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Long Enough
LYNDON JOHNSON’S SUCCESSION to the presidency, the transition in which he assumed the power that had once been John Kennedy’s, had been so successful, gone so smoothly, that by March, as was apparent from the contemporary journalistic evaluation, it was becoming simply a fait accompli, an accepted fact of American political life. And as more time passed, that would turn out to be its fate over a longer term as well.
Some of those who witnessed the succession up close, appreciating the magnitude of his accomplishment, were certain that eventually it would be given the credit it deserved. “History will record the great contribution Lyndon Johnson made in taking us through the transition,” Hugh Sidey wrote in 1969.
That has not happened, however. The success, the smoothness of Johnson’s succession has come to be viewed—to the extent it is viewed at all—as simply yet another example of the efficacy of the American Constitution’s provisions for the orderly transfer of presidential power in a democracy, of the efficacy, as one of the most detailed studies of vice presidential succession puts it, of the “recognized rule which made him President upon the death of the President.” The “smooth manner in which presidential power changed hands upon the death of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was not entirely unlike what had happened on seven other occasions in American history,” this study states. “Each time a Vice-President became President and led the country safely through the tragedy and crisis of losing its leader.”
Not that history has forgotten the assassination of President Kennedy and the three subsequent days of his funeral ceremonies, of course. The very opposite is the case. Those four days have become enshrined as among the most memorable days in American history. But the achievements of Lyndon Johnson during those four days and the rest of the transition period—the period, forty-seven days, just short of seven weeks, between the moment on November 22, 1963, when Ken O’Donnell said “He’s gone” and the State of the Union speech on January 8, 1964—have been afforded so little attention that his succession to the presidency has become, to considerable extent, an episode if not lost to, then overlooked by, history.
There are photographs and moving pictures of the assassination day and the funeral ceremonies whose inherent drama and constant reiteration on television, in movies, in books, in newspapers and magazines—in every form of media, really, in which the reiteration of images is possible—have engraved them so deeply in the American consciousness that they have become iconic images in the nation’s history. Jack and Jackie, tanned and radiant, coming off Air Force One in Dallas, pink suit and red roses bright in the sun, and sitting smiling, basking in the cheers, in the back seat of the open car; the President suddenly slumping in Zapruder’s lens; Bobby and Jackie, hand in hand in sorrow, coming off the plane, dark blotches on the suit; Jackie coming out of the White House holding her children’s hands—black mantilla, little sky-blue coats; the caisson with its six matched grays; prancing Black Jack with boots reversed; Caroline putting her hand under the flag; John-John’s salute; Oswald, his mouth open in shock and agony, the Stetsoned Dallas detective aghast as the menacing figure lunges in from the right, revolver in hand; the great procession up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol; the great procession on foot to the cathedral: the three Kennedys, the two brothers and the veiled widow, behind them the world leaders massed and marching.
A single photograph from those four days, and a simple photograph only, in which Lyndon Johnson is prominent has become iconic. It is perhaps the most famous photograph of them all—the picture of the new President taking the oath aboard Air Force One. But although his face is the focus of the camera’s eye, it is a face that is only stern and sad and composed, certainly not handsome, and the viewer’s eye moves quickly to the face beside his, the very mask of beauty in grief. And that photograph is the only image of Lyndon Johnson during those four days that has become a part of history, although, during those days, he was becoming the most powerful man on earth. When he appears in other photographs, it is not at the center; he is there behind the Kennedy family coming down the steps of the Capitol after the service in the Rotunda, but as the faces of the grieving Kennedys fill the lens, who looks to see who is behind them? What the world saw on television the day of the procession of Kennedys and world leaders following the casket to the cathedral—and what the world has seen over and over during the intervening half century—is, behind the Kennedys, Selassie’s medals and towering de Gaulle and Baudouin’s sword. Johnson is marching, too, right behind the family and in front of the leaders, marching, windows all along the route, with gunshots from a window fresh in his mind, but, thanks to the vagaries of camera angles, he is barely visible in most photographs of the procession.
