Lady Bird and Lyndon

by Betty Boyd Caroli

  That October 1965 weekend in New York softened the first lady’s attitude on religious differences. On Sunday evening Dorothy and Arthur Goldberg, who had recently become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, hosted a large dinner, with a star-studded guest list including Rockefellers, Roosevelts, and Kennedys. When the host repeated an old Hebrew prayer, asking for “wisdom for the leaders of the nation,” Bird could see its similarity to “passages of the Episcopal prayer book,” and she concluded it had been a memorable weekend, “even for the most Protestant of us.”

  That would be her last burst of jaunty enthusiasm before reality set in. Lyndon was set for another medical procedure, and that always called for her full-time surveillance. For more than a month she had known that Lyndon was going to undergo gall bladder surgery, but he had insisted on keeping it secret, and she had not even told her closest staff, Liz Carpenter and Bess Abell, who did her scheduling and made most of her arrangements. Only when she returned to the White House on Tuesday, October 5, a few hours before he was scheduled to enter the hospital, did she let them know. Then she turned her full attention to seeing that his hospital suite provided all the comforts he required.

  For a commander-in-chief who thrived on issuing imperatives, it was exasperating to don an ill-fitting hospital gown and take orders from nameless nurses. Add the discomfort of serious surgery and the hurt delivered by a suspicious press, and you have a very disgruntled patient. When recovery turned out to take longer than anticipated, Lyndon became more truculent than usual. The press reported, erroneously, that he was being treated for something far more serious than his gall bladder, possibly another heart attack or pancreatic cancer, and his fractured credibility left him ill equipped to rebut the claims.

  Presidential press secretary Bill Moyers tried to allay suspicion by releasing detailed medical reports and frequent updates on the patient’s activity and recuperation. Lyndon, attempting to do him one better, provided the image that came to characterize the worst side of his presidency. While still at the hospital, he met with reporters and, according to Time magazine, pulled up his blue sport shirt to “let the whole world inspect the ugly twelve-inch seam under his right rib cage” where the doctors had stitched him back together.

  Cartoonists had a bonanza as they tried to outdo each other in conveying his boorishness. One showed him preparing to greet Britain’s Princess Margaret, his shirt raised to expose the gory scar; the caption was an aide’s warning that viewing of scars would have to wait until after he had been formally introduced to his royal guest. Lyndon recognized he had gone too far this time, and he explained to reporters that he hadn’t meant to be crude. But it was too late.

  Hearing a national snort of derision aimed squarely at him, Lyndon fell into a deep funk. When he had to return to the hospital a few weeks later for more surgery to repair the scar and remove a small growth in his throat, his spirits sank further. His thoughts turned increasingly to death and the fact that the men in his family did not live much beyond sixty. He was fifty-seven. Americans deserved a more vigorous leader, he decided, not one likely to die in office. He started hinting that he would resign, and only twelve months after boasting of how many Americans voted for him, he had his secretary type up a letter asking Vice President Humphrey to take over the Oval Office.

  With her husband appearing as besieged as “a man on whom an avalanche had suddenly fallen,” Bird decided that the “black beast of depression [was] back in our lives.” She kept hoping he would get better if only she could manage to “buy a little time.” At least she could stay close at hand, ready to cajole and placate. When he became rebellious and finicky about who sat at his table for the state dinner for Princess Margaret, she kept coming up with different combinations until he finally acquiesced and ended the phone conversation with “I love ya.” For small gatherings in the family dining room, she made sure that no one she invited would make any mention of gall bladders or Vietnam.

  White House staff remarked on the calming influence she had on Lyndon. When he exploded in anger, she gingerly edged up to him, in a version of what she called “infiltration,” and began her soothing, nonconfrontational suggestions with, “Now, Lyndon . . .” Bill Moyers quipped years later: “Who knows how many disasters were averted by her uttering those two words, ‘Now, Lyndon . . .’ ”

  During a visit to the LBJ Ranch in 1965, speechwriter Richard Goodwin was sitting at the pool when Lyndon launched into one of his tirades about how all his critics were communists and about how he was going to go down in history as the president who lost Southeast Asia. He went on and on about how communists already controlled the three major networks and dozens of other communications outlets. According to Goodwin, he even named names: “Walter Lippmann is a communist and so is Teddy White. And they’re not the only ones. You’d all be shocked at the kind of things revealed by the FBI reports.” While Goodwin and the other guests sat in stunned silence, the president became “more intense.” Then Bird leaned over and “tenderly patted his hand,” causing the anger to dissipate and the tension “to seep from his body.”

  “Now, Lyndon,” she began, “you shouldn’t read [the FBI reports] so much.” When he bristled and asked why not, she explained in serene tones, “Because they have a lot of unevaluated information . . . accusations and gossip which haven’t been proven.” According to Goodwin, Lyndon looked less than convinced, but for the moment he seemed mollified.

  • • •

  Although 1965 had several low points, Bird included it in what she called a time of “wine and roses,” and in many ways it was. The president had managed to get through Congress some breakthrough, nation-altering legislation. He was being heralded as outstripping his own hero, having done, according to Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, “more than FDR ever did or ever thought of doing.” She could take pride in the quiet, linchpin role she had played.

