Landslide
Page 44
34 “leaped off their chairs” “Opinion: Those Outside Our Family,” Time, July 24, 1964.
35 When Rockefeller addressed the convention “The Late, Late Show,” Time, June 24, 1964.
36 “violence in our streets” White, Making of the President 1964, 260-1.
37 Clif White, turned off the television White and Gill, Suite 3505, 14.
38 “a disaster for the Republican Party” “The Goldwater Nomination,” New York Times, July 16, 1964.
39 “not a normal American politician” Lippmann, “The Goldwater Threat,” Newsweek, July 4, 1964, 13.
40 “I think the Republican Party has enough problems” Jack Raymond, “President Leaves Spotlight to GOP,” New York Times, July 12, 1964.
41 “We really won’t do any campaigning until after Labor Day” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and John McCormick, June 23, 1964, Citation #3824.
42 “The Canadian Royal Mounted Police … but we’ve got to put this thing together right away” Carl Albert OH II.
43 government estimates of deficit spending for fiscal 1964 “The Presidency: Meanwhile, Down at the Ranch,” Time, July 24, 1964.
44 “What we really want to do with Goldwater” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and George Reedy, July 20, 1964, Citation #4286.
45 “swiftly spread[ing] through the capital and its environs” “The Presidency: Just Storing Up Energy?” Time, July 17, 1964.
46 “you had a whole plate of sandwiches” Marie Fehmer Chiarodo OH II.
47 On its cover the following week “Harlem: Hatred in the Streets,” Newsweek, August 3, 1964.
48 “feel that most Negroes want to take jobs held by whites” Louis Harris, “The Backlash Issue,” Newsweek, July 13, 1964, 27.
49 Fertile territory for resentment could also be found in the suburbs Ibid.
50 “If we aren’t careful” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Geroge Reedy, July 20, 1964, Citation #4286.
51 “He wants to use this as a forum” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and John Connally, July 23, 1964, Citation #4320.
52 “Hell, these folks have got walkie-talkies” Ibid.
53 “The white backlash itself exists” Harris, “Backlash Issue,” 24.
54 “When this fellow looks at me” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and John Connally, July 23, 1964; Beschloss, Taking Charge, 468.
55 In a tense Oval Office meeting Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 290-1 and Shesol, Mutual Contempt, 186.
56 “We waited quite a while” Gillette, Lady Bird Johnson, 344.
57 “Stranger, when you see the Lacedaemonians” Murray Kempton, “Pure Irish,” New Republic, February 15, 1964.
58 “I’m sure Jack liked it” Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 288.
59 As a belated Christmas gift “Periscope,” Newsweek, January 20, 1964, 10.
60 In his biography … Evan Thomas reveals Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 286-7.
61 “there is no dignity” Hamilton, The Greek Way, 176.
62 He referred to “the president” Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 291.
63 “Here I and sorrows sit” Hamilton, The Greek Way, 176.
64 “The worst city in the United States for rumor and gossip is Washington” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Richard Daley, July 21, 1964, Citation #4298; Beschloss, Taking Charge, 463.
65 maybe he’d write a book in England Bradlee, “What’s Bobby Kennedy Going to Do Now?” Newsweek, July 6, 1964, 25.
66 “I should think I’d be the last man” Ibid.
67 “I don’t want the presidency if they do” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Jack Connally, July 14, 1964, Citation #4224.
68 “He’s got [Jackie] thinking” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Clark Clifford, July 29, 1964.
69 wondered if the president was recording the exchange Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 661.
70 “You didn’t ask me” Beschloss, Taking Charge, 479.
71 “I was very firm and very positive” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Clark Clifford, July 29, 1964.
72 “Oh, I’m just so gratified” Ibid.
73 “He had communicated that decision personally” Tom Wicker, “President Bars Kennedy, Five Others, From Ticket,” New York Times, July 31, 1964.
74 “While I’m thinking about naming him” Beschloss, Taking Charge, 484.
75 “When I … told him” Shesol, Mutual Contempt, 210-11
76 “a kind of stunned semi-idiot” Stewart Alsop OH.