But the succession of Lyndon Johnson deserves a better fate in history. For had it not been for his accomplishments during the transition, history might have been different. Because the headlines in that first blizzard of news—PRISONER LINKED TO CASTRO GROUP; SUSPECT LIVED IN SOVIET UNION—have long been proven false or exaggerated, it has been easy to forget that for several days after the assassination America was reading those headlines, easy to forget the extent of the suspicions that existed during those days not only about a conspiracy but about a conspiracy hatched in Cuba or Russia, two nations with whom, barely a year before, America had been on the brink of nuclear war. If Johnson had not moved as quickly as he did to appoint the Warren Commission and quiet the suspicions, would suspicions have escalated into an international crisis? Perhaps not, and certainly the commission’s investigation, which would in its turn be rushed, has been proven inadequate, its report flawed. The answer to that question is not simple, however. International misunderstandings have escalated into war because of folly and illogic before. Guns of August? In weighing the motivations, mixed as always with Johnson, for establishing the Warren Commission, the possibility of November bombs should be allowed at least a small place on the scales.
Nor should other aspects of the transition be passed over as lightly as they have been. Because he moved so swiftly and successfully to create the image of continuity that reassured the nation, it has been easy to overlook how the Kennedy men might simply have resigned. It has been easy to overlook the obstacles—the shock and mystery of the assassination, the mushroom cloud fears, the deep divisions in the country over his predecessor’s policies—that stood in the way of unifying America behind his Administration; easy to overlook how difficult to unify even his own party: to rally into line behind his Administration’s banner labor leaders, black leaders, liberals, many of whom had, for years, been deeply suspicious of him and who would have needed little excuse to fall irrevocably into line behind another, more familiar banner, the brother’s banner, that could so readily have been raised within party ranks; to fall into line behind a leader they knew, and were quickly beginning to love.
AND LYNDON JOHNSON’S ACHIEVEMENTS during those seven weeks went far beyond reassurance and continuity, far beyond even what he accomplished during those weeks for his predecessor’s tax cut bill and civil rights. For had he striven only for reassurance and continuity, something much more important would have been lost.
The bullets of Dallas had made John F. Kennedy a martyr—and the martyrdom of a leader lends new power to causes he had championed. Lyndon Johnson knew this. “Everything I had ever learned in the history books taught me that martyrs have to die for causes,” he explained to Doris Goodwin. “John Kennedy had died. But his ‘cause’ was not really clear. That was my job. I had to take the dead man’s program and turn it into a martyr’s cause.” He began to do that when, in that first address to Congress on November 27, he said he was trying to finish what Kennedy had started, “to continue the forward thrust of America that he began.” He couched his support of legislation in those terms. “No memorial … could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.” During the trans
ition he was constantly invoking the late President’s memory. And the invocations accomplished their purpose. JFK’s martyrdom had galvanized support for the causes with which he had identified himself in his eloquent speeches. “Kennedy’s assassination touched many people as they had not been touched before,” as an historian has written. “Could the murder of so young and promising a leader be redeemed? Must his life be wasted?” The passage of legislation he had introduced was a way of ensuring it wouldn’t be wasted. His death generated behind legislation that had seemed dead in congressional waters a tremendous new momentum.
And Johnson knew something else. Momentum can be lost. “A measure must be sent to the Hill at exactly the right moment,” he was to explain. “Timing is essential. Momentum is not a mysterious mistress. It is a controllable fact of political life.” The time to catch a wave is at its crest. And while the wave of emotion, of affection and adoration, for the martyred young President would roll on for decades—is still rolling on today, almost half a century after Dallas—its crest, the height of the Kennedy tide, came in the weeks immediately following Dallas, in the weeks of Lyndon Johnson’s transition. By rushing to push through Kennedy’s bills, Johnson caught the crest. The maneuvers by which he made them begin to move through Congress were made easier—in some cases were only made possible—by that wave of emotion. Had he not caught the tide at its absolute height, he might well have lost some of its force, and as the Senate fight of 1964 was to demonstrate, every ounce of that force would be necessary to pass the civil rights bill. By moving as quickly as he did, Johnson caught a tide, seized a moment, that might not have lasted very long.
