LBJ
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Even before the convention, Johnson had John Connally circulate rumors about Kennedy’s health problems and the story of how JFK’s father had bought the West Virginia primary, but they refused to do stories on them when he did not produce the proof.30 Connally even held a press conference on the Fourth of July at which he and India Edwards, the former head of the women’s division of the Democratic National Committee, charged that “Mr. Kennedy is a very sick man. He has Addison’s disease,” implying that he might not live much longer.31 Coincidentally, just weeks before this incident, the offices of two of Kennedy’s doctors, Eugene Cohen and Janet Travell, were broken into and ransacked for medical records;32 the burglars were never caught, possibly because—as Robert Kennedy thought—they were on J. Edgar Hoover’s payroll.33 That such “black bag” operations were routinely committed by the FBI at Hoover’s direction is now common knowledge; former FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen, in his book, described his own involvement in these exploits, sometimes doing two such jobs in the course of one day, altogether totaling in the hundreds.34 This is the only realistic explanation of how the information about Kennedy’s rare disease, a closely held family secret, would have become known to Johnson and his minions. It was probably with partial reference to this incident that Johnson reportedly told some reporter friends over drinks, “J. Edgar Hoover has Jack Kennedy by the balls.35
The sudden turnaround of Johnson’s passive and perfunctory presidential campaign into an aggressively negative, “take no prisoners” pursuit of the vice presidential nomination was marked by Connally’s statements about Kennedy’s illness on July 4, 1960, followed by Johnson’s announcement on July 5.
The acid-tongued conservative Texas author J. Evetts Haley in 1964 summed up Johnson’s dilemma of 1960: “For the anti-Southerners, he was still a Southerner in spite of all he had done to deny it; with the Southerners he was a copperhead and a traitor … His strange combination of Texans ranged from high party faithful to such veteran oil figures as H.L Hunt and the parvenu tycoon, Morris Jaffe, who gathered to beat the drums, carry the money bags and mingle with such case-hardened New Deal Johnson friends as Oscar Chapman, Dean Acheson, Tommy Corcoran and Benny Cohen.”36 When Kennedy “rolled to victory on the first roll call and the Convention erupted into turmoil, ‘the Texas delegation sat stunned, still and grim.’ Upon the motion to make his nomination unanimous, only one Texas hand was seen to go up while the entire delegation held their seats. As the ovation ran on, Rayburn and Connally finally rose, Connally turning and nodding to the delegates behind him, who grudgingly got up, except for Governor Price Daniel, who angrily kept his place.”37
Johnson watched the proceedings from his hotel room—the little speeches given by the person from each state delegation—and as Kennedy got closer to victory and Johnson got closer to defeat, the realization of his pending loss must have been galling for the majority leader, even though he knew the story wouldn’t end there regardless of who won the presidential nomination. As Evelyn Lincoln noted, that “probably explains why he never went out to his Convention Hall headquarters to thank his loyal supporters for the work they had done, even in defeat.”38 Speaker Sam Rayburn sat in Convention Hall, sadly watching the balloting—an unmarked tally sheet in his hand. Later, in Kennedy’s private hideaway retreat on North Rossmore Street, someone asked him if Johnson had come to the arena to congratulate him. His response was, “If he did, I didn’t see him.”39
At this juncture, one must ask the following question: Did Lyndon Johnson really ever believe he would be in the running for the presidential nomination in 1960? He had been counseled by Rayburn and Russell for years that, as a Southerner, he had little chance to run for national office because the only opportunity for that was on the presidential–vice presidential ticket; there was no intermediate transition from a state to a national ticket, and the odds were against a Southerner, at that time, to wage a successful campaign.40 According to a man who was later befriended by Johnson (given the “treatment” as we saw in the previous chapter), Orville Freeman made a revealing statement in an oral history interview for Johnson’s library that has not previously been given the attention that it deserves: Freeman said that longtime Johnson associate Jim Rowe had asked Johnson in late 1959 if he was planning to run for the presidency in 1960, because if not, Rowe wanted to join Humphrey’s campaign. “Johnson had told Rowe quite emphatically that under no circumstances would he be a candidate for President. And it was at that point that Rowe went to work with Humphrey. So we didn’t even consider Johnson in the picture at all, and of course I never felt that he had any chance to get enough votes in the convention, so we just never took it seriously”41 (emphasis added). This insightful comment has been ignored by every one of the many Johnson biographers who have consistently chosen to overlook the way he forced himself onto Kennedy’s ticket in 1960, as we shall now begin to explore. If in fact he had planned a serious run for the presidency, why would he have allowed his friend and associate Jim Rowe to sign on to Hubert Humphrey’s campaign? But it wasn’t just Jim Rowe he dissuaded. In 1960, he would tell most of his aides and associates that he was not interested in the presidency, without revealing the reason: his fear of rejection, fueled by his paranoia and cylical depressive episodes. Those who knew him the closest, however, knew otherwise: John Connally, according to Horace Busby, “says he never has another thought, another waking thought except to lust after the office”42(emphasis added).
