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TEAMING UP FOR THE BIG WIN
AUGUST 25, 1964, was one of those dog days in Washington, when energy slumps as the temperature hovers near 90 and the gray sky threatens a drizzle. But Lady Bird Johnson was on high alert, not sure what bombshell Lyndon would drop next. The Democrats had already convened in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to select their presidential candidate, but the name at the top of their list was not cooperating. Daughter Luci and most of the president’s staff had already arrived at the convention site and checked into their hotel suites, but Lyndon was refusing to join them. When he wouldn’t even reveal a timetable for his arrival, Walter Jenkins, his chief aide, phoned him from convention headquarters to find out what was going on.
Just before noon that Wednesday, Jenkins reached an utterly dejected president who whined that he wanted out of the job because it was too much for him. With all “the responsibilities of the bomb and the world and the Nigras and the South,” Lyndon told Jenkins, he had decided to let the Democrats choose a “better-prepared . . . better trained . . . Harvard educated” man. With nothing going right for him, why fight? If newspaper editors were going to treat him so badly, ignoring his accomplishments and headlining his shortcomings, why prolong the agony? Maybe it was beyond the power of any “white southerner . . . to unite the nation now.” He wasn’t asking for a lot, LBJ complained, just “a little love.”
Jenkins, knowing how useless it was to contradict his boss when he sounded this self-pitying, muttered non-committal phrases and let the whimpering run its course. Lyndon explained he had already written his withdrawal speech (except for the last sentence) and now he needed to decide where to deliver it. He had sounded out Bird and she thought he owed it to his supporters to make the trip to Atlantic City and face them directly. But he favored calling a few reporters to the White House and dropping his shocker right there in Washington.
After twenty-five years on Lyndon’s staff, listening to his innumerable threats and mind changes, Jenkins still could not be sure what Lyndon was really thinking, and he phoned press secretary George Reedy, who was still at the White House, to find out what he thought. Reedy’s rundown offered little comfort. A few hours earlier he had endured a long, excruciating walk around the South Lawn, his hammertoes making every step an effort, as he struggled to match the pace of the much taller Lyndon and, at the same time, process his ranting about the Democrats convened in Atlantic City: “Fuck ’em, they don’t want me anyway. . . . I’m going to go up and fuck ’em. I’m going to tell them that I’m not going to accept the nomination.” Reedy confessed to Jenkins that he could not be absolutely sure but this time Lyndon “sounded like he really meant it.”
Baffled by what to do next, Jenkins then turned to “one person . . . of all the people . . . around [Lyndon who had the] ability to reason with him and be convincing.” Jenkins called Bird. Lyndon’s state of mind was no news to her. Although he had been holding a couple of meetings every day and was on the phone a lot, she had picked up signs that he was falling apart, and she was doing everything she could to keep him operational. When he had breakfast and dinner in bed, she was there, beside him, eating off a tray. She had walked with him on the South Lawn and consulted trusted friends and advisers about his condition. The previous day, she had met twice with Abe Fortas, who held no official position at the White House but remained one of the Johnsons’ stalwart team. The second visit had lasted almost to midnight. She had also spent time with Dr. Willis Hurst, who had come to the White House, along with three other physicians, to examine Lyndon. What else could she do? “I do not remember hours I ever found harder,” she confessed to her diary.
That sticky Wednesday, with everyone waiting to see when he would go to the convention in Atlantic City, she decided to use a tactic that had worked before. She wrote Lyndon a letter and left it for him to read while she and Lynda went for a walk on the White House grounds. Upstairs, in the president’s bedroom, the shades were drawn, but Bird knew her husband was in there, refusing to “talk to anybody . . . wrestling with his own demons.”
Eventually he took up her letter and read it, and within hours he was on his way to Atlantic City. But not until August 27, when he stood in front of hundreds of delegates to the Democratic National Convention and actually accepted their nomination, did she have clear proof of how he would answer her letter. She had often described her role in their partnership as offering him good judgment, although he didn’t always accept it. This time he did, picking up her challenge to stay the course and run for a full term of his own. She later singled it out as an example of how she had influenced his presidency.
The letter was vintage Bird. Fully available in her published White House Diary, it began with flattery, telling her husband how great he was: “Beloved—You are as brave a man as Harry Truman—or FDR—or Lincoln.”
Then she promised him things would get better: “You can go on to find some peace, some achievement amidst all the pain.”
After stroking his ego further (“You have been strong, patient, determined beyond any words of mine to express. I honor you for it. So does most of the country.”) She was not afraid to use a mild threat: “To step out now would be wrong for your country, and I can see nothing but a lonely wasteland for your future. Your friends would be frozen in embarrassed silence and your enemies jeering.”
As for herself, he need not worry—she could take whatever came her way: “I am not afraid of Time [which had just published an unflattering article about her] or lies or losing money or defeat.”
Knowing how her man resisted taking instruction from anyone, she left the decision entirely up to him. But she closed her plea with one final dose of adulation and support: “In the final analysis I can’t carry any of the burdens you talked of—so I know it’s only your choice. But I know you are as brave as any of the thirty–five.
