involved in the plot to install LBJ as JFK’s running mate. Lincoln believed it was Hoover’s evidence of JFK’s womanizing that was being used to blackmail him to put LBJ on the ticket. She stated that Johnson “had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedy—during the campaign, even before the convention. And Hoover was in on the pressure on Kennedy at the convention … about womanizing, and things in Joe Kennedy’s background, and anything he could dig up. Johnson was using that clout. Kennedy was angry, because they had boxed him into a corner.”55 One piece of information in Hoover’s files which might have been used related to an affair he had fifteen years earlier with Inga Arvad, a woman who had been close to Hitler just before that (having shared a box seat at the 1936 Olympic games with the führer)56 which would have especially upset the Jewish constituency.57 Still another might have been an offer that was then being made to Johnson by one of Kennedy’s former lovers, Alicia Darr, of documentation of her long-term affair with JFK, and rumors of an abortion, for a fee of $150,000.58 This transaction was being brokered by Myron “Mickey” Weiner, the New Jersey attorney who would thereafter become associated closely with Bobby Baker, even spending so much time in his Capitol Hill office that office secretaries would say he was on Baker’s staff. Weiner took the offer to Bobby Baker in the early part of 1960 for transmittal to Lyndon Johnson; Baker saw it as blackmail and took it instead to Kennedy, who had to realize that this was merely a part of Johnson’s larger, but almost invisible, campaign against him.59

  According to Anthony Summers, “Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk would later say: ‘Hoover passed along gossip to the President he served, and that practice could raise questions in a President’s mind. What did Hoover know about him? In theoretical terms, that put Hoover in the position of a veiled blackmailer.’”60 The combination of Hoover’s extensive files of compromising information on Kennedy’s numerous sexual affairs and health records, including his history of Addison’s disease, together with Lyndon Johnson’s propensity for using brazen and brutal force to achieve his ends, put enormous pressure on JFK to accede to LBJ’s demands.

  By the next morning, Clifford took another call from Evelyn Lincoln, asking him to come to Kennedy’s room. This time, Kennedy’s mood was much more subdued and weary, as though he had not slept well the night before. He then explained to Clifford that he regrettably had to withdraw the offer of the vice presidential nomination he had just proffered the evening before to Senator Symington; he admitted that the reason for this was that “‘during the night I have been persuaded that I cannot win without Lyndon on the ticket. I have offered the Vice Presidency to him—and he has accepted. Tell Stuart that I am sorry.’ Kennedy added that no one in his whole family liked Lyndon Johnson; there had been a ‘family ruckus’ about his selection, [but] he saw no alternative, no matter how painful the choice.”61 After a day of chaotic rumors and commotion—at the start of which, Johnson was not on JFK’s lists, either the long one or the short one—his was the only name left; Lyndon B. Johnson stepped before the cameras and announced that “Jack Kennedy has asked me to serve. I accept.”62

  All hell broke loose at the Biltmore when word got out that Bull Johnson had bulled his way onto Kennedy’s ticket. Suddenly, Pierre Salinger was besieged by calls from reporters wanting a confirmation of a story being prepared by John S. Knight, of Knight Newspapers, revealing how Johnson had forced Kennedy to nominate him as his vice presidential nominee. Salinger simply issued a perfunctory denial, which resulted in a telephone call from the beleaguered staff and aides of the irate Johnson. An hour after he had released the original statement, he was awakened by a call, “from Bill Moyers of Senator Johnson’s staff. He said the speaker, Mr. Rayburn wanted to speak to me, Mr. Rayburn got on the phone and it was evident that he was highly agitated. He wanted, first, a complete denial of the story under Senator Kennedy’s name and, second, he wanted me to awaken Senator Kennedy and have him call John S. Knight and tell the latter of the story’s falsity. Mr. Rayburn said Senator Johnson was extremely disturbed about the story and wanted it nipped in the bud before it got wide circulation. George Reedy, who was Senator Johnson’s Press Secretary, had located Knight and told me where Knight could be reached.”63

