Behind Bird’s genial smile and easy chatter was the same spunky woman with her own opinions, and she found a way to make those known to her husband, who could be hardheaded about advice offered. She called her method “infiltration,” and explained how it worked. She would listen thoughtfully to his long monologues about some problem he was facing, and then, in the softest tones, without a hint of challenge in her voice, she would tell him what she thought. It could be a tentative suggestion, such as “You might also consider . . .” Or a gentle query: “Do you mean perhaps . . . ?” Then she would sometimes hear him recycle her position as his a few days later, giving ample proof that he had, indeed, “listened to me.” Although she probably never read ancient Chinese philosophy, she was very much attuned to one of its teachings—that leading by pretending to follow is how real power is wielded.
• • •
Lyndon’s first big challenge as a congressman gave Lady Bird more chances to polish her political wife skills. Senator Wirtz had backed Lyndon in the 1937 election because of what he could do for Texas’s 10th District—specifically for Wirtz’s current project, the Lower Colorado River Authority. The Texas legislature had set up the LCRA in 1934 to control the Colorado River’s destructive force by building dams at crucial junctures, and it was to be paid for out of federal money. By 1937, huge cost overruns had consumed the LCRA’s entire allocation, and the dams remained unfinished. It was up to Congressman Johnson to get money flowing again. That meant convincing officials to grant exceptions to the rules and persuading his colleagues that the 10th District’s claim was more worthy than others.
Lyndon came through, with considerable help from Bird. Of course it was not a smooth or easy victory—not when competition for funds was so fierce—and Bird reported that he had “nights of elation” mixed with “nights of discouragement.” It was up to her to keep him on course, using the same kind of cheery advice that she had used in the courtship letters.
She also put her own special brand of persuasion to work on a key figure. John Carmody, head of the Rural Electrification Administration, had the responsibility of deciding which parts of the 10th District qualified for federal help in getting electric power lines. REA policy did not allow subsidizing very sparsely populated regions—the cost was too high—and without those subsidies, parts of Lyndon’s district would not get access to electricity even after the necessary dams had been built to supply the power. If Carmody did not make an exception, residents on those isolated ranches and farms would be pumping water by hand and reading at night by lanterns just like their grandfathers had done.
Carmody was known as hard-nosed, a stickler for rules, but that didn’t deter Lyndon from trying to change his mind. He sent him a gargantuan, forty-pound turkey, so big it was rumored to have been cross-bred with a beef. And Carmody, sniffing a hint of bribery, sent it back. Bird proceeded more gingerly, with her usual mix of dinner invitations, broad smiles, and solicitous words about his family, and Carmody changed course, permitting electric lines into the Hill Country. It was a life-changing event for farm families who could now push a button to pump water or light the dark, and Bird knew they would not forget the congressman behind that transformation.
Although it is impossible to calculate precisely Bird’s worth to her husband’s career, the evidence is overwhelming that she, unlike him, found common ground with everyone, from the acerbic curmudgeon to the sweetest, smiling face. The wives of Herman and George Brown, who started bankrolling Lyndon after they landed contracts to build the LCRA dams, both became her friends although they had wildly different personalities. Margaret Brown, Herman’s outspoken, combative wife, did not make friends easily, and although her husband found her scrappy ways refreshing, others tried to avoid her. But not Bird, who praised her as “very stimulating, intellectual and independent . . . [the kind of person who ignites] firecrackers . . . [of the] intellect.” The less outspoken Alice Brown, wife of Herman’s younger brother, George, was more attuned to Bird’s subdued style, and the two women vacationed together in the summer of 1940 at the Prude Ranch, a working ranch that hosted paying guests, where the Brown children camped out and rode horseback.
Who knows how their wives’ friendship with Bird figured in the Brown brothers’ decision to support Lyndon? They had ignored him in the 1937 race, but once his value to them was clear, they flooded him with favors, making his subsequent campaigns much easier. In 1939, Herman Brown wrote to reassure him: “Remember that I am for you, right or wrong. . . . If you want it, I am for it 100%.” The Browns began by sending Lyndon a new car, but their gratitude soon ballooned to include offers to use their private planes and vacation properties, and, most important, virtually unlimited campaign dollars. As Bird put it, Lyndon got a “free ride” in his next three congressional elections.
Bird had helped Lyndon deliver so many favors to folks back in the 10th District, she knew his supporters were loyal. They weren’t going to hold a single vote against him. When he backed an increase in the minimum wage—an extremely unpopular stand in the eyes of business owners and farmers—she found nothing strange in the fact that he was reelected while other House members, including Terrell Maverick’s husband, who took the same position, lost their next election. Letters to his office confirmed his popularity. One man, who had been trying unsuccessfully for five years to get a response from the Veterans Administration, was stunned by Congressman Johnson’s efficiency: “I never saw anything like it. Why, I’d vote for that fellow for president.”
With her husband so busy, Bird carried the bulk of family responsibility, both his and hers. The Taylors were getting along fine. T.J. had married again, this time to a blonde who was younger than Bird; both Tommy and Tony were thriving. It was Lyndon’s side that required Bird’s help. His oldest sister, Rebekah, and youngest sister, Lucia, could take care of themselves, but the other two siblings provided enough trouble for all four. Brother Sam Houston had difficulty keeping a job, and he was often drunk, making his long stays with Lyndon and Bird strained and unpleasant. The middle sister, Josefa, had the same problems as Sam Houston, in even greater severity.
To add to her difficulties, the normally healthy Bird found 1939 one of the “few times in my life when I was not physically very up to par.” She lost weight, getting down to 113 pounds, and after five years of marriage she had not yet become pregnant. On the advice of a friend, she consulted a Baltimore physician who performed a medical procedure to increase her chances of conceiving, and, determined to get as much as possible out of the short hospitalization, Bird had her appendix removed at the same time.
To some who watched her in the 1930s, Lady Bird Johnson looked like a mousy servant performing housekeeping tasks—laying out her husband’s clothes each morning, filling his cigarette case, and polishing his shoes, all without a murmur of complaint. But Lyndon needed far more to stay afloat, and Bird knew what the deal was. From the wide-eyed newcomer who drank too much at the New Year’s Eve party, she had transformed herself into the valuable partner of an up-and-coming congressman. Flexible about so many things—where she lived, how many guests she had to feed, Lyndon’s mood changes and secrecy about his plans—she seemed to get along with everyone. And she was one of the few people who could offer him “good judgment” without raising his ire. Her mentor, Terrell Maverick, might well have been proud—Bird had become a model political wife.
6
NETWORK BUILDER
ON CHRISTMAS night in 1968, longtime Washingtonians Jim and Elizabeth “Libby” Rowe invited a few of their closest friends to a holiday dinner. Among the fifteen or so regulars at this annual event were Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy, his wife and their three children, and journalist Bill White and his wife, June. About 6:30, as the adults sipped cocktails and the young set entertained themselves in an adjoining room, ten-year-old Michael Bundy spotted some unusual activity in the hedges outside. The doorbell rang, and when the Rowes’ son went to answer it, he found the president of the
United States standing there, and the first lady, with a big smile on her face, behind him.
The Johnsons had not been invited, but here they were, and none of the adults showed much surprise. They were accustomed to Lyndon’s impromptu appearances. He and Bird had appeared at the Whites’ door a few weeks earlier, bringing their own dinner, and since the Whites had already eaten, there was nothing to do but seat the Johnsons at the dining room table and watch them consume their chili. June White decided Lyndon got a kick out of popping surprises. Bird, who knew better than most wives how unexpected guests can upend things, admitted she did not try to temper his spontaneity because he was “so enthusiastic and sweet.”
On this Christmas night, the Rowes immediately welcomed the Johnsons inside. As Secret Service agents took up strategic posts around the house and Lady Bird settled into a chair, the president launched into a recitation of his accomplishments. He did not stop until he left an hour later.