  But as the year came to a close, it was clear that behind the satisfied glow of achievement lay disappointment and frustration. The president was facing huge problems and finding decisions increasingly difficult to make. What stood most prominently as the buffer between him and his “Valley of the Black Pig” was Bird. She was, and had always been, his emotional keel. But things could get worse, she knew, and they did.

  15

  BEAUTIFICATION: A LEGACY OF BIRD’S OWN

  SNOW HAD begun falling outside when Lady Bird Johnson entered the Queens’ Sitting Room late in the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day, 1965. The day had started with a mixture of fog and drizzle, and by 5 p.m., when her meeting was due to start, darkness nearly shrouded the White House. She had conferred that morning with her philanthropist friend, Mary Lasker, and now wanted to hear from half a dozen others. As everyone stood around, greeting one another and chatting, faint sounds of singing wafted in from the Lafayette Park side, and the first lady turned to her newly hired aide, Sharon Francis, to ask what was going on outside. Francis, who was nearest the window, pulled back the curtain and replied, “They’re singing, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ and they’re kneeling in the snow.”

  The room went dead silent, as everyone waited to see how the first lady treated this poignant appeal for help. It was ten days after Bloody Sunday, the violent confrontation on an Alabama bridge between civil rights activists and their opponents, who remained staunchly committed to racial segregation. President Johnson had, just that morning, proposed to Congress legislation that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But without any further acknowledgment of the chanters outside, Bird started her meeting. As talk about cleaning statues and planting flowers proceeded, the elegant Queens’ Suite might as well have been thousands of miles away, in Buckingham Palace.

  It was not that Lady Bird Johnson lacked sympathy for those kneeling in the snow, but she had called together specialists to talk about an entirely different subject, and she was not one to be diverted from a purpose. One of what her friend Marny Clifford had labeled “pigeonholes” in her mind took to
p billing that afternoon, and her uncanny ability to keep projects separate from each other was never more apparent. Concern for Lyndon, his health and his career, was not a pigeonhole—it overlay everything else—but on this particular day in March 1965, she was concentrating on a project distinctly hers, one that resonated deeply with her but related only peripherally to Lyndon.

  It was important, Mrs. Johnson often said, to find something for one’s self, an interest or project that made the “heart sing,” and the dedication had to be authentic. Eric Goldman, the historian involved in the Johnsons’ first White House years, went to her for support on a library project he was promoting because he knew she was an avid reader. Although she rarely referred publicly to what she was reading, because she did not want to offend authors by mentioning some and not others, books were definitely part of her every day. To Goldman’s surprise, she turned him down on the library project, with the explanation: “I haven’t been in a library since I left college. This is not me.” What was “me” was her deep, intense love of nature, which had provided a valuable refuge during a pathetically lonely childhood.

  Like the mother she had barely known, Bird found the highest beauty and the deepest tranquillity out of doors, and now, from her White House podium, she could encourage others to explore the sights that had enriched her life—the verdant forests, rocky outcroppings, and blankets of wildflowers that calmed and soothed her, even in the most troubling times. This would be her legacy, something apart from Lyndon’s, and she would make no apology for taking time from other work to give it its due. It is an aspect of her marriage often overlooked, in the typical portrayal of her as entirely geared to her husband’s needs and demands.

  Before unveiling any beautification goals, Bird carefully did her homework and assessed the political implications. Any venture of hers could not contradict or interfere with the president’s policies. She had watched Eleanor Roosevelt strike out on her own, drawing a younger and more liberal following than FDR did. Although Bird admired Mrs. Roosevelt’s courage, she rejected her example. Any member of Bird’s fan club would have to root for Lyndon, too.

  The president had already set up a Task Force on the Preservation of Natural Beauty in 1964, and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall credited Lady Bird with influencing her husband “to demand—and support—more far sighted conservation legislation.” That task force, chaired by Harvard professor Charles Haar, received an “open sky” assignment, reaching all the way from “natural parks and society” to the “quality of urban life.” But the task force had a deadline only two months hence. Lady Bird operated more deliberately. No sixty-day rush jobs for her. First, she wanted to quiz experts, evaluate previous efforts, and mull over lists of people willing to help her.

  High on that list was Mary Lasker, and within days of the November 1964 election Bird reached out to her. A few years older than the Johnsons, Lasker (born in 1900) had already impressed both of them with her energetic devotion to a cause. Always perfectly coiffed and stylishly dressed, she needed no reminder from Lyndon to freshen her lipstick. The ambitious Midwesterner had set out after college (art at Radcliffe, literature at Oxford) to join the New York art world, and at her first job she met up-and-coming artist and gallery owner Paul Reinhardt. In 1926 she married him. Divorced eight years later, she married an even more promising go-getter, Albert Lasker, in 1940. An executive with Lord & Thomas in Chicago and a virtual icon in the advertising world, he was credited with making orange juice a staple on every breakfast table in America. Mary Lasker soon adopted her husband’s interest in marketing, and she applied her art training to the design of packaging for Lucky Strike cigarettes.

