The Kennedy Half-Century (119 page)

53
. Allen Matusow offers some criticism of the Great Society from the left in
The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). Charles Murray, in
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–80
(New York: Basic Books, 1984), gives a conservative critique, arguing that welfare programs worsened the plight of poor people and minorities.

54
. See Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the University of Michigan, May 22, 1964,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,
The American Presidency Project
[online], Santa Barbara, CA,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26262
 [accessed August 26, 2011].

55
. This song, composed by Irving Berlin for the 1946 Broadway musical
Annie Get Your Gun
, was still quite popular in the 1960s.

56
. See Nan Robertson, “Kennedy’s Birthday Marked in Sorrow; Widow at a Mass,”
New York Times
, May 30, 1964, Val Adams, “Kennedy Tribute on C.B.S. Friday,”
New York Times
, May 26, 1964, and Bart Barnes, “Johnson Leads Tribute at Kennedy Gravesite,”
Washington Post and Times Herald
, May 29, 1964.

57
. “Senator Kennedy Hurt in Air Crash; Bayh Injured, Too,”
New York Times
, June 20, 1964; “Peter Lawford Stunned by News of Air Crash,”
New York Times
, June 20, 1964.

58
. Highly classified intercepts indicate that the USS
Maddox
—reconnoitering the Gulf of Tonkin on behalf of the South Vietnamese government—took some fire from North Vietnamese
torpedo boats on August 2, 1964. In all likelihood, the second skirmish on August 4 never took place, but LBJ cited it anyway when asking Congress for authority to “protect our armed forces and to assist nations covered by the SEATO Treaty.” See John Prados, “Essay: 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” August 4, 2004, National Security Archive, George Washington University,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm
 [accessed September 12, 2011]. Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK) were the only two members of Congress to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

59
. In the monthly Gallup samplings from January to May 1964, Robert Kennedy always led the vice presidential pack, often by a wide margin. LBJ’s eventual choice, Hubert Humphrey, was well behind RFK consistently. See the iPOLL Databank, Roper Center, University of Connecticut,
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html
 [accessed September 6, 2011].

60
. Catherine Emrick to LBJ, January 16, 1964, Gen PL/Kennedy, Robert F./Pro Coo-CQZ, Box 11, Folder “PL/Kennedy, R. F./Pro. EM-EZ,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

61
. Mary Emily to LBJ, March 2, 1964, Gen PL/Kennedy, Robert F./Pro Coo-CQZ, Box 11, Folder “PL/Kennedy, R. F./Pro. EM-EZ,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

62
. Rev. Joseph F. X. Erhart to LBJ, July 28, 1964, Gen PL/Kennedy, Robert F./Pro Coo-CQZ, Box 11, Folder “PL/Kennedy, R. F./Pro. EM-EZ,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

63
. Robert Caro portrays LBJ as a man with “a desire to hurt for the sake of hurting.” At one point, says Caro, Johnson told Pierre Salinger, “in a remark he obviously intended to get back to [Bobby] Kennedy,” that JFK’s death may have been “divine retribution” for the president’s role in the assassinations of Ngo Diem (South Vietnam) and Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic). See Robert Caro,
The Passage of Power
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 585.

64
. Goodwin,
Johnson and the American Dream
, 199–201.

65
. During an Oval Office meeting with RFK, LBJ read from a memo prepared by Clark Clifford that said that “Goldwater’s nomination and the need for a running mate with appeal to Southern and border states” had convinced the president to offer the second spot to someone other than RFK. (Yet that description hardly fit Hubert Humphrey, a Northern liberal.) The next day, during a luncheon with several journalists, LBJ made fun of Kennedy’s response to the announcement. When RFK complained, Johnson denied that he had discussed their meeting with anyone. Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 659–62. On July 30, 1964, Johnson told the press that as far as the vice presidency was concerned, he had “reached the conclusion 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.” Lyndon B. Johnson, “Statement by the President Relating to the Selection of a Vice Presidential Candidate, July 30, 1964,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,
The American Presidency Project
[online], Santa Barbara, CA,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26408
 [accessed August 30, 2011].

66
. Johnson won New York with 68.6% of the vote, while Bobby Kennedy received just 53.5%. LBJ was pleased he had done so much better. Without Johnson’s coattails, it is entirely possible that incumbent Republican Kenneth Keating, a popular moderate liberal, would have defeated RFK.

67
. Telegram from Mrs. Walter Curry in Nashville, Tennessee, to Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, July 31, 1964, Papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson, President, 1963–69, Gen PL/Humphrey, Hubert, 9/11/64, Box 9, Folder “PL/Kennedy, Robert F.,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

68
. Rose and Harold Kogan to LBJ, August 3, 1964, Papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson, President, 1963–69, Gen PL/Humphrey, Hubert, 9/11/64, Box 9, Folder “PL/Kennedy, Robert F.,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

69
. Mrs. Mary Perry [Upper Darby, PA] to LBJ, undated letter, probably August 1964, Papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson, President, 1963–69, Gen PL/Humphrey, Hubert, 9/11/64, Box 9, Folder “PL/Kennedy, Robert F.,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

70
. It may have been a good thing for the country that Humphrey was chosen. Dodd was later censured by the Senate on corruption charges and McCarthy proved better at leading a 1968 antiwar protest movement than he ever did at governing.

71
. LBJ made the official announcement on Wednesday night, August 26, at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Johnson let the decision slip to journalists on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base while en route to Atlantic City. “Meet the next vice president,” he told the assembled newsmen, showing off the accompanying Humphrey. Walter Trohan, “It’s Johnson, Humphrey,”
Chicago Tribune
, August 27, 1964.

