As plans progressed, not a word leaked to the press. When the president was asked if his wife would campaign for him, he used one of his famous “Mother Hubbard” answers—covers everything and touches nothing—to keep the details secret a bit longer. She had campaigned in the past, he noted, and she would in the future. Behind the scenes, he enthusiastically supported her effort. When he learned that provisions were being made for an advance staff of only fifty, he instructed Carpenter to increase that number to seventy.
Not everyone in the West Wing shared his zeal. Kenny O’Donnell, a Kennedy holdover, struck Carpenter as “half laughing at the whole idea and obviously feeling that neither the South nor women were important in the campaign.” Such disdain for women’s efforts was old hat to Carpenter. Veteran of many campaigns, she knew that even the most politically astute females still found themselves relegated to the drudgery jobs, like “licking stamps and sealing envelopes. . . . [Then it was] back to the kitchen and the bedroom, girls, for four more years.”
Not until everything was in place did the first lady contact leading figures in the states she planned to visit. With Liz Carpenter’s help, she spent an entire day phoning governors and senators, one after another, to clue them in on her plans. After giving them the bare outline of her schedule, she solicited their suggestions on what to add, as if any leeway remained in the itinerary. Liz Carpenter insisted Mrs. Johnson had not “a phony bone” in her body, but when she started talking to Southerners, she just naturally included homey references to watermelon and honeysuckle. Only a hard-nosed opponent could turn her down when she began, in her most charming voice, “Guvnuh . . .”
The Lady Bird Special, its nineteen cars painted in patriotic red and blue stripes, left Union Station a little past 7 a.m. on October 6. A few minutes later, the president climbed aboard in Alexandria, slapping a White House seal of approval on the undertaking. He joined his wife’s campaign venture twice more, once at the midpoint in Raleigh, North Carolina, and again at the jubilant conclusion in New Orleans. That was just enough to express his support without diverting the focus from Bird. Daughter Lynda accompanied her mother for the first two days, and Luci replaced her sister for the last two days, as the train moved through eight states, over 1,682 miles of track.
Dozens of staff, security workers, and journalists remained on board for most of that time, and hundreds of guests climbed on and off as the train moved through their hometowns. Curious crowds assembled along tracks in places where celebrity sightings were rare. Residents of tiny Ahoskie, North Carolina, marveled that this was their most exciting day since Buffalo Bill came to town.
In other areas, the reception was neither so kind nor enthusiastic. Hecklers gathered, some wielding signs of support for Goldwater; others, more menacing, warned, “Blackbird, go home” and “Fly away, Bird.” In Columbia, South Carolina, where a group of young men tried to drown out the first lady with chants of “We Want Barry,” the rest of the audience hushed, curious to see how she handled disruptions. Up there on her own, she had no speech coaches or political aides to script her reply, but she answered with a calm logic that even the most hostile onlookers registered. Holding up a white-gloved hand, she announced, “This is a country of many viewpoints. You’ve had your say and now it’s my chance for me to have mine.”
Mrs. Johnson played her strongest card—her own Southern heritage—to convince voters of how much she shared with them. Faced with dissenters’ placards and chants, she reminded them that she came from a town much like theirs; she had the same concerns and spoke with the same accent. They might not agree with what she said, but they understood what she was saying. With college-debating precision, she ticked off her husband’s accomplishments; with gracious good manners, she complimented local officials; with cheerful optimism, she predicted a better future for them all. Rather than the scolding teacher from the North, she came across as the genial cousin who had moved away but remained attached to the people she had left behind. In Alabama, she spotted familiar faces in the audience and invited “Cousin Effie” and “Cousin Cox” up to the platform, to stand beside her. Who wanted to heckle a woman related to the family down the road?
Bird’s rail car, adjacent to the platform car, was well equipped; she had her own chef, a private bathroom, and a parlor where she could chat with local dignitaries who came aboard to be photographed with her. Conditions in the other passenger cars were more primitive. Fifteen volunteer hostesses, in perky hats and blue dresses, managed the human traffic, but it was difficult, as dozens of reporters, security agents, and service workers vied for a dollop of space. In the absence of bathing facilities, body odors produced choruses of “I’ve grown accustomed to your smell,” until Liz Carter booked a few hotel rooms in Tallahassee (and extra towels) so everybody could clean up.
