One-Night Stands with American History

by Richard Shenkman

  SOURCE: Richard B. McCaughan, Socks on a Rooster: Louisiana’s Earl K. Long (Baton Rouge: Claitor’s Bookstore, 1967), pp. 170–78.

  JFK POKES FUN AT LBJ

  At a Gridiron Dinner in 1958, Senator Kennedy told the correspondents about a dream he had had concerning the presidency: “I dreamed about 1960 myself the other night and I told Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, ‘John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.’ Stuart Symington said, ‘That’s strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.’ Lyndon Johnson said, ‘That’s very interesting, gentlemen, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don’t remember anointing either of you.’”

  SOURCE: Leon A. Harris, The Fine Art of Political Wit (New York: Dutton, 1964), p. 261.

  KENNEDY ON NIXON

  • When Nixon reputedly accused Kennedy of telling “a barefaced lie,” JFK commented: “Having seen [him] four times close up . . . and made up, I would not accuse Mr. Nixon of being barefaced, but the American people can determine who is telling the truth.”

  • “Do you realize the responsibility I carry?” Kennedy asked his supporters during the campaign. “I’m the only person between Nixon and the White House.”

  • “Last Thursday night,” Kennedy said during the campaign, “Mr. Nixon dismissed me as ‘another Truman.’ I regard that as a great compliment. I consider him another Dewey.”

  SOURCE: Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 208, 180, 185.

  JIM CROW, REALTOR

  In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Robert C. Weaver, later the first Negro cabinet member, to be head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. At his confirmation hearings before the Senate Banking Committee in February, Weaver received nearly unanimous praise, but was pressed hard by William Arvis Blakley. Blakley was a new face on the committee, having just been appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the election of Lyndon Johnson as vice president. Before he began his questioning, Blakley humbly told the committee that he was reluctant “to take a stand or bring out information,” since he had had so little experience. But the chairman reassured him.

  Blakley began his questioning by asking Weaver about certain black groups that had been named by the House Un-American Activities Committee as communist fronts. Had Weaver been a member of the National Negro Congress? Did he know it was a subversive organization?

  No, replied Weaver, he had never been a member of the congress and, in any case, it did not become communist-tainted until 1939 or 1940. The congressman had asked about Weaver’s connection with the organization in 1937.

  Blakley then asked Weaver about the Washington Cooperative Book Shop. Had Weaver ever been a member of the shop? Weaver conceded that he had been, in order to get a 20 percent discount. But he had resigned shortly after learning that the shop was not run democratically. Had he ever gone to a membership meeting?

  “Oh, yes; I was there,” Weaver replied.

  Blakley, satisfied that he had uncovered a skeleton in Weaver’s closet, continued. Did Weaver know that one of his books, The Negro Ghetto, which explained how city and suburban realtors helped create ghettos, had been praised by the Worker’s Book Shop of New York, a communist bookshop? Would he be pleased if the book were prominently displayed in a communist bookshop?

  “Yes, and my publisher would appreciate it too.”

  Finally, Blakley asked Weaver about a review of The Negro Ghetto that had appeared in the August 1948 issue of Masses and Mainstream, the well-known communist magazine. “Did you know about this review?”

  “I do not know whether I did or not, sir,” said Weaver. “I read about 250 reviews. If it came to my attention, I probably did read it. Do you know who wrote it? I might be able to identify it better.”

  “Yes. This seems to be by J. Crow, realtor.” (The review was bylined, “J. Crow, Realtor,” but was signed at the bottom by Herbert Aptheker. )

  “Who?”

  “J. Crow, realtor. Do you know J. Crow?”

  “I did not know he wrote book reviews.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Blakley. “This book reviewer seems to have been J. Crow, realtor. He went under another name sometimes, I suppose.”

  That June, William Arvis Blakley was defeated in a special election. His six months in the U.S. Senate were over.

  SOURCE: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, Hearings on the Nomination of Robert Weaver (87th Cong., 1st sess., February 7, 8, 1961 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961]).

  EXTRA WORK FOR WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS

  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a punctual, highly organized man. He was also the only man in the history of the Supreme Court to write both the majority and minority opinions for the same case.

  Meyer et al. vs. United States (364 U.S. 410), a life insurance– payment case, was argued before the Court on October 12, 1960. The opinion of the nine justices was split, and Justice Charles E. Whittaker, an Eisenhower appointee who, by his own admission, lacked the decisiveness and stamina required by the large Court workload, was directed to write the majority opinion. Douglas was chosen to write the minority opinion.

  Typically, Justice Douglas finished his work in a few days. Days soon turned into weeks, however, and Justice Whittaker’s majority opinion was still not available. Douglas, of course, could not submit his minority report until the majority decision had also been circulated.

  Over a month later Douglas visited Whittaker at his office to discuss a totally different matter and found his fellow justice worriedly pacing the floor. Whittaker simply could not, he confessed to Douglas, find the proper inspiration to begin writing the majority opinion in the Meyer case.

  That’s because you found for the wrong side! ribbed Douglas.