Caught the tide—and rode the tide, using its force as it rolled forward beyond the transition weeks into the new year of 1964, using it for more than the passage of the civil rights and tax cut bills, or for the yanking of the bit out of Congress’s teeth; using the momentum generated by John Kennedy’s death for other purposes; using it, in fact, for purposes beyond those Kennedy had enunciated, for the passage of long-dreamed-of liberal legislation whose purposes went far beyond any embodied in Kennedy legislation. Lyndon Johnson used that momentum to launch what he envisioned as (and what, in fact, might have been, had it not been undermined and then destroyed by a war he waged in the jungles of Asia, and by the deceptions he practiced in the name of that war) a vast, revolutionary, transformation of America: a “War on Poverty” that would, in his vision, be the beginning of the transformation of American society into “The Great Society.” His declaration that “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America” was a prelude to the introduction of legislation that would launch the war on dozens of new fronts.
These seven weeks, the seven weeks between November 22 and January 8, were therefore a period in which there took place in the capital of the greatest republic in the western world a remarkable demonstration of the passage of power, immense power—of its passing, in an instant, from one hand to another, and of its wielding by that new hand, in the first weeks after it closed on that power, with history-changing effectiveness. On one level, the passage was a demonstration of how, in very difficult circumstances (unique circumstances, circumstances for which there existed no precedents to provide guidance), to grasp the reins of a democratic government in a crisis created by the assassination of the head of state and hold the government stable, steady on its course. But this passage was a demonstration of the art of governing on a higher level than reassurance or stability. The higher use Lyndon Johnson made of these seven weeks—the use he made of the crisis: using it, using the transition, as a platform from which to launch a crusade for social justice on a vast new scale—made these weeks not only a dramatic and sorrowful but a pivotal moment in the history of the United States.
FOR LYNDON JOHNSON to have accomplished this, he had had to overcome governmental and political obstacles that had stood in the path of social justice for a century, and that for most of the last quarter of that century—since the last great liberal tide ran out in 1937—had been obstacles that could not be overcome: the congressional resistance and the power of the South that had blocked civil rights and social welfare legislation, for instance. And in addition he had had to overcome another obstacle that had nothing to do with government or politics, but only with himself.
So potent an aspect of his character had the fear of failure been throughout his life, for example, that it had all but paralyzed him in his attempt to reach for the presidency, no matter how deep his yearning for the office. When the office was suddenly thrust upon him, however, when there was suddenly no longer room for doubts or hesitation, when he had to act—he acted. If there were fears or doubts, no one saw them.
Gone from Lyndon Johnson during the transition also are the outward manifestations of other aspects of his personality that had been prominent at every other stage of his career. The frenetic, frantic, arm-waving, almost desperate demeanor that had characterized so much of his life was, during this transition period, replaced by a disciplined calmness. As for the alarm clock “inside him” that “told him at least once an hour … to go chew somebody out,” to “blow his top”—it went off seldom if ever during this period. During these weeks, there was usually, in fact, an underlying note of courtesy when he asked an aide to perform some chore. And, as one aide said, “I’ve never seen him so composed.” “Composed,” “calm,” “self-possessed,” “humility,” “self-discipline”—these were the words used to describe him during these weeks. The boastful, gloating quality was gone, even with enemies over whom he now had power. The words he “isn’t President anymore. I am”: during the transition did those words slip out more than once?—more than the single time he could not resist saying them (or a close version of them) to Robert Kennedy? Other qualities that had always been prominent in him vanished, not only the bellowing, the jabbing of hands, the waving of arms and the rushing of words that had invariably alienated audiences and made his speeches ineffective, but deeper-rooted qualities as well. “Almost at once, the whining self-pitying caricature of Throttlebottom vanished,” George Reedy was to write. “During this whole period, there was no trace of the ugly arrogance which had made him so disliked in many quarters.… The situation brought out the finest that was in him.”