Although Bird insisted that assassination was not part of her destiny, her security detail remained on guard. The volunteer hostesses listened for ominous talk, including threats against Mrs. Johnson, when they got off the train to mix with the crowds and pass out posters and other campaign items. A surveillance squad preceded the train to inspect the track, and in Florida, after a bomb threat was received, security agents insisted on carefully examining a long bridge before allowing the first lady’s train to cross it.
At Bird’s final stop in New Orleans on October 9, Lyndon met her with a big hug and warm praise. Behind the smile, one journalist friend detected a hint of jealousy. Lyndon had a long record of pushing her to excel, then showing some petulance when she upstaged him. He certainly sounded peeved in a telephone conversation with her on October 7. Evidently pleased with his TV appearance earlier that day, he phoned her to ask what she thought of it, and when she said she hadn’t even watched it because she didn’t know it aired, he exploded: “Well, why the hell don’t you find out? Why don’t you find one of those eighty women you got with you to find out?”
Aides marveled at how calmly she took such outbursts, answering him with an acquiescent “Yes, dear,” or a sympathetic comment about how hard he was working. His criticisms sometimes bordered on the ludicrous. Kenny O’Donnell, who noted Lyndon was constantly “up and down” during the 1964 campaign, reported he went so far as to accuse Bird of “working for Goldwater.”
After four days of giving speeches and greeting countless individuals, Mrs. Johnson hardly had time to catch up on her sleep before she faced one of the biggest trials of the entire campaign year. She was at the White House and Lyndon was stumping in New York when both learned that Walter Jenkins, whom they loved like a blood relative, had been arrested in Washington on what was then called a “morals charge,” but was actually a homosexual encounter with an indigent, aged war veteran in a public restroom.
At first incredulous, both Johnsons listened to the strong evidence and came up with separate explanations of what happened. They disagreed sharply on how they should respond. She insisted that only the strain of extreme fatigue could have caused Jenkins, a married father of six, to do anything to harm his boss’s chances in the upcoming election. Lyndon believed the meeting was setup, a plotted conspiracy to discredit Jenkins and raise questions about his boss. Prior to the arrest, Jenkins had attended a Newsweek party to which the president had also been invited. Could Jenkins have been drugged, possibly with something intended for LBJ? The presence of three police officers in that public toilet on a weekday evening looked suspicious to Lyndon. Who had passed the word that Jenkins would be there?
Both Bird and Lyndon understood that voters would be alarmed to learn that the president’s aide, who had access to top secret information and was privy to all his boss’s contacts and scheduling, was vulnerable to blackmail. That Lyndon had employed that man for twenty-five years cast doubt on his judgment; that he should continue to rely on him was unthinkable. Yet both Johnsons valued loyalty above all else, and Walter Jenkins had epitomized the devoted employee. He had worked eighteen-hour days, canceled critical medical appointments whenever the president s
ummoned him, and doggedly tackled all of LBJ’s assignments, even those delivered in such condescending, abusive terms that Jenkins’s face flushed red. The entire Jenkins family was close to the Johnsons. Walter’s daughter Beth was one of Luci’s best friends, and his wife, Margery, helped Bird with her speeches and had thoughtfully invited the Johnsons to dinner on the day they moved into the White House.
Bird was determined to put together a compassionate response that accommodated both loyalty and political necessity. A little past 9 a.m. on October 15, after having checked with legal advisers Abe Fortas and Clark Clifford, she phoned Lyndon and in her chairman-of-the-board staccato, told him that she thought they should do “two things”: offer Walter the number two job at KTBC and issue a public statement of support for a man who had suffered a “nervous breakdown” because of an overly demanding schedule. When Lyndon objected to taking any action and warned her to “stay out of this,” she remained firm and appealed to his survival instincts by cautioning that if he did not come to Walter’s aid now, he risked alienating his entire staff. For nearly thirteen minutes, husband and wife argued about what to do. Even after he complained that a plane was waiting for him and he was already an hour behind schedule, she kept him on the line, trying to convince him that she was right.
