The Democratic Convention opened in Atlantic City on August 24, 1964. The next morning Johnson sat alone at his desk in the Oval Office writing out a statement that he told himself he would read to the convention. As Vice President and as President “I did my best”:
Our country faces grave dangers. These dangers must be faced and met by a united people under a leader they do not doubt.
After 33 years in political life most men acquire enemies, as ships accumulate barnacles. The times require leadership about which there is no doubt and a voice that men of all parties, sections and color can follow. I have learned after trying very hard that I am not that voice or that leader.
Therefore I shall carry forward with your help until the new President is sworn in next January and then go back home as I’ve wanted to since the day I took this job.
As was his custom in similar situations, Johnson showed this statement to those he most trusted. Walter Jenkins told him, “Mr. President, you just cannot do it.” He walked around the White House grounds with George Reedy, his press secretary, who found the idea “absolutely incredible.” As Reedy recalled later, “Naturally, I was there to talk him out of it.” Lady Bird wrote in her diary that it was “the same old refrain.” But this time it was much harder to persuade him. She talked to him for hours and then wrote him a shrewd and touching note, playing on his courage and his patriotism. That did it.5
Lyndon Johnson’s depression about the presidency may well have been linked to what some called his “obsession” with “the Bobby problem,” that is, with the vice presidency. For the professionals, who looked at this issue realistically, the question was: what problem? At the Gridiron Club dinner earlier that year Jenkins took Larry O’Brien into a corner and told him that the President should be free to pick his own running mate. “O’Brien listened gravely,” Evans and Novak wrote, “but he was astonished at Jenkins’ nervousness. O’Brien knew that the President could pick his second man by the merest flick of his finger.” Clark Clifford, upon whom Johnson leaned heavily in handling this matter and who had also dealt with Kennedy, “had known from the beginning that there was simply no way that Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy could ever get along with each other.”
This was fundamental: Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy hated each other. It was hardly a state secret. In his newspaper column, “Washington Pipeline,” John Henshaw reported (falsely) that “President Johnson and Bobby got into such a heated argument recently that the Attorney General lost his head and swung at the President, hitting him on the shoulder.” While there were nasty incidents and grating differences in style, the central issue was the legitimacy of the Johnson presidency. “After Dallas,” Clifford wrote, “when Bobby Kennedy looked at Lyndon Johnson, he saw a usurper in the Oval Office. …” If he put the Attorney General on the ticket, Johnson reasoned, his presidency would be a mere interlude between two Kennedy presidencies. He must get rid of Bobby. Early on some thought that he needed Kennedy in order to win the election, but the Goldwater candidacy buried that argument.
Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger wrote, “saw himself as yoked with Johnson in the execution of a legacy and the preservation of a party.” This implied that he would accept, and perhaps seek, the second spot on the ticket. But he said and did nothing publicly. His “friends” entered his name for Vice President in tie New Hampshire primary in March and the President barely edged him out—29,600 to 25,900 votes. A Gallup poll of Democratic voters in April for Vice President showed Kennedy with 47 percent, Adlai Stevenson 18, and Hubert Humphrey 10.
Johnson was beside himself. He played with an alternative Catholic candidate—Sargent Shriver or Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Both suffered fatal flaws. If Johnson wanted a Catholic, there was only one—Kennedy. If he wanted a Minnesotan, there was a better one—Humphrey.
In late July the Attorney General invited several of his relatives and close friends—Ted Kennedy, his brother-in-law Steve Smith, Kenny O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, and Fred Dutton—to Hickory Hill. Goldwater’s victory, Schlesinger wrote, “had extinguished any need Johnson might ever have felt for Kennedy.” Now the President had a free ride in the north, where Kennedy was strong, and did not need trouble in the South and Southwest, where Kennedy would be a handicap. The Attorney General said he would forget the vice presidency, resign from the cabinet, and run for the Senate in New York. Everyone agreed that this was the proper course. His brother and Smith thought he should announce at once. “O’Donnell,” Schlesinger wrote, “begged him to wait; once Kennedy was out of the running, liberal Democrats would lose their power to force Johnson to accept Humphrey.” He went with O’Donnell.
The President, according to Clifford, now feared that Kennedy’s appearance before the convention would be “the emotional high point” and that the delegates would “nominate him by acclamation.” He must eliminate the Bobby problem before Atlantic City. On July 22 he asked Clifford to draft a talking paper for him for a meeting with the Attorney General. When they spoke together on July 29 Johnson literally read Clifford’s memorandum to Kennedy.
The President, according to his own version of the encounter, said that it would be “inadvisable for you to be the Democratic nominee for Vice President.” The nomination of Goldwater was the decisive factor in reaching this conclusion. The ticket must be strongest in “the Middle West and the Border States” and create as little “adverse reaction as possible upon the Southern States.” Because Kennedy’s public service had been “outstanding,” Johnson wanted him to consider becoming ambassador to the United Nations.
O’Donnell had warned an already suspicious Kennedy that Johnson would tape the meeting and the Attorney General saw the buttons light up. Upon returning to the Justice Department, therefore, he immediately dictated his own account of what had taken place. In substance it did not differ from Johnson’s, but was much fuller in detail. Among other things, Johnson had asked him to manage his campaign and Kennedy had refused.
Both had been wary and neither had been forthcoming. Johnson’s stuff about the Midwest and the South had little or nothing to do with his decision, and taping the conversation was hardly likely to encourage a frank discussion. On the other side, Kennedy said nothing about his decision to resign as Attorney General and run for the Senate.
Schlesinger surmised that both men were “relieved” to put this distasteful problem behind them. But there remained a nasty question that neither had addressed: how would the public learn that Kennedy had withdrawn? Johnson did not want to be publicly accountable for dumping him. He sent McGeorge Bundy over to persuade the Attorney General to announce that he had withdrawn of his own accord. Kennedy refused. Johnson then tried to get O’Donnell to convince him to pull back, but O’Donnell declined.
On July 30 the President invited three eminent Washington correspondents to a fine luncheon that went on for four hours. He could not restrain himself from giving a self-serving account of the confrontation with embellishments from his own notable gift for mimicry. He had Bobby so upset by the news of his being dumped that “his Adam’s apple [was] going up and down like a Yo-Yo.” The story was soon all over Washington. Kennedy phoned Johnson to express his outrage. Incredibly, Johnson said he had not discussed the meeting with anyone! Kennedy, in effect, called him a liar. Johnson said he would check his “schedule.” Kennedy’s friends then released his version of the meeting. All in all, it was a dreadful mess and the President looked awful.
Cornered, Johnson called for help from Clifford again. As usual, the counsel came up with a formula. There had been vice presidential speculation about several high-level members of the administration—McNamara, Secretary of Agriculture Freeman, as well as Shriver. Johnson went before the television and announced that it would be “inadvisable for me to recommend to the convention any member of the Cabinet or any of those who meet regularly with the Cabinet.” He specifically named Rusk, McNamara, Kennedy, Freeman, Stevenson, and Shriver. Clifford called this nonsensical creation
a “cosmetic covering.” It may have made Johnson feel better, but it fooled no one. Privately, Kennedy said, “I am sorry that I had to take so many nice fellows over the side with me.” Stevenson, sailing in Maine and decidedly not a candidate, was informed by James Rowe that he had been dumped. He phoned an old friend in Washington and said, “Hubert, it’s you.”6
The Democratic convention met in Atlantic City during the week of August 24, 1964. The town was definitely not the first choice. John Kennedy had hoped for San Francisco, but the logistics of holding both conventions in the same city did not work out. His second city was Chicago, but local funds were insufficient. This left Miami and Atlantic City, and the former was full of rabidly anti-Castro Cuban exiles with the Bay of Pigs fresh in memory.
