The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  To this distinguished diarist the new President spoke frankly of the tension between himself and the Attorney General. He said, “Jackie has been just great. She said she’d move out as soon as she could, and I said, ‘Honey, you stay as long as you want. I have a nice, comfortable home, and I’m in no hurry. You have a tragedy and many problems.’ ” His “real problems,” he indicated, were with Bob. He was convinced that Kennedy’s late arrival at the meeting had been intentional, and he insisted that Kennedy, bent upon humiliating him, had confided to “an aide” that “We won’t go in until he has already sat down.”8

  The charge was unjust, but it was perhaps an inevitable consequence of the LBJ-RFK relationship, or, to be more precise, of the relationship between certain of their advisers. Since the Los Angeles convention the association of the two principals had been repeatedly damaged by misunderstandings which could usually be traced to this or that “aide.” Thus the Vice President had been convinced that the Attorney General had never forgiven him for Los Angeles remarks critical of Joseph P. Kennedy. Ironically, Robert Kennedy had neither heard the criticism nor read of it. Johnson men were convinced that Bob disliked their leader. Kennedy men repeatedly reassured them, without success, and the Johnson administration had scarcely begun to gather momentum before the press speculated at length on “the feud” between the two men. To be sure, in temperament and in manner they were very unlike. That had also been true of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. It had not led to a vendetta then, nor did it now.

  Yet whatever the source of the strain, its existence was unquestionable. The consequences of Robert Kennedy’s tardiness, Johnson told his caller, had been deeply embarrassing; by entering in the middle of the President’s remarks the Attorney General had destroyed their effect. The Secretary, who was sympathetic—and who immediately afterward conveyed his sympathy to another Cabinet member who had regarded the meeting as a disaster—wrote that “There was real bitterness in Lyndon’s voice on this one.” Clearly he regarded the late President’s brother as a formidable obstacle. He agreed with his visitor that he ought to speak to the Congress as soon as possible. Wednesday, he was afraid, might be too late. Congress was thinking of recessing. Yet Johnson was apprehensive that an earlier address “might be resented by the family.”

  Having made what he described as his “pitch” for a quick address, the caller left. In the suite’s anteroom, Sargent Shriver was waiting. Shriver’s visit had been inspired by a sense of duty. He was one member of the family who had felt close to Johnson, and he wanted to wish him well. At the same time, he thought that he ought to touch base with Moyers. Apparently Moyers’ status was about to change, but technically he remained Deputy Director of the Peace Corps, and he was one of Shriver’s closest friends. The two men chatted in subdued tones until Johnson’s visitor had left; then they entered the Vice Presidential office. Shriver thought Johnson “very hospitable.” The new President said, “Well, Sarge, it’s a terrible thing. I’m completely overwhelmed, but I do want to say that I’ve always had a very high regard for you. It hasn’t been possible for me to do anything about it until now, but I intend to.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Shriver inquired.

  There were, he was told, two unsolved questions: the occupancy of the oval office and the timing of the address to the joint session. (Interestingly, Johnson displayed little interest in a nationwide speech during these days; he was concerned first with the Congress. A televised address on the Hill would, of course, reach just as many Americans as a White House fireside chat.) Johnson observed that Rusk and Bundy, among others, strongly believed that he should be meeting his appointments in the West Wing, pointing to the symbolic importance of Presidential residence in the mansion. Furthermore, he observed, he would be much closer to vital communications equipment there. Lastly, both Johnson and Moyers emphasized the urgency of a joint session on Tuesday.

  The State Department was pressing him especially hard. Yet if Senators and Representatives were in fact preparing to quit the capital, there was no sign of it. The need for moving across the street is obscure, though here a distinction must be made. The President was in no hurry to evict Mrs. Kennedy. On the contrary; he was content to sleep at the Elms indefinitely. It was the Chief Executive’s office in the West Wing that he wanted, not the pomp of the executive mansion.