“I love you always,
“Bird”
In designating those August hours as the hardest of that year, Bird was saying a lot, because she had some strong contenders for the title: the election year of 1964 was one of sleepless nights and hard choices. Along with big legislative victories, like the tax bill, came many disappointments, and during tough negotiations with railroad workers in April, she and Lyndon had talked “every night [about the negotiations] . . . and how much is hanging in the balance for him.” It was clear to her that part of Lyndon wanted out of the presidency and he was looking for her help on that. On a day when they had been wakened by a phone call at 5:30 in the morning, he had started out the door and then come back to whisper in her ear, “Get me out of this, won’t you?”
But she could not. After considering how an exit now might hurt “his image as a father figure to the nation,” she felt obliged to urge him to “Stay on.” No matter how much both of them wanted to find it, “There [was] no way out.” They had endless talks on the subject, and during the Republican convention in mid-July, Lyndon wakened Bird at 4 a.m. to talk “in detail the problems, the pros and cons, the good points and the bad, of every decision that faces him with regard to this campaign. . . . So it was a wakeful night, with about two hours’ sleep.”
One big problem, beginning with President Kennedy’s assassination, was figuring out how to move into his job with confidence, yet not look like a greedy usurper. As Lyndon and Bird served out what was left of JFK’s term, they toggled between those opposite poles: paying careful respect to the Kennedy legacy while promoting themselves as able leaders of the nation. The martyred JFK, the iconic Jackie, and their two endearing children had captured the nation’s love in a way few political families ever manage, and the Johnsons had the unenviable task of following them.
Lyndon had no guarantee that his party would choose him as their presidential nominee in 1964. He feared they might dump him in favor of one of the Kennedy crowd. Among the assassinated president’s most grief-stricken supporters were some who talked of reclaiming the Oval Office, and his brother Robert appeared eage
r to lead them.
So it wouldn’t do for either of the Johnsons to look too confident about their chances of remaining in a White House they had inherited rather than won on their own. Better to emphasize that their occupancy was only temporary and show respect for the man whose death had put them there. In public, Lyndon praised the leadership of JFK, and urged passage of the laws he had proposed. Bird made a point of not appearing to compete with Jackie, knowing she lacked both the interest and the preparation. In purchases for the White House family quarters, Bird held back, and she refused to upgrade the worn upholstery and draperies because, she explained, whoever moved in at the next election might not approve of her choices. She wouldn’t even designate a special project for herself. When reporters asked what legacy she wanted to leave, she declined to be specific, saying only that her answer would be revealed in deeds, not words.
Privately, Bird kept evaluating Lyndon’s performance and her own against what the Kennedys had done. After hearing her husband deliver a speech to a large crowd in Mississippi on February 27, she graded it a good B+ but lamented that it lacked “that singing quality of so many of Mr. Kennedy’s.” For herself, she recognized that she could not afford to ignore the value of Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House restoration project. It had added gravity to Jackie’s fashionista image and won her high marks with voters. Although Lady Bird did not share Jackie’s attachment to historic buildings—she cared more about good reading lights—she resolved to pick up on the White House project where Jackie left off. On February 28, she went to Mrs. Kennedy’s pink brick house in Georgetown for pointers on how to proceed. It was the kind of undertaking Bird dreaded because it resurrected old insecurities about her own provincial upbringing.
The prospect of meeting with the Committee for the Preservation of the White House on May 7 was even more daunting. Bird mused in her diary why a woman as confident as she in many matters shrank from any encounter with these arbiters of taste: “Why, when I’m not the least bit afraid of meeting the tycoons of business, or the titans of labor, or any other sort of people at home or abroad, should I look upon this [meeting] with such trepidation?” In addition to the White House committee members, she would have to face dozens of others invited to participate in the day’s events: ultra-wealthy donors, with names like Loeb and Paley; super-pedigreed Americans like Charles Francis Adams; celebrity curators and decorators, including James Biddle, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Mrs. Henry “Sister” Parish, who had counseled Jackie. It was not that Bird coveted what they had or were—she accepted the fact that they possessed a key to a world that was different from hers—but she knew they would be tempted to compare her with her stylish predecessor.
Bird prepared for the May 7 event for weeks and then, up to the last minute, kept looking for ways to make it flawless. At the morning session of the White House committee, she reviewed what had been accomplished and then triumphantly unveiled a Winslow Homer painting that had been “precipitously and happily dropped into our laps.” At noon, she was still polishing the speech she would deliver to a larger assembly that afternoon. She had studied diligently with White House curator James Ketchum, and could talk knowledgeably about provenance and restoration techniques when she led her guests on a tour of the mansion. For a woman who admitted she had to learn the difference between a bergère and a fauteuil, it was a remarkable performance.
To maximize her effectiveness in the White House Lady Bird denied herself small pleasures, like reading the newspaper comics. That freed up time for speech making and for planning and taking investigative trips. Her solo journey to the poorest parts of Appalachia in January 1964 had given such satisfaction that she resolved to do more. She found it personally gratifying to travel on her own, without Lyndon’s staff telling her where to go and what to say. When he set out on a five-state poverty tour in early May, daughter Lynda accompanied him while Bird stayed behind, conserving her energy for her own foray to Kentucky later that month.