  Johnson’s fear of being exposed for these tactics—for how he had brutally forced Kennedy to accept him as his vice presidential nominee—can only be related to how he feared such news would surely be interpreted when he assumed the presidency later: People might begin to connect this incident with future incongruities regarding how he had in fact hated being vice president and was not only ineffectual in it but actually acted contrary to Kennedy’s many agendas, even sabotaged him; all of this had not yet happened, of course, in 1960, but he did not want his actions at the convention known because he knew they would look bad later. What he did want known was the lie, the fiction that Johnson was the first and only name Kennedy had wanted as his running mate. This lie was repeated by Johnson so many times that he—and the sycophants he had around him—actually came to believe it. Thankfully, for the true historical record, even though the story was practically ignored for over four decades, Pierre Salinger decided to include the truthful account in his 1966 book.

  Thursday morning, July 14, began, according to Bobby Kennedy, “‘the most indecisive time we ever had,’ a period hopelessly snarled by confusion, miscommunication, and murky, mixed intentions.”64 The “murky, mixed intentions” apparently referred to the fact that Johnson had let it be known that, although he expected to be first offered the position out of due deference, he would not accept it, allowing Kennedy to then offer it to Symington as a second choice. Kennedy decided to go talk to Johnson because, until he had done so, he still “could not truly believe that the majority leader—despite assurances—would willingly accept such a profound diminution of power. According to Bobby, JFK went to Johnson’s suite simply ‘to talk to him about it.’ ‘I didn’t really offer the nomination to Lyndon Johnson,’ John Kennedy told reporter Charles Bartlett a few days later, off the record. ‘I just held it out to here’—he poised his hand two or three inches from his pocket, implying that Johnson snatched the opportunity.”65 Bartlett then reported that Johnson then seized the offer and “held fast to it through uncertain hours of shocked reaction within the Kennedy camp.” Johnson had cast his line with the expertise of an experienced fly fisherman and held his quarry throughout the ensuing reaction by party liberals; in the meantime, he simply told others that he assumed “that Jack Kennedy’s offer at the morning conference was as firm as it could be.”66

  After John Kennedy’s visit with Johnson, Kennedy returned to his room, where Robert Kennedy was waiting, “and he said, ‘You just won’t believe it.’ I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘He wants it,’ and I said, ‘Oh, my God!’ He said, ‘Now what do we do?’ … We both promised each other that we’d never tell what happened—but we spent the rest of the day alternating between thinking it was good and thinking that it wasn’t good that he’d offered him the Vice Presidency, and how could he get out of it.”67 All of Kennedy’s consultants and advisers were chagrined at the news, and there followed many hours of intense discussions and indecision. Evelyn Lincoln later “told of finding Bobby and Jack deep in conversation … ‘I went in and listened. They were very upset and trying to figure out how they could get around it, but they didn’t know how they could do it.’ She did not hear any mention then of a specific threat from Johnson, Lincoln said. But she added, ‘Jack
knew that Hoover and LBJ would just fill the air with womanizing.’”68 RFK later said, “We changed our minds eight times during the course of it. Finally … we decided by about two o’clock that we’d try to get him out of there and not have him because Jack thought he would be unpleasant with him, associated with him, and if he could get him to withdraw and still be happy, that would be fine.”69

  When word leaked out that an offer had been extended to Johnson, and that he had accepted it, the liberals went ballistic: “Salinger was outraged; O’Donnell denounced the choice of Johnson as a ‘disaster’ and told JFK it was ‘the worst mistake’ he ever made. ‘In your first move after the nomination, you go against all the people who supported you,’ he said. O’Donnell, JFK’s liaison to labor, ‘was so furious that I could hardly talk. I thought of the promises we had made to the labor leaders and the civil rights groups … I felt that we had been double-crossed.’ … Walter Reuther, President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, ‘exploded in a profane fury.’”70 He and the other labor leaders had never forgiven Johnson for his vote for the Taft-Hartley bill, which was considered anti-labor because it allowed for states to elect to make union membership optional for individual workers (it was also known as the “right to work” law). Bobby complained to Johnson’s advocates that they (the Kennedys) were in danger of losing control of the convention because of the growing labor revolt.71 Many liberals, such as Joseph Rauh, were still upset with Johnson because of the way he had attacked and humiliated Leland Olds in 1949, causing his nomination for reappointment to the Federal Power Commission chairmanship to be rejected; they remembered how Johnson had practically destroyed the man and had never forgiven him for it (coincidentally, exactly three weeks later in fact, on August 5, 1960, Leland Olds died, a broken man, with probably more suppressed outrage about his party’s vice presidential nominee than anyone else alive on that date).*

