The Passage of Power

by Robert A. Caro

  Another part of the explanation was Johnson’s natural aggressiveness—which manifested itself to them in ways that confirmed their feelings that he was still trying to grab a bigger role in the Administration than they wanted him to have; that, as Evelyn Lincoln was to say, his “immediate thought was of his image,” not of the President’s. A constant reminder of this was Johnson’s unending appeals, when the two men were traveling to the same city, to be allowed to fly with Kennedy on Air Force One, appeals that Mrs. Lincoln felt were being made so that he would be photographed getting out of the plane with the President, share in his spotlight. This “constant argument,” as Lincoln calls it, “cropped up every time the two men were going to make a joint appearance.” “You don’t mean to say that Mr. Johnson is again insisting on riding with me,” Kennedy would say. “How many times must I tell him that the President and Vice President, as a matter of security, should never ride on the same plane.” (The requests were always refused, and the refusal to be allowed to ride on Air Force One “bothered the Vice President more than anything else,” Lincoln says.)

  After he moved into his office in the Executive Office Building, Johnson unveiled a new strategy to demonstrate how close to the President he was, how much an insider in the Administration. His car, a long black Cadillac, with its impressive license plate, “111,” familiar to Washington journalists, would pull onto West Executive Avenue, the narrow street between the White House and the Executive Office Building, and Johnson would get out and walk, not into the EOB, but along the rear of the White House on a concrete sidewalk, past the doors to the Oval Office, until he came to the next door, that opened into Evelyn Lincoln’s office, and walk inside. After glancing into the Oval Office—which was almost invariably empty; Johnson arrived rather early, before the President—he would stand in Mrs. Lincoln’s office, chatting with the Administration staffers and officials who were coming in and out. After a while, he would leave by the other door in her office, on a route which took him by the press room, where a group of journalists would be sitting, before walking across to the EOB. Mrs. Lincoln felt she understood why Johnson was doing this. “By coming into my office, Mr. Johnson was creating the image of working closely with Mr. Kennedy,” she was to write, especially if he was in her office “when any of the Cabinet men or other officials came in.” And by emerging from the President’s part of the White House when he walked by the journalists, he would give them the same impression. And she felt she understood why Johnson’s car would remain standing outside the West Wing all the time he was inside—as an advertisement that he was inside.

  Part of the explanation for the Kennedy attitude, however, was more personal. If there exists copious documentation of the President’s remarks demonstrating “genuine warmth” toward the Vice President, there were nonetheless other remarks. “Kennedy is funny about LBJ,” Ben Bradlee was to write. “He really likes his roguish qualities, respects him enormously as a political operator, a politician who can get things done, and he thinks Lady Bird is ‘neat.’ But there are times … when LBJ’s simple presence seems to bug him. It’s not noble to watch, but there it is.” Sometimes in the President’s descriptions of his Vice President an adjective would slip in that wasn’t all that funny. “The President used to say he wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known … somewhat monstrous … larger than life … with a comic side,” Joseph Alsop recalls.

  And if Kennedy had given instructions to his aides to avoid “the slightest disparagement of the Vice President,” to let him “experience the full respect and dignity of the office,” they were not always being followed to the letter. Not long after the denouement of the “Seward” episode, Johnson dispatched Horace Busby on what amounted to a peacemaking expedition to Ted Sorensen. Busby began by asking Sorensen to spell out what role he thought Johnson should play in the Administration. Sorensen, always determined to find les mots justes, paused, and then found mots that could not have been more disparaging. Johnson’s role, he said, should be “Salesman for the President’s program.” During the conversation that followed, it became clear to Busby, as he reported in a memo to Johnson, that the Administration was determined that that role would not include a leading part on Capitol Hill. “In and out, during the conversation, various assistant secretaries from HEW and Budget” would be coming into Sorensen’s office, conferring about legislation about to be introduced. When Sorensen introduced Busby to them (“perfunctorily,” in Busby’s account, saying only “Mr. Busby, with the Vice President”), their reaction was “invariably the same—with transparent impact on Sorensen. They would say—two of them, separately, used virtually identical words—‘Oh, gee, I wish we could get the Vice President to work on our bill—that is what would make the difference.’ ” (And in each case “Sorensen hastened to prevent my direct response.”) Summing up the conversation in the memo to Johnson, Busby said, “I felt, as I left, that I had been to a summit conference, held on an iceberg, between two [men] who, while members of the same political faith at the moment, each brought—and left with—his own God.”

  As for Ken O’Donnell, if indeed he had, as he maintains, been put in charge of keeping Johnson happy, he was not fulfilling his responsibility. Feeling that “Johnson was a liability who would say or do things that would reflect badly on the Administration, he wanted to keep close reins on him”—and he did. He informed Johnson’s staff that all vice presidential speeches and statements had to be approved in advance by the White House. “He couldn’t issue a press release without it being cleared,” says Ashton Gonella. “Imagine if you had been king and then you had to clear everything you said.”