While Lyndon continued to hold back, rejecting one option after another, she went into action. She wrote out her own statement and then turned to J. Russell Wiggins, editor of The Washington Post, to publish it. Wiggins singled out that day as proof that the first lady, whom many disdained as so under her husband’s control she “would have followed [him] to the guillotine,” was very much her own person. “My God, she was like a vessel under full sail,” Wiggins said. “She came into that little blue room [upstairs at the White House] and she issued a statement declaring full loyalty to Walter Jenkins. She read it, and she said she wondered if we would print it.”
The paragraph that Wiggins deemed “great . . . and we did print it, of course,” read: “My heart is aching today for someone who has reached the end point of exhaustion in dedicated service to his country. Walter Jenkins has been carrying incredible hours and burdens since President Kennedy’s assassination. He is now receiving the medical attention which he needs. I know our family and all of his friends—and I hope all others—pray for his recovery. I know that the love of his wife and six fine children and his profound religious faith will sustain him through this period of anguish.”
Lady Bird Johnson was later questioned about how differently she and Lyndon had handled the Jenkins matter, and, as usual, she defended her husband. In 1999, in the last substantial interview she gave before suffering a debilitating stroke, C-Span’s Brian Lamb asked her to explain why Lyndon had distanced himself from Jenkins while she had come to his aid immediately. In reply, Bird showed, even though her husband had been dead for a quarter century, that her loyalty to him remained as firm as ever. She admitted she was “sorry” that Lyndon had not spoken up to defend his friend. But, she noted, Lyndon was only a few days away from the most important election of his life. She omitted from the interview with Lamb how she had followed up with the Jenkins family, showing compassion while her husband kept his distance. A month after Walter’s arrest, she visited the Jenkins home, although it was not easy. She described her time there as “a strange hour—very much the same and very different.” She later offered the Jenkinses land on which to build a new house, and she engaged Walter to handle some of her personal accounts. But for her, the whole ordeal was one “of the two or three most painful things in my life—more painful than the death of many close to me.”
• • •
On November 3, 1964, the Johnsons cast their ballots early in the day near the ranch, as was their habit, and then went to Austin to await returns at their favorite suite in the Driskill Hotel. Lyndon felt drained. When he spoke on the phone with Secretary of State Dean Rusk that afternoon, he confessed how low he had sunk: “I’ve had a headache . . . been in bed all day. I just kind of came off the mountain . . . just kind of feeling punchdrunk.” By late evening, when the results started coming in, a crowd of friends, family, and staff had gathered in the Johnson suite, as everyone waited eagerly to see their hard work pay off.
Early numbers indicated that votes for LBJ would greatly exceed JFK’s 1960 numbers. Even Lyndon’s hero FDR never collected such an overwhelming endorsement. In the end, Lyndon swamped Goldwater, taking 61 percent of the popular vote. The electoral college gave him 486 votes, leaving only 52 to the Republican, who claimed (besides his home state of Arizona) five states in the Deep South. All five had been on the Lady Bird Special’s route, but three other states also on that route (North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida) went for Lyndon.
It is impossible to know how many votes Lady Bird influenced, but her effort did not go unnoticed by other would-be first ladies. In Georgia, Rosalynn Carter, wife of future governor Jimmy Carter, watched the Lady Bird Special’s progress carefully, and a decade later she started out on her own solo campaign to advance her husband’s chances for the presidency. That a Southerner, like herself, had expanded so greatly the role of a candidate’s spouse was remarkable, and Mrs. Carter later explained that when she reached the White House herself, she had selected Mrs. Johnson as “my favorite first lady.”