  The furor at the offer to Johnson caused Jack and Robert Kennedy to try to undo the damage. Bobby went three times to Johnson’s suite to discuss the situation, the first to feel him out further; then he subsequently returned to propose that Johnson become chairman of the national committee instead. The first time was at about 1:30 p.m., after calling him, which allowed Johnson to stall for time, saying, “‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to see him.’ Phil Graham … was tugged into a separate bedroom by an insistent LBJ. Johnson and Graham sat on the bed with Lady Bird, ‘about as composed,’ Graham recorded, ‘as three Mexican jumping beans.’ Johnson said that Bobby Kennedy was making a final offer of the vice presidency. It was time for a final decision.”72 But as Kennedy spoke to him, Johnson became extremely upset; Bobby later described the way Johnson responded:

  He is one of the greatest sad-looking people in the world—you know, he can turn that on. I thought he’d burst into tears … I mean, it was my feeling at that time, although I’ve seen him afterwards look so sad I don’t know whether it was just an act … But he just shook and tears came into his eyes, and he said, “I want to be Vice President, and, if the President will have me, I’ll join him in making a fight for it.” So it was that kind of a conversation. I said, “Well, then that’s fine. He wants you to be Vice President if you want to be Vice President.”73

  After the first visit, things settled down until Bill Moyers discovered that Bobby was back in Johnson’s suite for another visit. In a room down the hall, a group of Southern governors were meeting to discuss with Phil Graham and Sam Rayburn the question of who should be on the list to give seconding speeches for LBJ’s nomination. Moyers burst into the room, exclaiming, “Graham, my God, Bobby is in the room!”74 Moyers dragged Graham by the arm to Johnson’s suite, and upon entering, they saw complete bedlam; Johnson was in a state of near panic as he screamed to Graham that Bobby was trying to get him back off the ticket. “‘Call Jack Kennedy and straighten out this mess!’ Rayburn barked at Graham. Graham dialed the extension to Kennedy’s suite, saying, ‘Bobby is down here and is telling the speaker and Lyndon that there is opposition and that Lyndon should withdraw.’ ‘Oh,’ Jack replied serenely, ‘that’s all right; Bobby’s been out of touch and doesn’t know what’s happening.’ … According to Graham, Bobby took the phone, listened a moment to JFK, and said, ‘Well, it’s too late now,’ before half slamming down the receiver.’”75

  As Bobby was trying to get Johnson to remove himself from the ticket, John Kennedy had received a call from Clark Clifford, who told him that his indecision was disastrous, and that he had to take him now. After Bobby’s last visit, the moods of everyone in the Johnson suite turned into hysterical anger, as though Johnson’s own mood had infected the psyches of the group; Johnson himself was livid, Lady Bird was crying uncontrollably; Graham and Corcoran listened as Rayburn screamed about how this was a typical Kennedy double cross. As Jeff Shesol described it, however, Johnson “did not blame John Kennedy as the agent of his stinging repudiation; the villain, Johnson believed, was Bobby Kennedy—Bobby, who opposed Johnson from the beginning; Bobby, who sided with labor against him; Bobby, who ruthlessly tried to humiliate him. In Baker’s recollection it was Bobby, not Jack, whom Johnson denounced as ‘that little shit-ass’ and a score of epithets more coarse.”76