  Clearance was required in other areas as well. During the new Administration’s first months, Johnson’s Air Force aide, Colonel Howard L. Burris, simply submitted a request to the Air Force each time Johnson was scheduled to travel somewhere. Johnson was often chagrined by the response to the requests, since he was not routinely assigned one of the three Boeing 707s—the same model as Air Force One—in the pool of planes the Air Force maintained for travel by high-level government officials, but was sometimes given, despite his protests, a Lockheed JetStar, a ten-passenger plane originally designed as an executive jet. The contrast between his plane and Air Force One was further heightened by the fact that instead of having “United States of America” painted on its fuselage, the lettering on the sides of the JetStar was “United States Air Force,” and two prominent insignias on each side of the plane identified it as part of the Air Force’s Military Air Transport Service. Descending from so small a plane before a welcoming delegation of local dignitaries Johnson considered an embarrassment. There was a more substantive problem as well: none of the MATS JetStars were outfitted with the powerful communications equipment that kept Air Force One in continual touch with the White House, and when Johnson asked that one JetStar be assigned permanently for his use, and that the equipment be installed, he was rebuffed. For a while, however, at least no barriers were placed to his requests for a plane to travel in. Then, however, that changed, and he was informed that before his requests could be submitted to the Air Force, they had to be approved by the White House, specifically by Special Assistant to the President Ralph Dungan. “You had to ask for, and get approval,” every time Johnson wanted to travel by plane, says Marie Fehmer, who went to work for Johnson as a secretary in June, 1962. “How do you think that made him feel?” And the plane he was assigned was, all too often, the detested JetStar. After many requests, the Air Force agreed to remove the MATS insignia; when he asked that “United States of America” be painted on its side, Burris had to report to Johnson that “Mr. McNamara’s office was informed” of the request and “the determination was to retain” the wording. His LBJ Company then leased a larger Grumman Gulfstream, which could carry up to twenty-four passengers, for his use on trips he made for political purposes—to speak at a Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, for example—but this attempt was curtly rebuffed. A message from the White Hous
e was dictated over the phone to Walter Jenkins: “The President has reached the following conclusion on travel policy: Both the President and Vice President will use Government planes whenever the occasion requires for both official and unofficial trips, including trips for political purposes.”

  Some of the insults were inadvertent. When Kennedy staffers, accustomed to calling him “Lyndon,” continued to call him that instead of “Mr. Vice President,” “he just couldn’t stand that; he felt they were doing that deliberately to humiliate him,” Sam Houston Johnson says.

  One insult, which O’Donnell was to excuse in his memoirs as merely a “terrible mistake,” involved a sixty-four-year-old lawyer and longtime Johnson ally from Dallas, Sarah T. Hughes. Early in 1961, Johnson asked Robert Kennedy to nominate Mrs. Hughes for a Federal District Court judgeship, but the reply from the Justice Department, which was trying to get younger judges on the federal bench, was that she was too old. Telling her that she couldn’t have the appointment, Johnson had then offered it to another Texas lawyer.

  In turning her down, however, the Kennedys had been unaware of a salient fact: Ms. Hughes was an ally not only of Lyndon Johnson but of Sam Rayburn. Rayburn did not contact them on the subject, but after several months Robert Kennedy realized that a bill important to him, one that he had expected to make its way smoothly through the House Judiciary Committee, was in fact making no progress at all. He asked Rayburn for an explanation—and got it. “That bill of yours will pass when Sarah Hughes gets appointed,” the Speaker said.

  Bobby explained that she had been ruled too old for the job. “Sonny, everybody seems old to you,” Rayburn replied. Ms. Hughes’ appointment was announced the next day.

  Rayburn’s remark—and Hughes’ appointment—had occurred while Johnson was on an overseas trip for the President. When he returned, O’Donnell says, “You never saw such an outrage.… He went through an act which is beyond belief with the President and me. ‘Mr. President, you realize where this leaves me? Sarah Hughes now thinks I’m nothing. The lawyer I offered the job to—he thinks I’m the biggest liar and fool in the history of the State of Texas.’ ” The outrage was understandable. In the Evans and Novak summary, “The Speaker had demonstrated that he possessed” enough power “to make the Attorney General waive [the] age requirement”—and that Johnson didn’t. And, of course, “the story of how Sarah Hughes got to be a judge quickly made the rounds” in both Washington and Texas. “Johnson felt … his reputation” had been unfairly damaged, O’Donnell says, “and he was right, he was totally right.… It was a mistake.”

  And some of the insults weren’t inadvertent. As Johnson’s “laments” had multiplied, O’Donnell says, he and Kennedy had “worked out a set routine for handling” them. “The President would first hear him out alone, and then call me into his office and denounce me in front of Johnson—‘Damn it, Kenny, you’ve gone and done it again’—for whatever the Vice President was beefing about. I would humbly take the blame and promise to correct the situation, and the Vice President would go away somewhat happier.” On one occasion, however, a different routine was prepared—one that didn’t leave Johnson happy at all.