Although the Kentucky trip required rising early and hiking along footpaths through one of the most economically depressed parts of the country, Mrs. Johnson loved it. Sitting alongside students in a one-room schoolhouse and washing her hands in the same zinc bucket they used brought back vivid memories of her own primary education in Karnack. For these youngsters, she had a special treat that was not available to country schools in Texas in her time: she threw the switch that turned on the first electric light their school had ever had.
Back at the White House that night, she ran herself a hot bath and thought back over the past few hours. Lyndon was already in Michigan, preparing to deliver a major salvo in the War on Poverty he had declared in January. In a speech entitled “The Great Society,” he would outline his vision, the cornerstone of his bid for reelection. But Bird would not be there to hear him. Savoring thoughts about her own solo excursion to Kentucky, she ranked the day among her “ten best” since becoming first lady.
Bird still found public speaking challenging, requiring hours of work. Nonetheless, she doggedly accepted many of the invitations that came in. George Reedy noted she had an uncanny ability to size up an audience and tailor her remarks to fit, while Lyndon was prone to gaffes. On a swing through the Midwest, he affected a common touch by telling a group of Iowa farmers that he had to leave and go “slop the hogs.” His press entourage joked afterward that his recipe for hog slop would start with champagne and contain “truffles and pâté de foie gras.”
Among the most daunting speaking invitations Lady Bird accepted was one to address a gathering of illustrious New Yorkers at the newly opened Hilton Hotel on April 9, 1964. Nearly three thousand people would gather that day to celebrate the first anniversary of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation, and Mrs. Johnson dreaded the prospect of standing up in front of them. The program promised a star roster, including the legendary Marian Anderson reading from Eleanor Roosevelt’s book Tomorrow Is Now, and Adlai Stevenson, orating “with his silver tongue.” Bird braced herself and went. She had decided to do what she did best—recount in her own words her personal recollections—in this case of a woman she had known, Eleanor Roosevelt. Bird could be as tough on herself as on Lyndon but this time she gave herself a satisfactory rating: “I had acquitted myself well enough—something I seldom feel.”
When Radcliffe College invited her to deliver the commencement address on June 9, she accepted, although she knew her presence at the podium would ignite comparisons between the exalted Seven Sisters colleges and her own alma mater, the University of Texas. Lyndon was famous for holding up the “Harvards” as specimens of sophistication and erudition, and Radcliffe, in those sex-segregated days, was the Harvard for women. Bird claimed she labored more diligently on this than on any of her previous speeches, and the result was exhilarating. Life magazine singled it out as one of the season’s best. She had used the opportunity to encourage women graduates to involve themselves in the nation’s political debates and to use both “energy” and “intellect” to help solve the nation’s problems. After chatting with students and faculty following her talk, she returned to Washington, and although she would never get her husband to agree, she saw the gap between Karnack and Cambridge as definitely bridgeable.
Her upbeat mood got another boost on July 2. For nearly a decade, that date had marked a double milestone in the Johnson household: Luci’s birthday and another year of Lyndon’s surviving his 1955 heart attack, an event Bird singled out as the “severest trial” that she and Lyndon ever faced. Now, in their first White House year, the Johnsons added a third reason to celebrate the day. After the candles on Luci’s favorite cake (lemon) were extinguished that afternoon, word came that the Civil Rights Bill, which was a crucial part of Lyndon’s legislative agenda, had finally passed the last hurdle: the House of Representatives had voted overwhelmingly (289 to 126) in favor. In a burst of jubilation, the president announced he would go to the East Room at six that evening and sign the bill in front of television cameras,
so the entire nation could watch. Just over a year had passed since President Kennedy introduced legislation to guarantee all Americans the right to be served in hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments. President Johnson had engineered the passage of a broader version that gave more attention to schools.
Bird had sometimes doubted her husband could pull this off. A few months earlier, she had felt “shaky” hearing him come out so “forthrightly for the full Civil Rights Program” in Mississippi, where integration had been “a little bit on the token side.” But she concluded he had been right to press his case there: “You might as well say it where it’s hard to say.” She had registered his defiant response to others who warned he was moving too fast on civil rights: “What the hell is the presidency for?” Now, as she watched him deliver “a marvelous televised statement” on the subject, her thoughts went back to the nights he spent on the office cot while he worked to get the 1957 Civil Rights Act through the Senate. Today was just “another step,” she decided, in what looked like a long struggle.
As soon as he had penned his name on the Civil Rights Bill, Lyndon wanted to escape Washington and get an early start on the July 4 weekend at the ranch. Leaving Luci behind, under the supervision of Willie Day Taylor, the president and first lady climbed into a chopper on the White House lawn at 10:30 for the short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, where they boarded the JetStar that took them directly to the landing strip at their ranch. It would be midnight (Texas time) before she arrived, but Bird was animated “with that sense of adventure and youth and release . . . [on] one of those rare nights, starry in every way, when one does not think about tomorrow.”
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 25