  A century earlier, Abraham Lincoln’s successor, like John Kennedy’s, had been eager to avoid the impression that he was anxious to take up residence in the President’s house. The resemblances between the seventeenth and thirty-sixth Presidents are uncanny in other respects. “What President has ever had a wider training for the office?” asked Lloyd Paul Stryker, Andrew Johnson’s biographer. Lyndon Johnson’s biographers would quickly vow that the training of the second Johnson was wider. Like Lyndon, Andrew was tactless with men, gallant toward women, and eager to eclipse the record of his predecessor. Andrew had also called a Cabinet meeting the day after the assassination of Lincoln, at which he declared that he merely intended to carry out established policies. It was even raining outside. On the matter of office occupancy, however, the two Johnsons differ sharply. Andrew met his Cabinet in the Treasury Building, where he set up temporary headquarters, and it was not until June 9, 1865, eight weeks after Lincoln’s death, that he took over the White House. As Senator Humphrey explained in his notes, the new Chief Executive was “an action President. He wants to get things done. He is in a sense restless and demanding.…”

  Shriver’s position was awkward. He was foggy about precedents, and although he had been related to Kennedy by marriage his devotion to the Peace Corps had left little time to explore other governmental labyrinths. “I remembered that the west basement had been chewed up when Jack was President,” he said later, “and while I hadn’t known what was going on, I had a hunch it had something to do with the hot line.” Shriver, normally quick to make up his mind, couldn’t decide about the oval office. In his words, Bundy, whom the President was quoting to him, “felt that it was first of all the President’s office, while the family naturally felt that it was Jack’s office. I’d been in the Navy, and I was inclined to agree with Bundy; you don’t leave a command post empty because the commander has fallen.” On the other hand, “It seemed unseemly speed to move into that office before Jack was out of the White House. Jack’s body, after all, was still lying in the East Room.” This reluctance from the most sympathetic member of the late Chief Executive’s family appears to have resolved the issue for Johnson; he did not mention the issue again that day.

  That left the timing of the address. Once again Johnson cited pressures from “the leadership of the government.” For those who were accustomed to Kennedy’s frontal approach such obliqueness was perplexing. Kennedy had characteristically prefaced an order with the phrase, “In my judgment.” If you disagreed, you debated with him. Johnson presented himself as an entrepreneur of other men’s ideas. In the event that they proved to be bad ideas, the promoter wasn’t at fault; he had merely offered them for consideration. His cautious introductions (“Bundy says,” “Rusk says,” or “McNamara says”) absolved him from responsibility. On this issue, he told Shriver, the voices were unanimous. All agreed that the President should go to the Hill “as soon as possible,” that “it was important to show that the Johnson administration was taking over.” Shriver agreed, though his reasons were his own. Extrapolating from his Peace Corps travels, he had realized that Asia, Africa, and South America would assume that “whoever had killed President Kennedy would now be President.” Dispelling that notion was important. The sooner the world was told that Johnson was not an employer of bravoes, the better off the United States would be, and when both Johnson and Moyers said they preferred a Tuesday talk, Shriver replied, “I’ll speak to Bobby.”

  The flak followed. Unknown to Shriver, Bundy had been assigned the same mission, and he had failed. Robert Kennedy had replied crisply, “I don’t like that. I think you should wait at least one day afte
r the funeral.” Bundy had told Kennedy that “they”—he was adjusting rapidly to the Johnsonian ambiguity—“want it on Tuesday.” The Attorney General snapped back, “Well, the hell with it. Why do you ask me about it? Don’t ask me what you want done. You’ll tell me what it’s going to be anyway. Just go ahead and do it.” If Johnson thought a Kennedy relative would make a more effective emissary, he was wrong. He was merely sending Shriver into a trap. Kennedy, exasperated by the new President’s failure to communicate with him directly, listened to the proposal and then said sharply to Sarge, “Why does he tell you to ask me? Now he’s hacking at you. He knows I want him to wait until Wednesday.”

  Shriver darted back between the parked cars, was ushered in by Moyers, and discreetly reported that “Bob prefers you wait a day, unless there are overriding reasons for having the address earlier.” Johnson immediately picked up his telephone and began pressing plastic buttons. To his listeners he said tersely, “It will be on Wednesday.” Each of them needed no briefing; every member of his staff was familiar with the background and was awaiting word from him. Shriver swiftly relayed the decision to his brother-in-law, and all that remained was a formal release from Salinger’s office. Shortly before 6:30 the networks broadcast that President Johnson would speak to Congress at 12:30 P.M. on Wednesday, November 27, the day before Thanksgiving; CBS, NBC, and ABC would carry it live. No commentator hinted that the President was being either hasty or a laggard, and only a handful knew of the dissension behind the announcement. Shriver, however, was left with “an inkling of the feeling that was involved.… It was clear that there was a condition which was exacerbating.”

  Gauging the degree of exacerbation is difficult. Most of the insiders remained tight-lipped about their Saturday talks in the Vice Presidential suite. Bundy has withheld the larger part of his early assessment of President Johnson; with his uncommon detachment and good sense, he observed on December 4 that “the important thing is to distinguish between what he is trying to accomplish and the specific means he may at first prefer, and to try to serve the real end while arguing against the means, if need be.” McNamara conferred with Johnson in the middle of the afternoon, but his comment—“It was not routine, but I do not feel at liberty to report a conversation of a President of the United States”—is both taut and unsatisfactory, since he has reported other such conversations in detail. It does seem obvious that Johnson felt balked, and that he blamed much of his frustration on Robert Kennedy. That was understandable. The Attorney General was symbolic of the past he had to overcome. It was also unfair. A study of Bob Kennedy’s movements that day reveals that virtually all his time was pre-empted by funeral preparations. A satisfactory solution of the situation was clearly impossible; the need for the government to proceed was at odds with the Kennedys’ grief. The President was being thwarted by something larger than any individual. He was attempting to start a new government, and everyone who could help him, including his own Texans and Washingtonians who had been close to him for a third of a century, was floundering in the greatest surge of emotion ever known.

  His talk with Ted Sorensen came just before his departure for the Elms. It was a long session, and representative; the invisible obstacles between them would have existed had Robert F. Kennedy never existed. Although determined to quit quietly, Sorensen took his responsibilities keenly, and he was anxious to be helpful. Before crossing the lot he had prepared a list of exigent Presidential business. With Moyers taking notes, they checked off each item carefully. Ted recalls his own manner as “blunt and tough.” Yet it was not hostile. He recommended a prompt address on the Hill. After brushing off his resignation, the President listened impassively to his evaluation of the White House staff. (Unknown to him, Johnson had been inquiring of others, “Is Sorensen an easy man to work with?” The answers had been mixed.) Early in the session the President asked, “What do you think of the possibility of a foreign government being involved in this?” Ted said instantly, “Do you have any evidence?” The answer was that there were no hard facts. Johnson showed him an FBI memo advising him that the rulers of an unfriendly power had been hoping for Kennedy’s death. The report was too hazy for serious consideration. There were no names or facts, and the name of the FBI’s informant was in code. “Meaningless,” said Sorensen, handing it back. The President said nothing. He asked whether Sorensen thought unusual safeguards would be necessary to protect him during the funeral. Ted shook his head; he didn’t.

  Sooner or later—it was to be sooner—the relationship between the new President and the former President’s Special Counsel was bound to deteriorate. As Sorensen had told a Cabinet member shortly after three o’clock, he had invested over ten years in John Kennedy’s career, and now the investment was gone—gone as surely as though he himself had been the victim in Dallas. Kennedy had chosen him because their personalities had meshed perfectly. Both were young, literate, understated men of integrity; Sorensen had been the ideal abrasive for the intellectual facet of the Kennedy prism, just as O’Donnell had been a foil for the President’s political talents, and Llewellyn Thompson a tutor for his Russian studies. But Ted Sorensen could never be an adequate companion for Lyndon Johnson. They were entirely different men. Their styles were a world apart.

  Throughout that weekend the President gave every sign of believing that he could preserve the Kennedy team intact. He couldn’t, and when he had grown surer of himself he realized that he had to create his own team. His delusion was a symptom of the Kennedy passion; of the need, as he himself had put it, to retain “the aura of Kennedy.” On November 23, 1963, the nation’s mourning was so intense that no other emotional climate seemed feasible. Afterward, and especially after he himself had become an elected President in his own right, Johnson would forget that he had ever pleaded for the support of Kennedy’s aides. The very mention of their names would annoy him. Within a year he would even resent the aura itself, and become so sensitive to it that any Secret Service man or White House chauffeur who wore a PT 109 tie clip would run the risk of incurring Presidential wrath.

  Jacqueline Kennedy was a doodler, and seated at her second-floor Louis Quinze desk, by the casement windows overlooking the Rose Garden and the Presidential office, she filled sheets of White House stationery with lists of people she must call or write and reminders to herself. It is startling to realize that a bereaved First Lady should be obliged to cope with trivia. But like any other widow she had to determine particulars. Even Mary Todd Lincoln, who went to pieces after the murder in Ford’s Theatre and deputized Robert Lincoln as chief mourner, had been obliged to select the place of burial. Mrs. Kennedy could, of course, have retired into seclusion. No one would have criticized her or expressed surprise; that would have been consistent with her innate reticence. But she wanted to share in the planning.

  It was good for her. She couldn’t sleep, and she must do something; doodling was better than brooding. Thus she concentrated on tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, devoting herself to the majestic ceremonies which, with her special cachet, were to leave an everlasting impression on the national audience. She was rarely alone. In this sense a First Lady is set apart from other widows. Relatives, social secretaries, her staff, her friends, and her husband’s friends slipped in and out of the West Sitting Hall’s double sliding doors carrying more scribbled paper—more to think about, new barriers between her and sorrow.

  Examined now, many of the notes seem either needless or inaccurate. One page is headed in block letters DALLAS POLICEMAN. Beneath is written: “Mrs. Marie Tippitt” (for Tippit), “three children” (correct), and the address “238 Glencairn Street Oak Cliff Texas—Suburb of Dallas” (it was Glencairn Drive, another place entirely). But that is irrelevant. What counted was that Mrs. Kennedy intended to send her condolences to the wife of the slain patrolman; the envelope could be addressed by someone else.

  General Wehle afterward declared that “she held all the strings, and we marveled at her clear thinking and sense of command.�
�� There was, and still is, an understandable tendency to idealize the comportment of the President’s widow. She didn’t hold all the strings. No one could. The minutiae of a state funeral are incredible; they require almost as much staff work as an amphibious invasion. Nevertheless, Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy made all the major decisions. Between them they delegated authority to reliable subordinates, and, as her notes attest, spliced together a lot of frayed ends. She was tentatively planning Monday’s services, worrying about the executive mansion’s inundation of house guests (“3rd floor 5 Single 2 Double”), and jotting down telephone numbers and names (“Jane DU 7-2480”; “Alsop, David, Pam, Cushing, Nancy, Margie, Mary”; “SCHLES—DILLON—MEDAL—JACK”; “Salinger, Mr. West, Clifton, Queen, de Gaulle, Bishop Hannan, Taylor, Tish”).

  The eminent (“Queen, de Gaulle”) would receive appreciative billets in her own handwriting. For others a handshake, a brief word would do. But in the mansion there was no such thing as informality. Every caller must be scheduled: “Mon 730 McNamara; Tues 530 Katz; 630 Dillon; Wed 530 Grimes.” Reading her scribbles, with their deletions, marginal jottings, cryptic symbols and underscorings, one senses her determination to drive away recollections of yesterday. Certain entries—“Mass Cards”—could be decided by her alone. But “Menus,” “Xmas,” “WH Scrapbook,” and “Dave Powers pants Teddy” could have been put off. She was thinking about everything except the unthinkable, filling her hours with tasks.

  Anticipating Christmas, household duties, and her brother-in-law’s funeral attire would have been remarkable had she lacked other duties. In fact, she had never had so many, not even before her own wedding. There was, for example, the problem of her attire. Bridal gowns are easily acquired. During the next two days, she decided, she must wear black stockings and, during Monday’s funeral services, a full mourning veil enveloping her entire head. Mary Gallagher acquired the stockings from Garfinckel’s, but no store had carried mantillas for years, so the White House seamstress had to make one. Ralph Dungan was pressing for a decision about the horses which would accompany the caisson. Fort Myer’s stables had two teams, matched grays and matched blacks. Which would it be? Eventually the word came down from Shriver that the family had settled on the grays. The Kennedy team could protect her from intolerable intrusions—every fraternal association, veterans’ organization, and quasi-religious group was anxious to participate in the ceremony—but if she wanted it to bear the Kennedy imprint, she had to be active, and she even had to develop political finesse; the Church hierarchy had its own notions of ritual, and interservice rivalry was irrepressible. Telephoning Taz Shepard and asking him to provide an escort of seamen for the horse-drawn gun carriage which would bear the coffin wasn’t enough. Colonel Miller had to be satisfied that the Navy really was her choice; otherwise the Army might feel slighted.