77 “Mr. Johnson may have been seeing goblins” Evans and Novak, “Inside Report: The Johnson-Kennedy Split,” Washington Post, August 4, 1964.
78 “I think we ought to just watch that just like hawks” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and James Rowe, Jule 31, 1964.
79 “The two destroyers would stage direct daylight runs” Karnow, Vietnam, 384.
80 “The entire action” Ibid., 386.
81 “Make no bones of this” Barry Goldwater, “1964 RNC Presidential Acceptance” (speech, San Francisco, CA, July 17, 1964), http://www.c-span.org/video/?4018-1/goldwater-1964-acceptance-speech.
82 “My fellow Americans” Lyndon B. Johnson, “Report on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident” (speech, Washington, DC, August 4, 1964), Miller Center Presidential Speech Archive, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3998.
83 “the smoke was observed rising to 14,000 feet” Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 414.
84 “You’ve taken the right steps” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, August 4, 1964, Citation #4715.
85 “I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh” Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 414.
86 Moments before he was shot Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, 294. Cagin and Dray recount Schwerner’s last moments using confession of his murderers and eyewitness testimony.
87 “A coronation, not a convention” “Now Johnson,” New York Times, August 23, 1964.
88 Forty-four months ago Telephone conversation between LBJ and George Reedy, August 25, 1964, Citation #6408.
89 “I’m just writing out a little statement that I’m gonna make” Ibid.
90 “I do not believe” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Walter Jenkins, August 25, 1964
91 “I deeply feared” Johnson, Vantage Point, 95.
92 “I do not remember hours I ever found harder” Lady Bird Johnson, White House Diary, 192.
93 “To step out now would be wrong for your country” Ibid.
94 “I can’t carry any of the burdens” Ibid.
95 “As I stood there warmed by the waves” Johnson, Vantage Point, 101.
Chapter Seven: Sacrifice
1 For a while he’d enjoyed a brief nightly reprieve “The Senior Staff Man,” Time, October 23, 1964.
2 On this particular autumn night Al Weisel, “LBJ’s Gay Sex Scandal,” Out Magazine, December 1999.
3 One campaign advertisement “Vote for President Johnson on November 3,” Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012, Museum of the Moving Image, http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964.
4 In early September “Daisy Girl,” September 7, 1964, Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012, Museum of the Moving Image, http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy.
5 Even the parents of the little girl Mann, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds, 64.
6 “I am not the first president to speak here” Lyndon Johnson, “Remarks in Cadillac Square, Detroit” (speech, Detroit, September 7, 1964), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1963–64, Vol. II, 1051.
7 “FACT,” wrote Jack Valenti Memo from Jack Valenti to LBJ, September 7, 1964, WHCF: EX/PL2.
8 In a memo to the DNC Dallek, Lyndon Johnson, 185.
9 “Confessions of a Republican” “Confessions of a Republi
can,” 1964, Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012, Museum of the Moving Image, http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/confessions-of-a-republican.
10 “probably the most violent advocate of peanut butter” Hayes, Smiling Through the Apocalypse, 393.
11 “frontlash” “Periscope,” Newsweek, October 12, 1964, 25.
12 “this big, booming, leonine Texan” “Lyndon’s Pace,” Newsweek, October 19, 1964.
13 “He needed contact with people” Marie Fehmer Chiarodo OH III.
14 People respected Johnson’s performance Horace Busby, memo to Lyndon Johnson, October 5, 1964.
15 “There was nothing in particular” Robert T. Bower, “Preliminary Report: Reactions to President Johnson’s Acceptance Speech to the Democratic Convention,” September 1, 1964.
16 “my vice president in charge of everything” Beschloss, Reaching, 54.
17 “I need you badly” Al Weisel, “LBJ’s Gay Sex Scandal.”
18 the Jenkinses offered up their own home “Johnson Gives Wife, 51, Gift that Helped Him to Win Her,” New York Times, December 23, 1963.
19 Practically all of official Washington knew him For background on Walter Jenkins see Weisel, “LBJ’s Gay Sex Scandal”; Marie Fehmer Chiarodo OH; Harry McPherson OH I; Horace Busby OH; Cartha deLoach OH.