Horace Busby was among the majority of aides and associates who felt that Johnson didn’t want to run for the presidency because he was afraid of becoming president, which of course is the way that Johnson would want it to be; he could never have admitted to them or anyone else that he was afraid of losing the election because that would forever end his chance of running again. Busby said that finally, John Connally proceeded to organize a campaign, “with or without the Senator. And so by January, that effort was trying to get off the ground. It’s pretty handicapping when you don’t have a candidate, but [laughter] nonetheless we were trying. So from January, you know, on through for quite a long time we were active, some of us were actively engaged basically trying to counter Kennedy. And so you became specialists in anti-Kennedy information and all like that [sic]. But you couldn’t talk about it around Johnson, you just didn’t talk about it. Well, the major candidates by then were all senators. He couldn’t let a word pass his lips about anybody, and that’s not the way he felt. He maintained the position he was the leader, and he couldn’t go out and engage in a partisan campaign, and he did not finally, in fact, announce that he was a candidate until three days before the convention began.” (The interviewer corrected that to “a week before, though the precise number of days was five.)43 Johnson’s columnist friend Drew Pearson said in an oral history interview that he “was for Lyndon in that race … [but] I wasn’t too optimistic … There were several troubles. Number one, he figured his work in the Senate was more important than going out to campaign, and he didn’t do hardly any campaigning. He stayed in Washington and he didn’t go out to corral delegates. He was given warnings by Senator Earl Clements of Kentucky, who was one of his unofficial campaign managers, that he had to get out, but he stayed around here.”44 Pearson attended the Democratic convention in Los Angeles and talked to Senator Johnson and to some of his colleagues and staff, concluding that “it was pretty much a hopeless case. He had no chance of stopping Kennedy even on a deadlock.”45
It is unlikely that Johnson ever seriously entertained the idea that he could realistically win the Democratic nomination for president in 1960, much less successfully run for the office against Richard Nixon if he did win the nomination. Given the strong possibility that he might be rejected at either of two levels—that, even if he won the nomination, the possibility of losing to Richard Nixon in November in a grand finale loss—he would have worried that the looming damage to his ego was probably more than he could bear. This was not the first time Johnson had experienced such a cas
e of nerves as he prepared for an election run; in other cases, he had gotten himself into such an anxious and stressful state that he became physically ill as election day neared. The totality of the evidence set forth below indicates that he was not prepared to conduct such a dangerous and debilitating endeavor. Yet he still wanted to be president, he considered it his destiny. His eyes were set all along on another route to the presidency, one that would require a stint in the only other constitutional office that might provide the necessary transition from being a Southerner to a nationally recognized, highly experienced man ready to assume the presidency in a heartbeat, though at a somewhat later date.