  Once again, it involved Rayburn. Having to deal with the Speaker on his legislative program had made John Kennedy more aware than ever of his power; appointing his friend, the painter William Walton, to the chairmanship of the federal Fine Arts Commission, he had only one instruction for him: “Don’t get me crossways with Rayburn.” And he was aware also of how much Johnson needed the old man—and of how wary Johnson was of doing anything to irritate him. And when, suddenly, there was a possibility of a dispute between the two Texans, the President knew just what to do about it, and worked out with O’Donnell a scenario designed for Johnson’s maximum discomfiture.

  The potential dispute was over an appointment to an Agricultural Department commission. With little interest in Texas patronage—except for old friends who needed jobs—Rayburn had been allowing Johnson to clear all appointments for Texas (Kennedy had agreed that Johnson could do so), but he had an old friend who had been on the commission for years until he was removed by the Eisenhower Administration, and he wanted him back on it. Rayburn’s friend had once annoyed Johnson, but Rayburn wasn’t aware of this—and in the case of an old friend it would not have mattered to him if he had known. When O’Donnell asked if the appointment had been cleared with Johnson, Rayburn said, “I don’t care. I want this fellow.” Appearing some hours later in O’Donnell’s office, Johnson told him that Rayburn’s friend was an alcoholic who was “going to embarrass the President,” added flatly, “I don’t want that fellow appointed” and reminded O’Donnell of his appointment-clearing agreement with Kennedy.

  Saying he would have to let the President decide, O’Donnell ushered Johnson into the Oval Office, where the President, after listening to the dispute as if he’d never heard about it before, told Johnson, “Well, I’ll stick by my agreement.” Swiveling his chair, he stared out the window as if he had no further interest in the matter—and the scenario began to unfold. O’Donnell put his hand on the telephone on Kennedy’s desk.

  “Who are you calling?” Johnson asked.

  “The Speaker,” O’Donnell replied.

  Hurriedly stretching out his hand, Johnson put it on top of O’Donnell’s to prevent him from lifting the receiver. “What are you going to tell him?” he asked. O’Donnell said he was going to tell him that Johnson wouldn’t clear the appointment.

  “You can’t do that!” Johnson said. “You tell him that you don’t want him appointed.” O’Donnell said that was impossible, that he had no power over appointments. “Mr. Vice President, it’s either you or the President that’s not going to appoint him, and it’s not going to be the President.”

  The President, O’Donnell recalls, was still staring out the window, “enjoying the whole scene.” There was a long silence—during which Johnson’s hand never left O’Donnell’s. Finally Johnson said, “Well, don’t call him.” Telling O’Donnell to let the matter rest until he made a decision, he walked out. A few minutes later, Walter Jenkins telephoned to say that Johnson was withdrawing his objection.

  WHAT WAS THE EXPLANATION for treatment of Johnson that had such a personal edge?

  Was part of it—an understandable part of it—the simple fact that Jack Kennedy had been too close to death too many times to want to be reminded of his mortality, and that his Vice President was, by his very existence, the most vivid of reminders?

  Sometimes Kennedy would bring up the subject of presidential succession in kidding terms, in what Sorensen calls “casual banter.” Dressing in his bedroom for a flight to Ohio that was going to be made through a storm, he said, “with a laugh,” to Sorensen, with the presidential valet, George Thomas, listening, “If that plane goes down, Lyndon will have this place cleared out from stem to stern in twenty-four hours—and you and George will be the first to go.” And sometimes when he spoke of the subject, there was, in Jack Kennedy’s tone of voice, no banter at all. Walton, wanting the Fine Arts Commission to preserve two red-brick-and-white-trim townhouses diagonally across Lafayette Park from the White House that were about to be demolished for a modern office building, was considering combining the townhouses and making them the official residence of the Vice President. When he raised the suggestion in the Oval Office, however, the reaction was emphatic: “You think I want Lyndon listening across the park for my heartbeat? No!” (The townhouses were instead used for the commission’s own offices.)

  And was part of the explanation something beyond reminders of mortality?

  Unlike Robert, Jack Kennedy appeared not to care that Johnson had, for years, been telling insulting stories about his father—and about him: that Johnson had called him nicknames, like “Sonny Boy”—stories that had surely gotten back to his ears. Did he really not care?

  Had he “forgiven”—but not forgotten—India Edwards? Says Ted Sorensen, the aide who was as close to Jack Kennedy as anyone ever got
, about India’s statements that Kennedy “wouldn’t be alive” without cortisone: “That was about as low as anyone could go.”

  There had been years—eight years—when the young senator “could not get consideration for a bill until I went around and begged Lyndon Johnson.” How much had Jack Kennedy resented having to beg? Whatever the reasons for a personal edge in his dealings with Johnson, the edge, no matter how many historians and Kennedy aides deny its existence, was definitely there.

  THEN, DURING THE FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND OF 1961, while Sam Rayburn was back in Bonham, he felt a terrible pain in his back. Despite his failing eyesight and the way age had shrunken his body, he had been, at the age of seventy-nine, in relatively good health up until then, occasionally even giving one of his rare smiles as a milestone neared for him: on June 12, 1962, he would be Speaker of the House twice as long as anyone else in American history; in January, 1963, he would celebrate his fiftieth year—a half century—in the House, a milestone that also meant a lot to him.