The Kennedy Half-Century (55 page)

Johnson was not about to let such a thing happen. As frank as he was with his loyalists, he had teased Bobby Kennedy (and many others) with the prospect of being chosen for the ticket’s second spot. But when he met with Kennedy at the White House on July 29, 1964, it was obvious even to RFK that he was not going to get the prize. Johnson issued a statement saying he had ruled out all members of his cabinet, so valuable were they in their current posts.
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No one was fooled; no cabinet member but Robert Kennedy was considered a serious possibility for vice president.

This was the moment that marked the informal end of the Kennedy administration. Johnson had fully declared his independence. Bobby Kennedy would go his own way, running for and winning a U.S. Senate seat in New York, though assisted greatly by LBJ’s long presidential coattails in November 1964.
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By no means did all Democrats acquiesce easily in Kennedy’s being shown the door. The White House mailbox was stuffed with angry missives as soon as the news spread. Mrs. Walter Curry of Nashville sent a fiery telegram to
Lady Bird Johnson, asking for her intercession: “In striking at Robert Kennedy your husband has struck at the hearts of millions of American citizens. He has struck at the memory of John Kennedy. Please try to make him understand what he has done.”
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Rose and Harold Kogan wrote President Johnson, “We were shocked at your dropping [of RFK] … We feel this move is an insult to our adored and beloved President Kennedy. Because we are ardent Democrats, we feel we must convey to you our deep feeling of personal hurt.”
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And Mrs. Mary Perry of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, had a prediction for LBJ: “Just heard the news over the radio … that you eliminated [RFK]. I am sure you also eliminated the state of Pennsylvania … Mark my words, you will lose Pennsylvania.”
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x

As for his real choice, Johnson kept the country, and the contenders, guessing. Three U.S. senators had reason to believe they were destined for the ticket, based on hints dropped by LBJ: Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and Hubert H. Humphrey, also of Minnesota.
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Johnson let the speculation build an audience for his unopposed convention renomination, announcing the news of Humphrey’s elevation during the Democratic conclave itself.
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LBJ had almost certainly leaned to Humphrey all along. He was the link to liberals and the North that Johnson required, and his legislative talents were unquestioned. Like Johnson, Humphrey had felt the Kennedy family sting. During the 1960 Democratic primaries, Humphrey was not just defeated but humiliated.
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The Kennedys left no stone unturned nor insult undelivered in the key primary of West Virginia, where Humphrey was all but accused of cowardice for not serving in World War II. (He had repeatedly tried to enlist but was turned down for various reasons.)
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Like Johnson and unlike John Kennedy, Humphrey was a serious, well-respected senator—but the amateur had won in 1960. Four years later, it was time for the professionals’ revenge. Humphrey understood this potential alliance as early as the previous November 22. After Johnson returned from Dallas, he held a late-night meeting with congressional leaders in his Old Executive Office Building suite. All the assembled Senate and House luminaries pledged their fealty to Johnson, but Humphrey lingered after the meeting, stressing how much he wanted to help LBJ in his new duties.
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The formal business of the Democratic National Convention was nominating Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. The highlight, though, was memorializing John F. Kennedy, and this was not an entirely welcome prospect for LBJ. For weeks memos had streamed back and forth about how to handle the Kennedys in Atlantic City. In LBJ’s view, this was
his
convention,
his
opportunity to emerge fully from John Kennedy’s shadow. But to the
Kennedys, and a large portion of Democrats and the public, it was impossible to forget that this would have been JFK’s moment of triumph, where he would have been launched toward a second term.

A twenty-minute film was commissioned to salute JFK. It was, in the words of presidential assistant Douglass Cater, a “tearjerker,” utilizing Mrs. Kennedy’s allusion to Camelot as its theme. “Camelot was a highly schmaltzy musical about a semi-mythical kingdom,” wrote Cater to LBJ press secretary Bill Moyers. “I have quite mixed feelings about its propriety at a convention,” he huffed.
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Cater’s real concern became quickly apparent:

Certainly, the delegates will be left weeping. It would be less dramatic but probably less risky to show that film sequence without the music. I have vague unrest about engaging in such an emotional bender just before the Johnson acceptance speech.

At first the film had been scheduled for showing on the convention’s first night. But Johnson and some of his aides worried that it could stampede the delegates into nominating Bobby Kennedy for vice president, regardless of Johnson’s preference. This was never a very likely prospect, but such was the wariness about RFK and the Kennedy family’s intentions. LBJ’s solution was shrewd: the film would be delayed until the final evening when the ticket was already set.
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The Johnson entourage was right about one thing. The emotional impact of this film, and its introduction by Robert Kennedy, was overwhelming. When RFK appeared, the delegates launched a spontaneous, twenty-two-minute standing ovation, and they simply refused to let him start speaking. They wanted the moment to last; they wanted him to know how they felt. RFK’s short oration finished with a passage from
Romeo and Juliet
that some read, perhaps overread, as a contrast between JFK (the heavenly night stars) and LBJ (the garish sun):

…
when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heav’n so fine
That all the world will be in love with the Night
And pay no worship to the garish Sun
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Virtually the entire convention hall was crying, and millions at home as well. The film recounted JFK’s achievements, but the personal glimpses—such as Kennedy teaching John Jr. to tickle his chin with a buttercup—were most affecting, and hard to watch. Meanwhile, RFK had left the stage, gone out to sit
on a staircase, and inconsolable, he broke down in tears. No one knew better what that evening could have been.
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The general election was fiercely fought. Barry Goldwater detested Lyndon Johnson, thinking him corrupt and unfit for the Oval Office. Senator Gold-water told friends he had looked forward to a race with JFK, who apparently at one point had suggested to the Arizonan that the two might fly around the country on Air Force One, debating the issues at each stop.
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Kennedy may or may not have been serious, and if he were, it was because he knew Goldwater was simply too far right to pose a serious challenge to his second term. In any event, Johnson refused to debate Goldwater, while most campaign observers believed that Kennedy would have done so, given his success against Nixon in 1960. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no television president, and he was not about to give Goldwater a free audience of millions in debates similar to those of 1960.