Atlantic City, with its long boardwalk, had once been the queen of fashionable beach resorts. But it was now dingy and threadbare. The old hotels had faded, “monuments to another era,” Theodore White wrote, “a strung-out Angkor Wat entwined in salt-water taffee.” Its newer motels were grungy. The plumbing did not work, the telephone system failed to connect, handles came off doors and windows. More important for hungry Democrats, the restaurants were dreadful and their stomachs were calmed only in the splendid kosher delicatessens. An added complication was that the state of New Jersey insisted on first-class rooms for the 447 police officers it sent in, including 50 at the closest good motel. The tawdriness of the town seemed to rub off on the convention.
Johnson needed, demanded, and got absolute control. Having disposed of Bobby, he was left with two serious problems. One was to resolve a potential racial crisis over the seating of the Mississippi delegation(s) that, uncontrolled, might have caused severe political damage. The other was to pick a running mate.
Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, race relations worsened markedly in 1964. There were vicious riots in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Rochester, in Philadelphia. Governor George Wallace of Alabama manipulated an emergent white backlash by invading the North to campaign for President in several Democratic primaries. Appealing to anxious ethnic working-class Democrats, he received 34 percent of the vote in Wisconsin, 30 in Indiana, and 43 in Maryland. Lake County, Indiana, with the steel towns of Gary and Hammond and a large ethnic population, Governor Matthew E. Welsh wrote Johnson, normally produced a Democratic majority of 40,000 to 50,000. Wallace won the primary by 2,527 votes.
Robert Moses, a young black man, Harlem-born and Harvard-educated, had spent three frustrating years in Mississippi trying to register Negroes to vote in the face of formidable and often violent opposition. (Three volunteers—James Chancy, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—had been murdered.) Now Moses launched the Mississippi Educational Summer Project. Students from the North came south to assist in the registration. If white Mississippi rejected them, as it did, blacks and a few liberal whites would elect delegates from their own Freedom Democratic Party who would go to Atlantic City and demand to be seated. Humphrey had earlier warned Johnson of the dangers of Mississippi, but had been unable to get his attention.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party held its convention in Jackson. Its counsel, Joe Rauh, the noted civil rights lawyer and attorney of the UAW, unveiled what he called “the magic numbers.” There were 100 members of the Democratic convention’s credentials committee and they needed eleven votes to file a minority report. Eight state delegations were needed to force a roll call. Rauh was certain that they had the eleven and eight. The Jackson convention had picked 68 delegates, four of whom were white. “Johnson,” Rauh said, “saw this on television and he realized for the first time that this was serious.”
Official Mississippi sent its own lily-white delegation, which assumed that it would be seated because it had been elected by registered voters. Many of these delegates were not loyal to the Democratic party and would support Goldwater. Many northern Democrats recognized the moral claim of blacks in the South to the right of representation.
Johnson, eager to avoid an open clash broadcast on television, devised a compromise: (1) the regular delegation would be seated on condition that it pledged support for the ticket; (2) the freedom delegation would receive the privilege of the floor, but no votes; and (3) the convention would adopt a rule making it mandatory for state Democratic parties in the South to open their rolls to blacks, thereby insuring racially mixed delegations starting in 1968. He passed this proposal to Humphrey, but did not order him to handle the problem. Johnson knew he would because of the senator’s long involvement with civil rights; because he realized the effect success or failure would have on his own vice-presidential candidacy; and because Humphrey was certain from their Senate association that Johnson’s style in such situations, as Evans and Novak put it, was to “stay out of sight and use leading figures on either side, whose loyalty was unquestioned, to work out the compromise.” Humphrey, while willing “to do a job that had to be done,” found this testing of his proven competence “aggravating.”