THE NECESSITY FOR SUBDUING these qualities—for keeping them under control—may have been obvious to Lyndon Johnson as he assumed the presidency, so clear was it that they would prevent him from accomplishing his goals. They would, for one thing, have made it more difficult for him in dealing with the Kennedy Cabinet and White House staffers. A “yielding” nature had not been a criterion for staff hiring in the Kennedy Administration; most Kennedy men, not all but most, were, therefore, men who would not be amenable to his methods of control. Having observed those methods, these men were determined not to submit themselves to them. Wary of signs that he might intend them to do so, they might leave at the first hint that he would treat them as he treated Jenkins and Reedy (as indeed the one member of the Kennedy team with whom Lyndon Johnson did slip, Pierre Salinger, left as fast as he could). Other slips could trigger the “mass exodus” he feared. In dealing with the House and Senate, moreover, his usual methods wouldn’t help, and might hurt, because a key method had always been threats, and threats didn’t work without power behind them, and during these first weeks of his presidency, when he was still trying to understand such fundamentals as the elements of the budget, and was operating against deadlines—the Christmas recess, the budget-submission deadlines—that made maneuvering difficult, he still hadn’t consolidated his power sufficiently to use it extensively in his relations with Congress.
Yet, obvious as may have been the necessity for subduing these qualities, for him to subdue them must have been very difficult. They had not, after all, been eliminated from his nature. They were still there, powerful as ever—as will be seen, all too clearly, in the next volume of this work. Lyndon Johnson had grasped in an instant what neede
d to be done with Kennedy’s men and Kennedy’s legislation: his insight into the crisis and the rapidity of his response to it a glimpse of political genius almost shocking in its acuity and decisiveness. But the genius in knowing what he needed to do was no more vital in the crisis than the self-discipline and strength of will that enabled him to do it. Accomplishing what was needed required him to subdue and to conceal elements of his nature that he had never before concealed or subdued—elements so basic to his personality that they had, in fact, governed his behavior during all of his previous life.
Yet he subdued them, overcame them, in a triumph not only of genius but of will.
AS I SAID at the beginning of this book, it is not an examination of Lyndon Johnson’s entire presidency, but only of its first phase, and the longer story will be very different in tone. The interruptions in the Life and Senate Rules Committee investigations would be brief; Don Reynolds would soon be back in Senator Williams’ office; by August Life would be running its “net worth” story, and newspapers would be running their own articles. And the tone would be different in other areas as well. The presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson would be a presidency marked by victories: his great personal victory in the 1964 election, and his great victories for legislation that are the legislative embodiment of the liberal spirit in all its nobility. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Medicare and Medicaid; Head Start; Model Cities. Government’s hand to help people caught in “the tentacles of circumstance.”
Yet victories would not, as it turned out, be the only hallmarks that would make the presidency of Lyndon Johnson vivid in history. “We Shall Overcome” were not the only words by which it will be remembered. “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” The choruses of the great civil rights hymns were not the only memorable choruses of the Lyndon Johnson years. “Waist deep in the Big Muddy / And the big fool says to push on.” Fifty-eight thousand dead. Three hundred thousand wounded. The amputations, the blindness, the terrible scars of body and mind. Men looking down at the space where their legs used to be. And fifty-eight thousand and three hundred thousand are the numbers only of the American dead and wounded (not all of them during his presidency—the Vietnam War would continue more than four years after he left office—but virtually all of them after he escalated the war into an American war). The number of Vietnamese—South and North Vietnamese soldiers and civilians—killed and wounded is not in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. It may be (no one has yet made a complete estimate) more than two million: men and women and children killed and maimed and burned alive, some by bombs dropped on villages selected as targets by Johnson himself, dropped by B-52s which flew so high that they were not only invisible but unheard from the ground, so that the people in the villages did not know they were in danger until the bombs hit.
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