72
. Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1960
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 92.

73
. Humphrey’s draft history is convoluted. According to the Senate Historical Office, he was put on the back burner at least twice, the first time because he was a father and the second time because of “a right scrotal hernia”;
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/hubert_humphrey.pdf
 [accessed September 12, 2011]. Humphrey “flunked the physical exam for a Navy commission. He was colorblind, and had a calcification of the lungs and a double hernia. And although his draft number was coming up, it seemed doubtful that the Army would take him either.” Carl Solberg,
Hubert Humphrey: A Biography
(Minneapolis: Borealis Books, 2003), 97. In his autobiography, Humphrey said, “In 1940, when the draft began, I had been classified 3A, the status given men who were married and had children. But the war was heating up, the draft situation seemed to be changing, my younger friends were going into service, and I was torn between responsibility to my family and a desire to be a part of our military effort” (47). “Shortly before the [Minneapolis mayoral] convention, I had taken an examination hoping for a Naval Reserve officer commission … I was embarrassed by again flunking the physical. The reasons seemed to me insignificant: I was color-blind, had a double hernia, and had some calcification and scars on my lungs (probably from drinking unpasteurized, tuberculous milk as a child). I had the hernia repaired, and the other factors would not have had any effect on my ability to function. Those disabilities, if they could be called that, seemed so slight that I pestered the Navy recruiting officer, Rollo Mudge, incessantly. In July, I was classified 1-A Limited and started the whole routine over, but the Army decided it was too expensive to draft and support men with dependents. Muriel and I had three children, so I was deferred once more” (56). Humphrey says he tried to enlist again during the Battle of the Bulge, but was again classified 1-A Limited (57). Hubert H. Humphrey,
Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).

74
. 
The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After
, History Channel, 2009.

75
. Memo from Douglass Cater to Bill Moyers, 7/15/64, Files of S. Douglass Cater, Box 13, Memos to the White House Staff, May-Nov. 1964 and [1967], Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

76
. Robert Dallek,
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–73
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 139.

77
. Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1964
(New York: Atheneum, 1965), 291–92.

78
. Ibid.

79
. Historian Jeffrey Matthews quotes Goldwater: “ ‘Kennedy and I … had talked the whole thing out … [O]ur plans were all laid” for cross-country Lincoln-Douglas-style debates. Matthews, “To Defeat a Maverick: The Goldwater Candidacy Revisited, 1963–64,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
27, no. 4, “Rules of the Game: How to Play the Presidency” (Fall 1997): 664–65. See also John Nichols, “Goldwater and JFK Set Standard For Today’s Pols,”
Cap Times
, January 19, 2011,
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/article_1899dc22–9347-58b7–9d7b-od9ea48cfodc.html
 [accessed September 12, 2011].

80
. The “Peace, Little Girl” commercial (better known as the “Daisy Spot”) shows a young girl in a field counting petals as she picks them from a flower. When she reaches the number nine, an ominous voice interrupts and begins a missile launch countdown that culminates in a blinding flash of light and the image of a mushroom cloud. We then hear Lyndon Johnson’s familiar drawl: “These are the stakes—to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We either must love each other, or we must die.” A narrator closes solemnly: “Vote for President Johnson on November third. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.” The controversial ad was shown only once—during CBS’s
Monday Night at the Movies
—but it generated considerable publicity for the Democratic Party and, by inference, portrayed Goldwater as an unstable politician who would wage nuclear war if elected president. Goldwater himself “set the stage for the spot’s anti-Goldwater implications” by publicly expressing support for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Peace, Little Girl (Daisy Spot),” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum Media Archives On-Demand,
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/media/daisyspot/
 [accessed September 14, 2011]; Larry J. Sabato,
The Rise of Political Consultants: New Ways of Winning Elections
(New York: Basic Books, 1981), 169–70. See also Robert Mann,
Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds
(Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2011).

81
. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

82
. For the 89th Congress, Democrats massively outnumbered Republicans in the House by 295 to 140 and in the Senate by 68 to 32.

83
. Charles Mohr, “Goldwater Says Kennedy Timed the Missile Crisis,”
New York Times
, September 10, 1964; Letter from Clark Clifford to LBJ, 9/11/64, Office Files of Horace Busby, Box 52, Memos to Mr. Johnson, September ’64, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas.

84
. White,
Making of the President, 1964
, 384.

85
. Johnson’s aides consulted the historical record and discovered that ceremonies on the first anniversary of the death of a president varied widely. In April 1946, President Truman dedicated Hyde Park, FDR’s retreat, as a national shrine, and in Congress, FDR eulogies were in order. In Warren Harding’s memory, President Calvin Coolidge lowered the White House flag to half-staff in early August 1924. (This minimal remembrance may have reflected the fact that some of Harding’s scandals had become well known in the year following his death, and this was Coolidge’s own election season.) Special church services were held for William McKinley in September 1902, including one that President Theodore Roosevelt attended. For poor President Garfield, on the first anniversary of his death in September 1882, nothing special occurred. Abraham Lincoln’s anniversary generated a closing of public offices on April 14, 1866, and the House of Representatives adjourned in Lincoln’s honor, with the motion being made by Republican U.S. representative James A. Garfield of
Ohio, ironically. See Memo from Benjamin Read to McGeorge Bundy, 11/10/64, EX FG 2/Eisenhower, Dwight, Box 40, FG 2/Kennedy, John F. 5/1/64–11/19/64, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

86
. Memo from Jack Valenti to LBJ, 11/13/64, EX FG 2/Eisenhower, Dwight, Box 40, FG 2/Kennedy, John F. 5/1/64–11/19/64, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas.