Lady Bird and Lyndon

by Betty Boyd Caroli

  12

  PRESIDENTIAL PARTNERING

  ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, as word spread of what had happened in Dallas, Americans tried to make sense out of disconnected images on their TV screens and shocking reports from their radios. All across the nation, people who had admired the magnetic, future-oriented President Kennedy struggled with the realization that he had been inexplicably taken from them by an assassin’s bullet, and many looked to like-minded friends for consolation in their grief.

  One such get-together occurred that evening in Montgomery, Alabama, twenty miles south of Prattville, where some of Bird’s relatives still lived. Liberal Democrats were in short supply in that region, but a small group of them gathered at the home of Cliff and Virginia Durr, the civil rights activists whose friendship with the Johnsons reached back to the 1930s. When the conversation turned to what lay ahead, Cliff Durr said, “We just wish Bird could be President.” Rollin Shaw, a longtime friend of the Durrs’ daughter, was present that night and she remembered, “Everyone chuckled a bit, realizing that the jest contained much truth.”

  At least they could take comfort in knowing she would be right there beside Lyndon, taking a full partner role, offering both support and judgment, as she had been doing since she married him. He counted on that, and on the plane back from Dallas he turned the phone over to her to help him convey condolences to Rose Kennedy, mother of the slain president.

  Within days, Mrs. Johnson started speaking out on subjects that mattered. She was not going to be another Bess Truman or Mamie Eisenhower, who thought a first lady should keep her mouth shut. After Lyndon delivered a rousing call to arms, with his State of the Union message on January 8, declaring “unconditional war” on poverty, Bird met with reporters to tell them what she thought of the speech. With its emphasis on education, retraining, and health, it pretty well summed up, she noted, “Lyndon’s living and working for the last thirty years.” She even quoted the line she liked best: “You must be strong enough to win a war and wise enough to prevent one.”

  Lyndon’s war on poverty was going to be her war, too. Before he gave that speech, she had already begun preparing for a trip of her own to coal mining areas in Pennsylvania where unemployment was high. She knew, of course, that Eleanor Roosevelt had made similar forays to the poorest parts of Appalachia, and had explained them as part of being the “eyes and ears” for her husband. In fact, Mrs. Roosevelt played down her authority in general and insisted she “never tried to influence [her husband] on anything he ever did.” To suggest otherwise was “embarrassing.” Lady Bird Johnson was not about to offer a similar disclaimer. Quite the contrary. In planning her own trips to poverty-stricken areas, she called in experts to tell her how she could help Lyndon’s efforts. When she returned to Washington on January 11, after visiting dilapidated schools and shaking hands with out-of-work miners, she exuberantly described the day as one of her very best yet as first lady.

  Both Mrs. Johnson and her ingenious press secretary, Liz Carpenter, began immediately shaping an image of a first lady fully involved in the presidency. Veteran newswoman Marie Smith had already started a highly laudatory biography, The President’s Lady, due out late in 1964, and Elizabeth Janeway was slated to publish a flattering article in the April issue of Ladies’ Home Journal entitled “The First Lady, A Professional at Getting Things.” But when Look magazine, with a circulation of more than seven million, approached Mrs. Johnson in early 1964 with the proposal for an article on “Wifemanship at the White House,” she turned to a writer she admired, the wife of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Lady Bird Johnson had taken an immediate liking to each other when they met briefly at the Kennedy White House, and Lady Bird was impressed by two of Lindbergh’s books, Gift from the Sea and Dearly Beloved, although she found them so different she could hardly believe they came “out of the same mind.” Who better to write about the role of spouse to a famous man than the woman who had married the most famous man in the world and then won celebrity status for herself by publishing bestsellers? Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea (1955) was particularly relevant to Bird’s situation because it recounted how a busy wife and mother of five found precious time for herself on an isolated island.

  At first Lindbergh did not know how to respond to Mrs. Johnson’s invitation. She wasn’t sure she wanted to write for Look, and the topic of first ladies was not in her repertory. But after talking with Lady Bird, she agreed, and the lengthy piece, “As I See Our First Lady,” appeared in the May 19, 1964, issue. It was an eye-opener, spelling out how Mrs. Johnson meant to expand the limits in the job. A first lady could no longer just sit demurely beside her husband in public and quietly run his household.

  Providing a tranquil home life for a busy chief executive was, of course, part of the job, and Lady Bird promised to make sure Lyndon had a “balm” from the pressures of his office. But she meant to do much more, according to Lindbergh. Besides monitoring her husband’s speeches and actions, she would point out his shortcomings, and let him know her thinking on important issues. When Lindbergh observed that she sounded like one of those American women who want to “dominate” their men, Bird “tartly” corrected her: “American women have been partners since pioneer days. . . . It was not a question of one dominating the other side.”

  It was a remarkable statement, so unlike Eleanor Roosevelt’s description of her own marriage. Nearly twenty years had passed since Mrs. Roosevelt left the White House, and many American women were currently reading Betty Friedan’s best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, and talking about a new wave of feminism. But Bird didn’t regard herself as a feminist, not then nor later. She was fashioning her own hybrid model for marriage, growing out of both Southern and Western roots, and it combined traditional nurturing of others with achievement on one’s own. Like the pioneer women she admired, she considered marriage a team of equals; like the Southern women she loved, she would not challenge her husband in public, but in private would let him know what she thought.

  In that 1964 article, when Lady Bird Johnson revealed the kind of marriage she had, Lindbergh agreed with her, describing the Johnson partnership as an admirable one in which each respected and relied on the other. Unfortunately, most reporters did not pick up on what Lindbergh wrote, and they continued to treat Mrs. Johnson as the subservient underling to an overpowering, domineering husband rather than an equal who acted as his aide and in-house critic.

  Although Mrs. Johnson started off her interview with Lindbergh by saying she felt, as first lady, “as if I’m on stage for a part I never rehearsed,” both she and the author knew that was an exaggeration. No woman had ever come better equipped for that role. Her thirty years of Washington apprenticeship could serve as a guidebook to anyone aspiring to the job. Since arriving in 1934, as the bride of a congressman’s young assistant, she had scrutinized the capital so carefully she could have written a tourist guidebook, with the opening and closing hours of all the major monuments, and a rundown on all the important leaders in her own Who’s Who.

  From the network she had in place, she could count on lots of help. Libby Rowe, Marny Clifford, and Carol Fortas, whose husbands provided counsel to Lyndon, stood ready to advise Bird on everything from wardrobe selection to cleaning up the capital city. Nearly a quarter century of hearty interaction with members of the Congressional Club and the Senate Wives’ Club circle had provided a roster of friends, who volunteered to come to The Elms and help answer the hundreds of condolence messages pouring in. Eventually, four rooms in the Executive Office Building were set aside for dealing with approximately five thousand letters that arrived each week, while eight telephone operators, “busy as cats on a hot stove,” fielded calls. Bird oversaw it all. She was used to delegating tasks—she had been doing it all her life—and her decades-long foray into broadcasting had bolstered her confidence as a manager.

  Any move from one home to another produces stress, but the move Mrs. Johnson had to oversee in
volved the most famous house in America, and millions were watching to see how she managed it. Mrs. Kennedy could not be expected to vacate the premises overnight. She had to find a place to go, transfer Caroline’s school out of the third floor of the White House, and deal with the myriad of decisions that sudden widowhood produces. When someone suggested Bird should hurry things along, she directed her press secretary to relay this response: “I wish to heaven I could serve Mrs. Kennedy’s happiness. I can at least serve her convenience.”

  That cordiality took on added significance when contrasted with Lyndon’s impatience. He sought, but did not get, possession of the Oval Office for a meeting on Saturday morning, November 23, before Evelyn Lincoln, JFK’s distraught secretary, had a chance to clear the desk. When the residence was ready for the Johnsons on December 7, he insisted on moving in immediately, although Lady Bird pled for waiting a day, so as not to begin their time there on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Lyndon prevailed, and the move occurred on a date that seared in Bird’s memory like “salt in your eye.” As she adjusted to management of the 134-room executive mansion, she continued emptying out The Elms, and preparing to sell it. Only she could make the necessary decisions about which of the furniture, rugs, and housewares should go to Texas, which to storage, and which got sold or junked.

  The upright piano was easy—Sheldon Cohen bought it for his young children. His association with the Johnsons started within hours of the Kennedy assassination, after they phoned Abe Fortas, their longtime friend and trusted adviser, to ask for advice. They were still on Air Force One, returning to Washington, when they went to work on the question of how to manage their personal wealth, especially their broadcasting stations. In the relative obscurity of the vice presidency, both Johnsons remained in constant communication with their business manager, Jesse Kellam, and they freely offered him their views on programming, sales, and staffing. But now that Lyndon was president, with the responsibility of appointing members of the FCC, such intervention was clearly inappropriate, if not illegal.

  Abe Fortas immediately turned to Sheldon Cohen, a thirty-eight-year-old lawyer in his firm, who went to work on the matter before Air Force One touched down that evening. Cohen’s first response was that the Johnsons should sell the stations, but when Fortas assured him that they would never agree to do that, Cohen had to find another solution. For six days, he devoted every waking moment to unraveling the labyrinth of financial holdings that comprised the Johnson wealth at that time. Although he slept at home, he barely saw his wife and children. On Sunday, November 24, while most of Washington prepared for the slain Kennedy’s funeral on Monday and Abe Fortas held his weekly string quartet rehearsal at his home, Cohen plodded through mounds of financial papers in an adjacent room of the Fortases’ house in Georgetown. He was so oblivious to what was happening outside that room that when told that Jack Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, he had to ask, “Who is Oswald? Who is Ruby?”

  What Cohen gleaned from his investigation (and what diligent reporters would reveal a few months later) was that the Johnsons had massive holdings, including banks, land, and businesses. By far the biggest single component was the Texas Broadcasting Company, held in the name of Claudia T. Johnson. Her husband owned not a single share. But Cohen determined that a spouse’s name on a deed provided no protection against charges of conflict of interest: he had to treat her property as belonging equally to Lyndon and he had to find a way to separate both Johnsons from decisions about their investments.

  Cohen looked for some precedent. He had heard talk of JFK setting up a “blind trust” when he became president, but that turned out to be false. Cohen had already drawn up “blind trusts” for ambassadors who, faced with assignments in countries where they held significant investments, protected themselves from charges of conflict of interest by turning over control of everything they owned to another person or entity, such as a bank. Why not something similar for a president?

  The snag was the Johnsons, especially Lady Bird, who showed a more dogged devotion to the dollar than did Lyndon. She had worked long and hard for that nest egg and neither she nor Lyndon wanted to relinquish control. Both talked about the uncertainty of politics and the possibility that voters would turn them out at the next election. They had daughters to educate, and a comfortable retirement to safeguard for themselves. Even if reelected, they needed the income to support a constantly rising living standard. Lyndon kept adding ranchlands and upgrading his cattle, and after building a landing strip behind the ranch house, he had started buying airplanes. Only if all their investments could be safely put under the control of loyal, old friends would the Johnsons agree to step aside.

  The two men who emerged as the best candidates for trusteeship were superbly qualified: John Bullion had been preparing their taxes since 1940, and rancher/attorney A. W. Moursund was their longtime neighbor. It was his family who lent Lyndon money to go to college. With two such reliable trustees lined up, Lyndon and Claudia T. Johnson were willing to proceed, and on November 28, Cohen had the papers ready for them to sign.

  Although technically the first “blind trust” in American presidential history, it was hardly “blind.” Both Johnsons continued to communicate freely with the two trustees. Moursund had his own direct, private telephone line to the White House, and his ranch was often the Johnsons’ first stop when they returned to Texas. Vicky McCammon, the secretary who shared boat rides with Lyndon and Moursund, reported that their conversation often centered on “different money matters, television interests, just how the whole thing was going to be wrapped up.” When the Johnsons invited Moursund to stay overnight at the White House, Lady Bird identified him as “the children’s trustee,” with whom she “had a lot of business to talk about.”

  Bird managed the guest quarters of the executive mansion like a busy small hotel. She assigned big names, such as philanthropist Mary Lasker, to the famed Queens’ Bedroom suite or the Lincoln Bedroom. But personal guests—Johnson City neighbors, friends of Luci and Lynda, the family doctor, the Moursunds and the Bullions—slept in less impressive quarters on the third floor. The turnover in those rooms was so heavy, she marked her diary with an exclamation point when they were empty.

  Her open-door policy contrasts sharply with that of Jacqueline Kennedy, who liked to restrict the upper floors of the White House to a privileged few. She valued her own privacy and wanted her children to feel free to play, out of sight of gawking strangers. She occasionally opened up the Lincoln Bedroom for a national hero like Charles Lindbergh, but she was also known to fib to keep people away. On at least one occasion she had the furniture shrouded to give the appearance of a paint job under way, providing her with an excuse for not accommodating a guest who had hoped to stay overnight.

  In other ways, Mrs. Johnson resolved to define the job of first lady in her own terms, without feeling daunted by her predecessor’s celebrity glamour and enormous popularity. Pity was not what Bird wanted. When offered sympathy for having to move in the shadow of the trend-setting Mrs. Kennedy, she was shocked, and replied, “Don’t feel sorry for me. I still have my Lyndon.”

  The contrast between the two first ladies was immediately obvious in how they dressed: Jackie’s designer outfits in runway model sizes made the shorter, older Bird look like a thrifty matron. During her thousand days in the White House, Jackie had added dozens of outfits, with five-digit price tags, to her already extensive wardrobe, while Bird, who disliked shopping, had to borrow black coats and dresses for the Kennedy funeral and for the mourning period that followed. Showing her limited regard for big-name designers, she admitted that one funeral outfit made her look “very Salvation Army but in a smart way, I hope.”

  Two months as first lady passed before Lady Bird finally found time to buy clothes for what was becoming a very busy schedule. Even then, she purchased only two new outfits and decided that “wrapped up” the matter until summer. Instead of adding to her wardrobe, she had old suits altered, and she updated her mi
nk coat by shortening it, recycling the excess fur into a hat. She had lost weight in the stressful first weeks in the White House, and, reaching to the back of her closet, she found a gold and silver lamé dress that Lyndon had bought her in Paris. It finally fit.

  First ladies typically take primary responsibility for parenting in the White House, especially if young children are involved, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh asked Mrs. Johnson how she planned to handle that. Bird’s reply—that her two daughters could “count on her to be there for them”—was typical of her, dutiful and correct, but a world away from Jacqueline Kennedy, who maintained that if one failed at parenting, nothing else mattered. Michelle Obama’s description of herself half a century later as “Mom-in-Chief” would have sounded as foreign as a Chinese proverb to Mrs. Johnson.

  Very few presidential families deal easily with the explosion of publicity that their move into the White House ignites, and the Johnsons were no exception. Lynda, enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Texas in Austin, wanted to stay there, where she had pledged to a sorority and acquired a boyfriend, rather than live in the Washington fishbowl. Her mother disagreed. She recognized the White House provided a rare opportunity that few people have—to meet world leaders and national celebrities, to witness history in the making—and she wanted both daughters to take full advantage. When Lynda continued to resist the move, her mother suggested her UT roommate, Warrie Lynn Smith, come with her, and a deal was struck. By the end of January 1964, the two young women had settled into third-floor bedrooms and enrolled at nearby George Washington University. But Lynda made very clear she resented the change. She had been overruled by her parents, she told The New York Times, and had made the transfer under pressure.

  Even with the entire Johnson family under the same roof, the daughters saw little of their parents. Lyndon’s supercharged schedule meant he ate dinner late, often after 9 p.m. Even if they waited for him, they had limited opportunity to voice personal concerns or share their worries. He liked fast-paced talk, and Lynda complained it was “Lose your breath; lose your chance.” The president routinely polished off a meal in less than twenty minutes, much of that time in conversation with a staff member or friends he brought with him. Lady Bird made a point of joining him at the table, no matter how late the hour, but she did not always wait for him to eat. She would sneak a plate earlier, and then play with her food while he ate. On the very rare occasion when she dined on her own, she felt like a “deserter.”