It was vintage Johnson: Lyndon gleefully surprising the hosts by crashing their party and then monopolizing the conversation; Lady Bird compensating for his social ineptness by thanking the Rowes for what she kept calling an “open house.” Young Michael Bundy noted how raptly the adults listened as the president went on and on about how much he had done for them and for the nation.
Everyone present knew that his upbeat assessment of his record did not coincide with what most Americans were thinking. With less than a month left before Richard Nixon moved into the White House, LBJ was besieged by critics of his Vietnam policies and nothing he could do would change that. As if trying to prove his worth to himself and his audience, he kept going back to the legislation of which he was proudest—in education and medical insurance and civil rights.
At ten, Michael Bundy thought it odd for a grown-up to brag like that, but the adults were not at all surprised. They had known Lyndon a long time, and they had known Bird. They knew he would have not gotten where he was without her, always there in the background, smiling and smoothing the way. When Bird got a chance to pass on advice to her daughter, Lynda, who had married an aspiring politician and asked her mother how best to help him, the answer came back that she should learn to walk behind him and keep saying, “Thank you.”
It is easy to misinterpret such a role as unacceptably docile, laughably passive. But it was anything but. If Bird hadn’t covered up her husband’s gaffes, smoothed out the feathers he ruffled, and helped build a powerful network of supporters and friends, how would he ever have reached the success that he did? She knew how essential her social skills were to his success, and so did he. Toward the end of his life, when a friend reminded him that the best thing he ever did was marry Bird, he confirmed that not a day passed that he did not think of that.
Of course the network building she started right after her marriage was not just for Lyndon—she had her own reasons for wanting to rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of Washington. She had let Lyndon know in the courtship letters of the deep yearning she had to be where “Things are Happening,” and in a position to meet the people who made those things happen, people who knew all about life “beyond the provinces” and talked about “life with a capital L.” Bird never wanted to be the insignificant wife who sat on the sidelines; she wanted a central role in the action, and getting acquainted with the star players in Washington was the way to do that.
Libby and Jim Rowe were not the first Washingtonians she got to know, but they were among those who lasted longest. Both had taken their first jobs in Washington in the mid-1930s and then stayed. Libby grew up in a conservative Republican D.C. household but after four years at Bryn Mawr she returned as a convinced liberal and worked at the United Mine Workers headquarters, where she wrote speeches and helped elect labor-friendly legislators in 1936. Jim Rowe moved to the capital to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then took a position at the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1937, shortly after he and Libby married, he became an assistant to FDR’s son Jimmy, putting him very close to the center of Washington’s power hub. Libby Rowe had to quit her job because of a United Mine Workers rule against employing married women, but she continued to move in labor circles and spearhead community projects.
As first lady, Mrs. Johnson would look to Libby Rowe for help in beautifying Washington and President Johnson would count on Jim Rowe for counsel. The relationship between the two couples, overlapping social and work lives for nearly four decades, hit a very rough spot in 1960, when Jim Rowe grew so disgusted with Lyndon’s boorish behavior, especially his heavy drinking, that he quit speaking to him. But Jim reentered the Johnson fold in November 1963, and Libby became a stalwart leader in Bird’s environmental work.
• • •
Southerners predominated on Bird’s early list of allies, including many Alabamans who spoke with the same accent as hers. With them, she didn’t have to worry that they would ridicule her for saying LIE-BERRY (instead of LIE-BRARY) and CANE-T (instead of CAN-T.) She could relax and enjoy herself, knowing they would serve the foods she preferred, like grits and cornbread.
Alabaman Virginia Durr, nine years Bird’s senior, figured in the younger woman’s initiation to Washington. Durr would later explain in a book about herself that she had realized at an early age that a young Southern woman of means, like herself, had only two choices, either act the perfect lady or “go crazy.” Determined to do neither, she looked for a way out, and at age twenty-three married another ambitious Alabaman, Clifford Durr, who had already distinguished himself by winning a Rhodes Scholarship. With Virginia’s help (and she was in a position to help since her sister was married to U.S. senator Hugo Black) Cliff Durr obtained a job in Washington in 1933 with the newly formed Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and Virginia Durr immediately began creating her own niche in the capital as a civil rights activist.