His misgivings—demonstrated repeatedly during the months (arguably, twenty-four months) leading up to the convention, as he refused the pressure and demands from his staff and colleagues to enter the race—are one clue that he had clearly conceived of his alternate strategy, in the seemingly inevitable event that he would lose the presidential nomination, well before his last-minute announcement on July 5, 1960. It would have necessarily been in the back of his mind throughout that period, as the anchor which allowed him to withstand the pressure, while—to himself at least—keeping his hat in the ring for what he knew was a 1960 move that was essential to the fulfillment of his destiny. That is clearly the most veritable explanation of his behavior throughout the 1958–1960 period, from the time he lobbied the Texas legislature to pass “Lyndon’s law” allowing him to run for national office concurrently with running for reelection as the senior Texas Senator.
He must have instinctively decided that losing the presidential nomination to Kennedy might actually be the surest way for him to achieve his lifetime goal, because the “Kennedy-Johnson” team would have a much better chance to win in November than a “Johnson-Anyone Else” team; the fulfillment of his dream could then be managed after that. It would then be only a matter of time, and the effective management of the inherent risk, but he evidently knew that by “calling in his markers” with all of his longtime cronies in high places, the risks would be minimized. This route would also satisfy his biggest concern: his fear of being roundly rejected by voters in far-off states where he was an unknown.
The Vice Presidential Nomination
As he maneuvered for the vice presidential nomination after losing the presidential nomination to Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson tried to portray his Texas base as solid and essential to the general election even though, as we shall shortly see, Kennedy had no intention of naming him to the ticket at that point in time; he wasn’t even on Kennedy’s long list, much less the short one. Johnson’s plan for his ten-day run for the presidency was simply a way to insert himself on to the list of possible nominees, even though he did not expect to win the presidential nomination on the second or third ballot, never mind the first. By the time he appeared in Los Angeles on Sunday, July 10, his subsequent actions indicate that he had already decided on an alternate plan to assume the presidency.
The “master of the Senate” was now used to being a very powerful man, and almost no one would have expected him to give up that power to become the vice presidential nominee; no one except for him, because he had figured out that getting into that office was the only conceivable way that he could position himself to become president at a later time. Of course, he never really wanted the position of vice president for its own sake; none of the many men who ever held it had sought it out as their objective, that would have been comparable to a major league baseball team seeking to merely come in second in the World Series. But Johnson’s situation—reflected by his virtual absence from the campaign until July 5—was different from any other candidate who had become their party’s candidate for vice president. He joined the campaign late for the very purpose of becoming a “spoiler” in order to force his way on to the top of Kennedy’s list of vice presidential candidates. This required a deft touch, since he did not want to appear too eager for the offer; that would have run the risk of giving away bargaining chips that he would need to obtain the broadest powers possible as vice president. But his ambivalence about becoming the vice presidential nominee was a ruse. After all, he had been the force behind a change in the Texas law that allowed him to simultaneously run for his Senate seat and the presidency or vice presidency, months before the convention, though he never proceeded to mount an effective campaign for the presidential nomination. After going to those lengths to pave the way to run for two offices at once, he did not bother to even declare his candidacy until July 5, only five days before the start of the convention. Compared with his tepid presidential campaign, his campaign for the vice presidential nomination was stunningly hard-fought, viciously aggressive, meticulously planned, and ultimately successful.
In the weeks before the convention, John Kennedy had narrowed the list of potential vice presidential nominees to two senators: Stuart Symington of Missouri or Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington. Johnson had enlisted several influential men—his mentors Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, as well as Washington Post publisher Philip Graham, the mighty lobbyist Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran, and the acerbic columnist Joseph Alsop—to assist him in lobbying Kennedy, yet Lyndon Johnson was still not on Kennedy’s list when he won the presidential nomination on the first ballot. Immediately after Kennedy had secured the nomination, Johnson learned that the Knight Newspaper chain was planning a midnight edition saying that JFK was considering three men for the vice presidential spot—none of whom had the initials LBJ.46 This news would have caused him to enlist every one of his “men” to pull every string at their disposal to put his name on the top of Kennedy’s list.