  No, answered Whittaker, he had made the correct decision, but somehow the writing would not flow. Douglas then realized that he had an opportunity to speed up the legal process. Even though Douglas had sided with a minority of his fellow justices in the case, he understood completely the rationale of the majority’s decision.

  If you think it might help, he offered, I’ll write a few notes to get you started.

  Whittaker accepted this sympathetic proposal, and within a few hours he had Douglas’s majority opinion on his desk. With scarcely any changes, Douglas’s writing became the recorded opinion of the Court. Legal records, of course, credit Douglas with writing the minority opinion only.

  SOURCE: Dagmar S. Hamilton, Austin, Texas, in a personal interview with Kurt E. Reiger, February 1979.

  CATCH-18

  During the eight or nine years that Joseph Heller was writing his first novel, the working title of the book was “Catch-18.” Then, just as the book was going into production, Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine, informed Heller that Leon Uris was coming out with a book with the same number in the title. The magazine warned that the public would probably not accept two books with similar titles, and opined that if people had to choose, they would pick the Uris novel, since Uris was a familiar name.

  Heller immediately sank into depression. He even took a leave of absence from his job as a writer of advertisements for McCall’s to brood about his problem. He had specially picked the number eighteen because it was the only multi-syllable number that begins with a vowel, except for the number eleven, which could not be used since it was part of the title of a recently released movie.

  For four weeks Heller worried about the problem, until one day his editor called with an idea for a new title. The editor suggested “Catch-22,” and instantly Heller agreed.

  SOURCE: Joseph Heller, in a television interview with Bill Boggs on station WNEW, New York, March 15, 1979.

  LBJ, TEXAN

  Lyndon Johnson was the earthiest president
in recent American history. In the 1950s, when Richard Nixon was vice president and LBJ was the majority leader of the Senate, reporters sensed that the Texan had not taken a particular speech of Nixon’s very seriously. When asked why, LBJ smiled and said, “Boys, I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.”

  On another occasion LBJ thought of dismissing FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, then realized it would be too difficult. “Well,” commented a chagrined Johnson, “it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.”

  SOURCE: David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 436.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER ASKS WHO SARTRE IS

  In June 1964, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover started an investigation of Jean-Paul Sartre when he read a newspaper report that the famous French philosopher had joined the “Who Killed Kennedy Committee.”

  The newspaper identified Sartre as an author only. Hoover immediately issued an order: “Find out who Sartre is.”

  SOURCE: UPI, Tennessean, January 1978.

  LBJ LEARNS TO REASON TOGETHER

  “Come now, let us reason together,” became a catch phrase of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Today everyone associates the Isaiah 1:18 quote with the late president. But how did he learn to use it?

  In LBJ’s early days as a politician, he once had a strong disagreement with the head of a power company. The future president wanted a small Rural Electrification Administration line constructed in his county district in Texas. The power company said no. Finally, in total exasperation, LBJ told the power company official to go to hell.

  After the verbal exchange, a friendly ex-senator offered Johnson some timely advice. “Telling a man to go to hell and then making him go is two different propositions. First of all, it is hot down there and the average fellow doesn’t want to go, and when you tell him he has to go, he just bristles up and he is a lot less likely to go than if you hadn’t told him anything. What you better do is get out the Good Book that your mama used to read to you and go back to the prophet Isaiah and read what he said. He said, ‘Come now, let us reason together.’” From that time forward LBJ was quoting Isaiah and reasoning together.

  Of course, what the old ex-senator and LBJ left out of the Bible quotation was Isaiah 1:19. Many Bible-reading contemporaries, however, quickly pointed to it as the quote most exemplified by the Johnson administration:

  “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land;

  “But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword, for the Lord hath spoken.”

  SOURCE: Paul F. Boller Jr., Quotemanship (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1967), p. 917.

  LBJ’S BATHROOM TALKS

  To Lyndon Johnson there was nothing strange about talking to someone while sitting on the Imperial Flusher. If anything Johnson thought it was odd when people stopped talking simply because a visit to the bathroom was necessary. He explained his ideas about the propriety of bathroom conversations to biographer Doris Kearns by way of an anecdote:

  “[Once a Kennedyite came into the bathroom] with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet. You’d think he had never seen those parts of the body before. For there he was, standing as far away from me as he possibly could, keeping his back toward me the whole time, trying to carry on a conversation. I could barely hear a word he said. I kept straining my ears and then finally I asked him to come a little closer to me. Then began the most ludicrous scene I had ever witnessed. Instead of simply turning around and walking over to me, he kept his face away from me and walked backward, one rickety step at a time. For a moment there I thought he was going to run right into me. It certainly made me wonder how that man had made it so far in the world.”

  SOURCE: Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 241–42.

  LBJ GOES PUBLIC

  As a politician LBJ did a lot of traveling. Once he visited Thailand for a conference. At the conference Johnson was feasted royally and given plenty to drink, which made him a frequent visitor to the rest room. As he emerged from the rest room on one of these trips, he met a group of reporters. Instantly, Johnson opened his fly, pulled out his membranous Texan, and commented, “Don’t see ’em this big out here, do they?”