Johnson also sent his trusted lieutenant, Walter Jenkins, to man the command post in Atlantic City and to provide the sole conduit to the President. He was assisted by Tom Finney, a member of Clark Clifford’s law firm. C. D. “Deke” DeLoach, the FBI’s White House liaison, headed a Bureau team of 30 men which established electronic surveillance over the telephones in the MFDP office and in the rooms of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bayard Rustin. Their main purpose, however, was to report on the activities of Robert Kennedy. DeLoach passed the substantial body of information his men collected to Jenkins.
The credentials committee hearings opened on Saturday, August 22. Rauh presented a strong brief and Fannie Lou Hamer gave a moving account of the brutalities she had suffered as a voting rights activist. This scene played on national television. King strongly endorsed the MFDP.
On Sunday Oregon Congresswoman Edith Green proposed that all members of either delegation who took a loyalty oath to the Democratic party and its ticket should be seated. An estimated 17 credentials committee members supported the proposal and it became the MFDP position. The regular Mississippi delegation would have nothing to do with it.
Humphrey then proposed Johnson’s three-point plan and the administration moved in its big guns. Humphrey and Walter Reuther, who departed the General Motors-UAW negotiations, both old friends and, in Reuther’s case, his client, worked over Rauh. Humphrey stressed that the President insisted upon it. According to Rauh, “Never once … did he ever say, ‘Joe, you’ve got to take this settlement to help me.’ ” Reuther, however, was the “muscle,” that is, Rauh thought he might get fired as the UAW counsel. Reuther told Rauh that the MDFP would lose the election for the Democrats—“Goldwater’s going to be President.” Rauh was convinced that the Republican did not have a chance. Bayard Rustin and Andrew Young of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference urged the freedom group to accept the compromise, now improved by offering two delegates in 1964. King made a thoughtful assessment of the pros and cons and suggested that acceptance was the wiser course. Meantime, the administration lobbied the state delegations who had supported MFDP and by Tuesday morning their number had shrunk below eleven. While Moses was embittered, there no longer was a rational argument against the three-point proposal. MFDP caved in and the convention adopted the settlement.
On the whole, it was a satisfactory outcome. The President had kept the party united, at least on the surface, avoiding a damaging battle on the floor of the convention and a walkout by the Mississippi regulars perhaps joined by other southerners. Humphrey had emerged as the triumphant mediator, thereby soldifying his quest for the vice presidency. The mainline civil rights organizations, for whom Rustin and King spoke, much preferred in the long run a grateful President and representation at future conventions to a symbolic losing fight for MFDP in 1964. But Moses and many other young militants were convinced that they had been sold out by the joining of the white and black power structures to destroy them. They would exact a price in return.
Lyndon Johnson’s remaining task was to pick a Vice President. Here he would diddle Humphrey mercilessly. This served two purposes: to demean the senator in order to exact a pledge of absolute loyalty and to add a note of uncertainty to a convention that seemed otherwise to create no excitement.
Johnson insisted that his Vice President must be his man. As Arthur Schlesinger reported, he put it in ways that left no room for doubt. “Whoever he is, I want his pecker to be in my pocket.” And he wanted men around him “who were loyal enough to kiss his ass in Macy’s window and say it smelled like a rose.”
Hubert Humphrey desperately wanted to be Vice President and was forthright about his ambition. His people started a campaign in December 1963 but remained discreet as long as Robert Kennedy was a contender. Johnson began saying nice things about Humphrey in March 1964 and in a private conversation remarked, “If I just had my choice, I’d like to have you as my Vice President.” He insisted, however, that this was not a promise and the ever-patient Humphrey understood. But there was trouble in Texas. Governor Connally argued that Humphrey’s long championship of civil rights (he was then steering the civil rights bill through the Senate) would damage the ticket in the South and on the border. The governor, who was very conservative, also worried about a possible liberal Humphrey presidency. Walter Jenkins agreed with this analysis. Lady Bird Johnson, a close friend of Abigail McCarthy’s, was charmed by her husband, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, for his wit and intelligence. Johnson explored the political value of McCarthy’s Catholicism as a substitute for Kennedy’s and began to toy with him.
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