Transplanted couples like the Durrs and the Johnsons drifted easily into friendship, and Bird remembered how she absolutely “loved . . . trips out to [the Durrs’] rambling, old country house.” She met other powerful people there, like Virginia’s brother-in-law, Hugo Black, who left the Senate in 1937 to join the U.S. Supreme Court. He was still on the Court in 1948, when Lyndon needed a highly placed jurist to keep his name on the ballot in Texas; he turned to Black, who delivered.
Just as she had looked to those older “oil men” back in Austin to enlighten her, Bird enlisted friends somewhat senior to her in Washington. The Durrs, although only slightly older, stepped quickly into a mentoring role. After originally misjudging diminutive Bird as lacking both maturity and confidence, Cliff Durr changed his mind, and, impressed by her intelligence and journalism background, he eventually encouraged her to buy her first radio station. Virginia Durr was equally struck by Lyndon’s dedication and intensity. Although he talked full speed and waved his arms like an impetuous, out-of-control youth, she recognized that his resolution to abolish poverty was genuine. As he rose in politics, she would call on him for support in securing voting rights for African Americans, and he would come to her defense when she was vilified as a communist in the 1950s.
A good friend of the Durrs, Aubrey Williams, was soon a guest at Bird’s table, where he could make her mouth drop with accounts of his storybook life. He had begun working at an age when most boys start school and then used his wages to put himself through high school and college. He went to France to earn a doctorate, and after returning to the United States was spotted by federal officials as an unusually competent and innovative social worker. By the time he was forty-five, he headed one of the largest, most effective programs of the New Deal—the National Youth Administration—and was the person to whom all forty-eight state directors, including Lyndon Johnson, reported.
Williams had traveled in places that Bird had only dreamed about, and the talk at his home never bored her. No matter how the conversation started, it always got back to politics, she noted, with a “social-economic bent.” The mood stayed upbeat and passionate, as everyon
e jumped in with ideas about how to obliterate city slums and get the economy moving again. Reform and improvement were not just vague dreams, they were goals deemed within reach, and Bird decided these “were the people who were going to do it.” At their get-togethers at the Durr home on Seminary Hill or at one of the Johnsons’ rentals, “You didn’t bother much about the food,” Bird remembered, “but the mental stimulation was first class.”
At her table sat people with wildly different views—the ultraliberal Durrs, who fought their whole lives to extend rights for blacks and farmworkers, alongside racists like Alvin Wirtz, a father figure to Lyndon when he first entered Congress. When the Durrs were fighting hard to eliminate the poll tax, Wirtz was vigorously defending its retention. At one Johnson dinner, when the subject came up, Wirtz complained in the Durrs’ presence that without the poll tax more blacks would vote and that would be like giving the right to animals: “I like mules but you don’t bring them into the parlor.” Of course, Cliff Durr explained, that was typical of the thinking of many Southerners at the time, and Wirtz was more progressive on other issues, such as the need to extend electrification to rural areas. But on matters of race, the Wirtzes and the Durrs were at opposite poles, and Bird managed to incorporate them all into her circle.
Her friendship with Alvin Wirtz’s wife, Kitty, had started during the NYA stint in Austin, and it continued when both couples were living in Washington. Whatever their views on race, the Wirtzes were important people in Texas’s 10th District, and their daughter, Ida May, became a central figure in Bird’s life after she married a physician, James Cain, in 1938. It was Dr. Cain who furnished Bird with valued medical advice, right up through the White House years. He was the person she called, having him paged out of a theater, when Lyndon had his heart attack in 1955, and he was one of the two doctors she summoned to tell her what was wrong with her seriously depressed husband a decade later.
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 11