An embittered Goldwater lashed out at LBJ at every turn, while Johnson commissioned some of the nastiest television spots ever aired. The “bombs away” commercials, including the infamous “Daisy Spot,”
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all but called Goldwater crazy, likely to use nuclear weapons and, in effect, end all life on earth. Surprisingly few positive advertisements were aired by Johnson, who missed an opportunity to build support for the sweeping programs he had planned for a full term. But Johnson was swept back into the White House with a popular vote majority that even exceeded that of his hero, FDR.
^y
He lost only five Deep South states
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and, narrowly, Goldwater’s Arizona. Best of all, Johnson’s margin helped to produce an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that would bend to his will.
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The other aspect of the campaign worth noting was Johnson’s reluctance to cite JFK more than he had to. He could not avoid it when Goldwater charged the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had been timed for maximum political effect in the following month’s midterm elections,
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and occasionally LBJ would mention how he got to the Oval Office.
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But Johnson wanted to create his own mandate, not slip back into office on Kennedy’s ghostly one—though public grief and guilt about the assassination were a big part of the Democratic landslide, whether LBJ acknowledged it or not. At last, Johnson was looking forward to his own term with his own team. However, he underestimated the Kennedy faction in this sense: They viewed his new term as John Kennedy’s second, the triumphant term snatched away on the streets of Dallas. In their eyes, Lyndon Johnson would never really be his own man. He would forever be a president who owed everything to John Kennedy—and a well-placed bullet.

No sooner was LBJ elected than he had to face the haunting first anniversary of the assassination.
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It would be a highly public reminder of how his presidency began, and he had to proceed cautiously. Johnson and his staff agreed on several steps. A presidential proclamation was issued, calling for a day of prayer on November 22 (which conveniently fell on a Sunday in 1964). Johnson visited the Kennedy grave site “quiet[ly], without fanfare” five days before the anniversary to pay respects. A sculpture of JFK was received by LBJ on November 19 and placed in the cabinet room of the White House. And Johnson, after returning to the LBJ Ranch in Texas for Thanksgiving week, attended an interdenominational service at Austin’s University Methodist Church on the anniversary itself.
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Aide Jack Valenti also counseled the president, “It would be ill-advised to be out hunting on Sunday the 22. I know you have visitors that day—but I submit the backlash from this could be severe.”
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Much as Americans’ eyes had been riveted on Arlington in November 1963, and then again on John Kennedy’s May 1964 birthday, the eternal flame at JFK’s grave site drew television cameras and forty thousand mourners on November 22, 1964. Bobby Kennedy led other family members to kneel in prayer “on the first anniversary of that day of national horror, shame and grief.” Among the earliest visitors had been the two daughters of President and Mrs. Johnson, who left yellow roses.
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Three million people had made the pilgrimage to Arlington just between JFK’s funeral and the end of May; tens of millions would follow over the decades.
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On December 15, 1964, President Johnson wrote to Jackie Kennedy about matters pertaining to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He added a poignant thought: “Time goes by swiftly, my dear Jackie. But the day never goes by without some tremor of a memory or some edge of a feeling that reminds me of all that you and I went through together.”
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Johnson won the Keystone State with 65 percent of the vote in November.

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In 1936, FDR’s best election, Roosevelt received 60.8 percent; LBJ in 1964 garnered 61.1 percent.

14
Crossed Swords: Camelot vs. the Great Society

On January 20, 1965, political observers were almost united in their belief that LBJ was the new FDR, a big-picture, big-government, big-action president who would be in office until the Constitution said he had to go in January 1973. Johnson was at the peak of his powers on the highest mountaintop, and his vista included a robust economy, compliant congressional supermajorities, and unambiguous dominance of the Western world. John F. Kennedy’s time was past. Lyndon Johnson’s independence day had dawned.

Perhaps because LBJ had already been in office for fourteen months, inauguration day lacked the drama that had accompanied many other swearing-ins in American history. Whatever the level of excitement, Johnson was determined that the day would be free of Kennedy dominance. He had always seen himself as far more experienced and better qualified to be chief executive than his young predecessor. In his short time in office he had already compiled a legislative record more impressive than JFK’s. He had won the 1964 election in grand style, a massive landslide compared with Kennedy’s squeaker. Therefore, in the reality that Johnson saw, this was entirely his own term. John F. Kennedy was not mentioned in Johnson’s inaugural address, and that was part of a larger plan.
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LBJ’s close aide Horace Busby had sent him a memo in December, reminding the president that he had already designated the year as the 175th anniversary of the presidency. Busby recommended this also be the inauguration’s premise: “Adoption of the 175-year theme would, as no small benefit, eliminate adverse comments or unwelcome pressures for associating the late President Kennedy with your Inauguration … All former presidents would be, in this context, subject to equal treatment, rather than any [that is, JFK] being singled out for special treatment.”
²