  By the late 1940s, the Laskers were less interested in making money than in spending it on what had become their shared mission. Although the link between cigarette smoke and cancer had not yet been publicized, they transferred their promotional skills to finding funding for medical research. With adequate resources, they argued, cures could be found for the big killers of their time—cancer and heart problems. The overly optimistic Laskers even set a deadline for reaching their goal—the year 2000.

  After Albert Lasker died of cancer in 1952, his widow pursued their objective with renewed zeal. Realizing private contributions would never suffice to pay for the necessary research, she turned to Washington where, in 1958, Senate Majority Leader Johnson looked like her most promising ally. He had survived a major heart attack himself, and his mother had just died after suffering from multiple medical problems. Even so, Lyndon quaked at the size of Lasker’s request, and both of them knew she would have to settle for less. On hearing that she was asking for $565 million, equivalent to about $3 billion in 2014 dollars, he asked, “Isn’t that too much?” and she replied, “Not if you want to live.”

  By 1960, he was the one who needed help—from her. After his presidential ambitions met a frigid reception in New York City, he asked her to intervene with her influential friends and put in a good word for him. He told her that Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Schiff, owner of the New York Post, were very wrong in thinking he was “anti-Negro and . . . anti–civil rights. . . .” Lasker agreed to speak with both women, but she reported back that she had not made a “dent” on either one. In fact, Roosevelt and Schiff thought she was “crazy” to believe Lyndon harbored any genuine interest in civil rights.

  Stuck in the stagnant trough of his vice presidency, Lyndon was of little use to Lasker, who turned to Lady Bird. Invited to The Elms for lunches and dinners, Lasker pronounced her hostess “absolutely charming,” and each event “very well done, very well organized.” Although the New York art maven and the wildflower enthusiast from Texas would appear to have little in common, something clicked between them, and Mrs. Johnson described Lasker as “very dear to me.”

  When Lyndon snapped back into action after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lasker was one of the first people he called. She joined the small group, including Abe and Carol Fortas, who gathered at The Elms on Sunday evening, November 24, to talk about Lyndon’s priorities as president. Lasker had recommendations ready for the new first lady as well, but it was too early, and the energetic New Yorker had to sit by and watch as Mrs. Johnson “just marked time.”

  The legitimacy conferred by the 1964 landslide election lifted Bird’s diffidence. Now she was ready to tackle some of the projects Lasker had listed. They included improving “the appearance of the vast federal highway system . . . the beauty of our cities, and . . . the health of the people.” Lasker recommended starting with roadways, which had expanded enormously as a result of the Highway Act of 1956, providing billions of dollars for a sprawling interstate network. Even a high-flying multimillionaire like Lasker had to travel by automobile sometimes, and she complained of being a “victim . . . [of] totally treeless and hideous [roadsides, including the] New Jersey Turnpike.” Illinois was just as guilty, with “thousands of miles . . . of highway, totally without trees, which makes driving there a pain.” In striking contrast, the Taconic Parkway near Lasker’s New York City home base had been “beautifully landscaped,” and she held it up as a model for the entire nation.

  Mrs. Johnson also solicited ideas from Arizonan Stewart Udall. He had remained as secretary of the interior after Kennedy’s death and found himself more personally attuned to the Johnsons, with their Westerners’ proud ties to land and open spaces, than to the sea-loving JFK. At forty-four, Udall boasted an enviable record. An athlete who helped integrate his college cafeteria before the law mandated it, a decorated World War II veteran who came home to earn a law degree, and a three-term veteran of the House of Representatives, he unveiled his concerns for the environment in a book, The Quiet Crisis, published in 1963. Written while he held a day job in the president’s cabinet, The Quiet Crisis, along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published the previous year, put a staggering price tag on the overuse of natural resources: increased pollution and decreased open spaces would create an environment in which birds could no long
er sing.

  In spite of his own national perspective, Udall advised the president’s wife to use her clout on a project close to home—Washington, D.C.—and turn it into an attractive “garden city” with tree-lined streets and flowering parks. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visited every year, Udall noted, and they left Washington with memories of a gritty, shabby metropolis, so inferior to the grand capitals of Europe. Jokes about Washington’s sorry state had circulated for years, among them President Kennedy’s quip that it was a city that combined Southern efficiency with Northern charm.

  For more brainstorming, Lady Bird turned to Libby Rowe, a friend since the 1930s, whom President Kennedy had appointed to the National Capital Planning Commission, charged with sprucing up Washington. Rowe, who had a broader concept of environmental issues than Lasker, encouraged Mrs. Johnson to think beyond plantings and statues and do something for those neighbors of hers who lived in wretched poverty only blocks away from the White House. First ladies since Dolley Madison had been taking some part of the city under their wing, heading charitable organizations looking out for orphans or others in need, but only Ellen Axson Wilson, the first wife of Woodrow Wilson, had zeroed in on a specific local problem—housing. As a result of her lobbying, Congress passed a housing act with her name on it after her premature death in 1914.