  SOURCE: Steven Gerstel, newspaper reporter, Washington, D.C., in a personal interview with Richard Shenkman at the Capitol, January 1979.

  LBJ GIVES AWAY TOOTHBRUSHES

  LBJ loved to give gifts. In his first year as President he spent over three times as much as his predecessor on gifts. He particularly liked giving electric toothbrushes. “I give these toothbrushes to friends,” he explained to biographer Doris Kearns, “for then I know that from now until the end of their days they will think of me the first thing in the morning and the last at night.”

  To make doubly sure friends would not forget him, LBJ gave particular individuals more than one toothbrush. Doris Kearns received her first toothbrush when she worked as an intern at the White House in 1968. Over the next ten years she received more than twelve toothbrushes from Johnson.

  SOURCE: Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 10.

  LBJ PLAYS SANTA CLAUS

  “The place: The Texas ranch of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson.

  “The time: Several years ago.

  “A young man arrives at the ranch to run a routine political errand. While he is waiting in the living room, Johnson strides in, picks up the telephone, and calls his press secretary, George Reedy, who is staying in the guesthouse down the road. He gives Reedy a monumental chewing out.

  “‘He was using language that I had never heard one human being use to another,’ recalls the political worker, now an official of the University of Texas. ‘He called him every filthy name in the book and some that aren’t. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.’

  “Finally, Johnson hangs up the phone. He turns to the young man and says, ‘Now, let’s give George his Christmas present.’ He leads the way outside to an expensive new station wagon, drives it down to the guesthouse, and toots merrily on the horn. When Reedy comes out, Johnson gives him the station wagon. To the astonished witness, the senator observes: ‘You never want to give a man a present when he’s feeling good. You want to do it when he’s down.’”

  SOURCE: James Deakin, “The Dark Side of LBJ,” Esquire, August 1967, p. 45. Reprinted by permission of James Deakin.

  A NEW YORKER CONFESSES

  John V. Lindsay, mayor of New York City: “The only problem I ever have in New York City is people. People present me with a constant headache—we have too many slobs.”

  ADVICE ON IMMIGRATION

  When Congress was revising U.S. immigration laws in the late 1960s, Vice President Hubert Humphrey received this timely advice from an Indian living on a New Mexico reservation: “Be careful in revising those immigration laws of yours. We got careless with ours.”

  SOURCE: Bennett Cerf, Laugh Day (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), p. 16.

  EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

  Virginia Military Institute has always prided itself on the fact that once a man passes through the gates of the school and becomes a cadet, his background, name, and circumstances no longer matter. The first blacks entered VMI in 1968. A reporter for a large metropolitan newspaper, somewhat dubious about the claim that blacks were being treated as equals at the school, asked one of the new black recruits about VMI life.

  “This is the most equal place I ever heard of,” came the reply. “Here they treat everybody like a nigger.”

  SOURCE: Henry A. Wise, Drawing Out the Man: The V.M.I. Story (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978), p. 288.

  NIXON COLLAGE

  • At age twelve Richard Nixon told his mother, “I will be an old-fashioned kind of lawyer, a lawyer who can’t be bought.”

  • As an a
nxious senior at Duke University Law School, Nixon broke into the office of the dean to find out his class standing. He discovered that he was at the top of his class. He was not punished.

  • While touring Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958, Nixon was spat on by a protester. Secret Service agents grabbed the man and the then vice president planted a healthy kick in his shins. In Six Crises, Nixon recalled that “nothing I did all day made me feel better.”

  • Despite his boast that writing Six Crises was a maturing experience, Richard Nixon did not author the book. All of it was ghosted by Alvin Moscow, except the final chapter on the 1960 campaign.

  • Speaking to reporters about his health, President Nixon once claimed that he had never had a headache during his whole life.

  NIXONISMS

  • To an injured policeman waiting for an ambulance, Nixon remarked, “How do you like your job?”

  • During the funeral of French president Georges Pompidou, Nixon declared: “This is a great day for France.”

  • One day a man was invited to the Oval Office to give President Nixon a chair made completely from a single piece of wood. The President sat in the chair, and it immediately collapsed. As he picked himself up from the floor, Nixon said nothing, but then asked, “Well, how do you go about doing this kind of work?”

  SOURCE: Douglas Hallet, “A Low-Level Memoir of the Nixon White House,” New York Times Magazine, October 20, 1974, p. 52.

  EVEN THE MEDIOCRE DESERVE A VOICE IN GOVERNMENT

  Roman Hruska, speaking in the Senate in defense of Harold G. Carswell, Richard Nixon’s nominee to the Supreme Court: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos and stuff like that there.”

  SOURCE: Richard Harris, Decision (New York: Ballantine, 1971), p. 117.

  WATERGATE CONFUSION

  Ron Ziegler, presidential spokesman during the Watergate crisis: “If my answers sound confusing, I think they are confusing because the questions are confusing, and the situation is confusing and I’m not in a position to clarify it.”