Seymour Hersh interviewed several men involved in the decision Kennedy faced regarding the vice presidential nominee, including Hyman Raskin, who had worked as a strategist and campaign aide for Kennedy for two years before the convention and had an intimate knowledge of the events leading to the selection of Johnson as the vice presidential nominee. According to Raskin, Johnson asked for a meeting with JFK immediately after Kennedy had been nominated. At that point, Raskin stated emphatically that “Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any of the Kennedys.”47 According to Clark Clifford, Kennedy had already decided on Senator Symington when he received a call from Evelyn Lincoln asking him to meet with Kennedy in his private rented residence; Kennedy had complimentary things to say about Symington when the two met that evening, stressing the dignified way he conducted himself (implicitly contrasting his demeanor with Johnson’s), and he then asked Clifford to convey his offer of the vice presidential nomination to Symingon. “‘Find out if Stuart will accept and let me know right away.’ This was an unequivocal proposal from the candidate.”48 When Clifford took the offer to Symington, after he had deliberated with his family—and against their wishes, their consensus was against accepting it—the senator told Clifford, “You can tell Jack I will accept his offer.”49
Three of Johnson’s men—Graham, Corcoran, and Rayburn—first took the case to John Kennedy that he, Johnson, should be given the vice presidential nomination. Rayburn himself took a lot of convincing, but when Johnson explained that he wanted it because it would put him next in line for the presidency, Rayburn became completely in favor of it. There are many stories about how Rayburn came to change his mind, but one thing was consistent through all of them: Rayburn hated the Kennedys, not just John and Bobby, but their father as well. “The speaker snapped at Corcoran. ‘No, I won’t go along with it.’ He said. ‘I wouldn’t trust Joe Kennedy across the street. He’ll double-cross us sure as hell.’”50 Rayburn had originally been flatly against Johnson’s acceptance of such an offer, but Johnson met with him when it became obvious that he would not be the presidential nominee, and they talked long into the wee hours of the following morning. The next morning, “To the shocked Texans who gathered in Johnson’s suite, Rayburn shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m a damn sight smarter than I was last night,’ he said sheepishly.”51 According to author J.
Evetts Haley’s contemporaneous account, Johnson and Rayburn issued an ultimatum to Bobby Kennedy: a threat to create a fight on the convention floor over the vice presidential nomination, regardless of the party disunity that would result.52
According to Seymour M. Hersh, Kennedy was supposed to stop by the campaign’s command post that evening to acknowledge and thank his loyal staff, before going on to the convention hall; but something had happened to change his plans, and he didn’t make an appearance in either of these places until moments before his speech to the delegates. Hyman Raskin said that he was told that Kennedy was running late, but he later determined that the real reason Kennedy didn’t appear was because he had received a stunning telephone call from either Johnson or Rayburn. The call was made just a few hours before Kennedy was to give his acceptance speech, and it was made after the three Johnson men (Graham, Corcoran, and Rayburn) had made their case to Kennedy; the call was made because Kennedy had not responded favorably to their entreaty. Clearly, Johnson himself was behind it, whether the call was from him or Rayburn; Johnson knew that this was his one last chance to get his name on the 1960 Democratic ticket. Immediately after JFK’s speech, Bobby Kennedy called Raskin; he was very upset and simply wanted to tell him to cancel a scheduled meeting JFK had with party leaders (from which Johnson and Rayburn had been excluded). When the party leaders heard about this, it set off gossip and speculation about what was going on, but Bobby told Raskin the only thing he could say to them was that “you don’t know” what was going on. Raskin worried all night about what had happened, unable to sleep; he assumed that it might have been related to the scheduled meeting for which Johnson had been excluded, which he thought might have “backfired.” By the next day, he was surprised to find that Johnson—who had not only been excluded from the list of possible vice presidential nominees, but even excluded from the meeting of party leaders—was now the big news of the convention, having been named as the vice presidential nominee.53