  JFK did tell Raskin why he had changed his mind: “You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems.”77 His explanation to others, such as Kenneth O’Donnell, who asked him why, was, “Are we going to spend the whole campaign apologizing for Lyndon Johnson and trying to explain why he voted against everything you ever stood for,” was to angrily defend his decision, saying, “I’m forty-three years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small Senate majority. Did it occur to you that if Lyndon Johnson becomes the Vice President I’ll have Mike Mansfield as the Senate leader, somebody I can trust and depend on?”78 Referring to Johnson and Rayburn’s decision to hold Congress open during August, Kennedy continued, “If Johnson and Rayburn leave here mad at me, they’ll ruin me in Congress next month. Then I’ll be the laughingstock of the country. Nixon will say I haven’t any power in my own party, and I’ll lose the election before Labor Day. So I’ve got to make peace now with Johnson and Rayburn, and offering Lyndon the Vice Presidency, whether he accepts it or not, is one way of keeping him friendly until Congress adjourns.”79

  JFK’s explanation to O’Donnell about why he chose Johnson was apparently one of the “rationalizations” that Bobby had referred to when he said they spent so many hours “snarled by confusion, miscommunication, and murky, mixed intentions … we spent the rest of the day alternating between thinking it was good and thinking that it wasn’t good.” Getting Johnson out of the Senate, therefore, was clearly one of the good reasons, one that they would use to justify the decision to their friends and associates, obviously practiced enough to seem convincing to them. Unfortunately for them both, especially John—and possibly Robert as well, but that is the subject for another book—they should have spent a little more time listing the cons of having Lyndon “Bull” Johnson anywhere near the White House, in a position to assume the presidency in the only other way that a person can achieve that high office without having been specifically elected to it.

  The truth about all the various rumors concerning Kennedy’s selection of Johnson as his vice presidential nominee has taken almost as long to emerge as the truth about his assassination. These accounts by credible witnesses—Clark Clifford, Hyman Raskin, Evelyn Lincoln, and even Bobby Kennedy—confirm that Johnson called Kennedy just before he was to give his acceptance speech to
deliver his threats and inform him of the extensive damning information he had collected from FBI’s dossier on Kennedy. This is the only logical explanation of how he had come from not being seriously considered at all to being given the offer though it had already been given to Stuart Symington. Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to become vice president under John F. Kennedy was all part of his carefully designed plan to become president himself, and this was the single most critical component of it.

  Robert Kennedy would later tell his friend Charles Spalding, “Charlie, we really weren’t at our best this time … we were all too tired.” To his friend Charles Bartlett, he said, “Yesterday was the best day of my life … and today was the worst day.” And to John Seigenthaler, he said, “We were right at eight, ten and two and wrong at four.”80 John F. Kennedy’s fatal mistake was made after an agonizing day of deliberation with his brother Bobby, when he grudgingly accepted the blackmail threats of Johnson and Hoover. By allowing Lyndon Johnson to become the vice presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy unwittingly signed his own death warrant. In later years, after both Kennedys were dead, Johnson would claim to his favored authors, historians, and associates—the ones who accepted practically everything Johnson said at face value, not realizing their own credulity in doing so—that he was always Kennedy’s first choice, thus explaining why there were so many conflicting stories and misrepresentations about the widely reported drama that unfolded at the Biltmore Hotel, validated by many of the other participants.

  Although the more persevering and intellectually honest historians would eventually record the truth, the above story made it into a number of biographies Lyndon Johnson persuaded people to write. Merle Miller tried to make the case that Johnson very reluctantly accepted Kennedy’s offer, as though he had been the first and only choice, and had even initially declined it.81 Others, like Doris Kearns and George Reedy, completely ignored the stunning events in Los Angeles82 that caused Kennedy to make a last-minute, 180-degree about-face to name Johnson, who had never seriously been considered, to the ticket, requiring him to uninvite his actual preference, Senator Stuart Symington. The truth was, Johnson had alienated so many of the liberal senators; in 1959 and 1960, party liberals “had undermined Johnson’s effectiveness as Leader. ‘Johnson felt he had lost control,’ [Eliot] Janeway says. ‘He had lost emotional control of the Senate. And he was very bitter against a good third of the Democratic caucus.’ Theodore F. Green of Rhode Island told Tommy Corcoran that ‘Lyndon was finished as an effective majority leader … If he went back, Green said, they might give him the title again but they wouldn’t follow him.’”83 Eliot Janeway stated that Johnson “was very anxious to get out of the majority leadership. Johnson would have paid for the vice presidency”84 (emphasis added).