Long after Rosalynn Carter had left Washington, her press secretary, Mary Hoyt, reminded readers of the Los Angeles Times that Lady Bird Johnson had changed the rules for candidates’ spouses. Not every aspiring first lady would have the confidence (or willingness to devote the time and energy) to undertake the kind of outreach that Mrs. Johnson engineered, but she set a new standard for what could be done. Americans became accustomed to the fact that a candidate’s wife would give speeches, hold her own press conferences, and fund-raise by herself to help propel her man into the White House.
A little past midnight on voting day in 1964, Lyndon Johnson impetuously decided to leave the Driskill and make a surprise appearance at the Austin Civic Center, where enthusiastic supporters had gathered. As he exited his hotel in a euphoric mood, a spontaneous assembly cheered him. Television cameras moved in to capture images of a man walking on top of the world. Minutes later, his mood shifted abruptly. On the way to the Civic Center, he happened to hear a radio announcement of his impending arrival. Enraged that his surprise had been spoiled, he lashed out at those he considered responsible and was particularly nasty to one press aide, who swore he had nothing to do with the leak. For the rest of the evening, Lyndon pouted, or, as his official diary noted, he was “quiet” on this, the night that should have been a high point of his life.
Bird is not on record as intervening that night to soothe the offended aide. She had worked hard in this campaign, and the August day when she persuaded her husband to get up out of bed and go to the Democratic convention stood out as the most trying. Now, as she faced four more years in the White House, she felt no sense of elation but only “a curious pall of sadness and inertia [which is] hard to shake.” For nearly a week she did not make a single entry in her official diary, as she gave herself a break. After doing all that she could to produce a big win, she now had to prepare for the next four years.
Her mail showed that Americans were counting on her. Of the nearly two thousand letters that came into her office each week in 1964, most were invitations to speak or requests for a photo or autograph. But the others were what interested New York Times reporter Nan Robertson. They were the ones that addressed the first lady as presidential aide and appealed for her help—to get some legislation passed or to promote one cause or another. Her staff called them her “tell-it-to-the president” letters, and according to Robertson, Mrs. Johnson was receiving a lot of them because, unlike Jacqueline Kennedy, Mamie Eisenhower, and Bess Truman, she “has been and continues to be deeply involved in her husband’s political life.”
Not since Eleanor Roosevelt had a first lady been so enmeshed in a president’s agenda or so featured in the public’s expe
ctations. Bird recognized her mandate. Now that Lyndon had won the big prize, the Oval Office in his own right, she would have to turn her attention to what she could accomplish in the upcoming term. She would have more time to tweak her side of their partnership.
14
LINCHPIN IN THE LAUNCH OF THE GREAT SOCIETY
ON JANUARY 20, 1965, as thousands gathered on the side of the Capitol and millions more tuned in on TV to watch the inauguration of Lyndon Baines Johnson, they got a surprise. For as long as anyone remembered, a congressional aide had held the Bible for the swearing in, so the incoming president could raise his right hand and put his left hand on the Scriptures as he took the oath of office. But on that sunny Wednesday, as Lyndon faced Chief Justice Earl Warren, who would administer the oath, Lady Bird stepped forward to hold the family Bible.
A Johnson spokesman informed reporters that Lyndon had told his wife it would “mean a lot to him” if she took this new role in the ceremony, and she had not objected. In her diary, she confessed it was “sweet” of him to want her at his side at this special moment. With Lyndon towering nearly a foot above her, she had to tilt her chin sharply upward to fix her eyes squarely on his, while the congressional aide, who had not been warned about the change, stood awkwardly aside. In her buttoned-up American Beauty red coat and brimmed hat, she would appear in the same frame as Lyndon in nearly every photo of the event.
Bird’s break with precedent that day might be written off as inconsequential, a trivial altering of an old ritual. But it was much more. It signaled the valuable partner role she played. Her strategic linchpin status in her husband’s administration would be underlined time and again in the next four years as she served as sounding board, collaborator, and emotional stabilizer. Moreover, that change in the inauguration rite would become the new tradition, solid as steel half a century later. Even spouses of lesser public servants—mayors and governors across the nation—routinely take the same part as Mrs. Johnson did that day.
Lady Bird and Lyndon Page 27