20 “like a nigger slave” Caro, Master of the Senate, 129.
21 “Goddamn it, Walter” Harry McPherson OH VII.
22 In Bill Moyers, Scotty Reston “Underground Campaign for the Vice Presidency,” New York Times, April 5, 1964.
23 One week later Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 57.
24 The next day “12,000 Slosh Through the Rain to Get Report,” Washington Post, September 29, 1964.
25 “the commission analyzed every issued” Anthony Lewis, “Warren Commission Finds Oswald Guilty and Says Assassin and Ruby Acted Alone,” New York Times, September 28, 1964.
26 “From Mexico City to Moscow and Minsk,” “Report Finds No Plot from Reds,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1964.
27 In a twenty-four-page cover story on the report “The Warren Commission Report,” Newsweek, October 5, 1964, 32-64.
28 “Now where is the Hudson River again?” Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 297.
29 Polls showed Ibid., 300
30 “Walter came over to see me this morning” Telephone conversation between Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson, October 14, 1964.
31 Fortas and Clifford soon learned Ibid.
32 “Does his wife know about this?” Ibid.
33 “I just can’t believe this!” Ibid.
34 “You don’t foresee that you can keep this lid on” Ibid.
35 “No sir” Ibid.
36 “Now, I don’t think I have any choice” Telephone conversation between John Connally and Lyndon Johnson, October 14, 1964.
37 YMCA’s “basement men’s room “The Senior Staff Man,” Time, October 23, 1964.
38 Jenkins’s crime could range “from the seemingly trivial” Henry Gemmill, “Arrest of Johnson Aide Could Bolster GOP’s Election Day Chances,” Wall Street Journal, October 16, 1964.
39 On the phone from Washington Beschloss, Reaching, 73.
40 “nearly every family has had some problem” Ibid., 74
41 Early the next morning Liz Carpenter OH IV; Beschloss, Reaching, 86.
42 Her whistle-stop tour of the South Russell, Lady Bird, 258.
43 On a train dubbed the Lady Bird Special Ibid., 249.
44 A sign in the crowd Ibid., 259.
45 “This is a country of many viewpoints” Ibid., 258.
46 “I would like to do two things about Walter” Telephone conversation between Lady Bird Johnson and LBJ, October 15, 1964, Citation #5895.
47 “I wouldn’t do anything along that line now” Ibid.
48 “I don’t think that’s right” Ibid.
49 “I don’t want you to hurt him” Ibid.
50 “Abe approves of the job offer” Ibid.
51 “My poor darling” Ibid.
52 “My heart is aching today” Russell, Lady Bird, 268, citing Personal Files 5, Lady Bird, LBJL.
53 “If any responsible person “The Issue of Integrity,” Christian Science Monitor, October 17, 1964.
54 “a bouquet of mixed fall flowers” “The Jenkins Report,” Time, October 30, 1964.
55 “Walter Jenkins came to the White House” Wallace Turner, “Miller Stresses The Jenkins Case,” New York Times, October 21, 1964.
56 “The really remarkable thing was the mail” Carpenter, Oral History Interview IV.
57 “If they don’t want us” “Communism and Corruption” Time, October 30, 1964.
58 “Just think about it for a moment” Perlstein, Before the Storm, 508.
59 “The Great Society” Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks in Madison Square Garden at a Rally of the Liberal Party of New York” (speech, New York, October 15, 1964), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1963-64, Vol. II, 1349.
60 “I am not a prophet” Lyndon Johnson, “Remarks in Boston at Post Office Square” (speech, Boston, MA, October 27, 1964), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1963-64, Vol. II, 1466.
61 “utopian society” Charles Mohr, “Johnson Refers to Jenkins Case,” New York Times, October 28, 1964.
62 “It’s the time when man” Johnson, “Remarks at the Civic Center Arena in Pittsburgh” (speech, Pittsburgh, PA, October 27, 1964), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1963-64, Vol. II, 1479.
63 “I’d seen the film” Reagan, American Life, 391.
64 “I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW” Dean Burch, telegram to Ronald Reagan, October 28, 1964, Box C35, Telegrams in response to “The Speech,” Ronald Reagan Library.
65 “The returns … read like tall tales from Texas” “LBJ: My Thanks to All America,” Newsweek, November 9, 1964.
66 “Listen, I pulled you through up here” Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, November 3, 1962, Citation #6142.
67 “Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election” James Reston, “What Goldwater Lost,” New York Times, November 4, 1964.
68 “The American people were not prepared” John G. Tower OH I.
69 Jack Valenti prepared a packet of postmortems Memo from Jack Valenti to Lyndon Johnson, November 28, 1964, LBJL, Handwriting File, Box 4.
70 “These are the most hopeful times” Lyndon Johnson, “Remarks at the Lighting of the Nation’s Christmas Tree,” (speech, Washington, DC, December 18, 1964), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1963-64, Vol. II.
Chapter Eight: Valley of the Black Pig
1 Seated inside, in a robe and pajamas Charles Mohr, “President is Ill: Goes to Hospital With Bad Cough,” New York Times, January 24, 1965.
2 At a ball at the Mayflower hotel “Hail to the Chief,” Newsweek, February 1, 1965, 17.
3 At his brother’s grave at Arlington Ibid.
4 Briefing the press on the president’s health “National Affairs: State of the President,” Newsweek, January 11, 1965, 17.
5 “not bourbon but Scotch” Ibid.
6 the First Lady had come back and checked herself in to the hospital, too “The Uncommon Cold,” Newsweek, February 1, 1965, 18.
7 In the late spring of 1948 Caro, Master of the Senate, 618-9.
8 He told Warren Woodward Caro, Means of Ascent, 202.
9 “Settled in her seat” Russell, Lady Bird, 157.
10 “Tell him to go ahead with the blue” Caro, Master of the Senate, 624.
11 “everything will be all right” Ibid.
12 “I think we’ll be all right in a day or two” “President Is Ill.”
13 I wouldn’t hesitate at all. Laurence Stern, “Johnson to Remain in Hospital for Rest,” Washington Post, January 24, 1965.
14 “By evening … concern about the president’s health had subsided” “President is Ill.”
15 He had seen the president only moments before Ibid.
16 When reporters
asked how he was feeling Charles Mohr, “Johnsons Return to White House,” New York Times, January 26, 1965.
17 “The Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” Enid Nemy, “Lady Bird Johnson, 94, Dies,” New York Times, July 12, 2007.
18 “Last night was not a good night” Lady Bird Johnson, White House Diary, 232.
19 1948 kidney stone Caro, Means of Ascent, 194.
20 “With LBJ’s history” Beschloss, Reaching, 168.
21 “This week’s mood is not good” Ibid., 170.
22 “the grim, unacknowledged thought” Beschloss, Reaching, 394.
23 “Is our world gone?” Lyndon B. Johnson, “Inaugural Address” (speech, Washington, DC, January 20, 1965), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965, Vol. I, 74.
24 On January 7 Johnson, “Special Message to Congress: Advancing the Nation’s Health” (speech, Washington, DC, January 7, 1965), Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965, Vol. I.
25 April 13, the hundredth day of the new term The Johnson White House focused its legislative efforts in early 1965 on a 100-day period beginning with Johnson’s State of the Union address on January 5, 1965 and ending on April 12 of that year. The choice to measure one hundred days from the State of the Union, when the new Congress came into session, rather than from when his own new term began on January 20, speaks to the primacy of the legislative branch, and the legislative calendar, in Johnson’s thinking.
26 Republicans must instead offer a “constructive” alternative “Nation: Aid to Appalachia,” Time, March 12, 1965.
27 “Republican rank-and-file enthusiasm” “Periscope,” Newsweek, February 1, 1965, 7.
28 “shouldn’t even be cast as governor” Shana Alexander, “My Technicolor Senator,” Life, December 4, 1964, 30.
29 “The history that interests Mr. Johnson” Drew Pearson, “A Lesson Learned from FDR,” Washington Post, November 24, 1964.
30 “not to make Roosevelt’s error” Evans and Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, 489-90.
31 “I was just elected by the biggest popular margin” Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, 216; Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 309.
32 “I knew from the start” Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, 291.