The Passage of Power (136 page)

“Pledged to a number”
:
WP,
July 17, 1960. A typical response by labor and liberal leaders to the news of Johnson’s selection was that given by Reuben G. Soderstrom, head of the Illinois State AFL-CIO. “Labor worked day and night at Los Angeles to get Kennedy so we would be rid of Johnson. And what did they do? They made chumps out of us.” George Meany, Soderstrom said, had his “Irish up” over Johnson’s selection (
NYT,
July 28, 1960).
“The one name”
:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
p. 207.
“There was”
:
Lincoln,
Kennedy and Johnson,
pp. 92–93.

Three men were called:
Johnson’s discussion with Baker, Connally, and Rowe is based on the author’s interviews with Connally and Rowe, and on Baker,
Wheeling and Dealing,
pp. 124–25. In an autobiography Connally “wrote” with Mickey Herskowitz, Connally’s description of some of the incidents described in this chapter sometimes varies somewhat—not in any significant aspect—from the way he
described them to me, during three days of interviews with me at his ranch in 1985, and during other interviews with him in Austin in 1986. Since I went back and forth over these incidents with him, trying to make him remember all the details he could, I am using the wording he used with me.

“We were not”
:
Connally interview.
“Your risk”
:
Connally, Rowe interviews.
“He’ll never”
:
Connally interview.
“Hate your guts”
;
“not a fully committed”
;
“angry and bitter”
:
Baker,
Wheeling and Dealing,
pp. 125–27. Baker quotes himself as making part of this argument to Senator Kerr a few minutes later, but both Connally
and Rowe say Baker used the same phrases in the conversation with Johnson.
“You’re going”
:
Connally interview.
“A strong”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 125.
“He would have to
carry”
;
“I even expressed”
:
Connally interviews.
“I don’t think”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 125.
“Suppose you”
;
“You’re totally”
:
Connally interview.

“You’ll still have the Speaker”
:
Connally interview.

“You’re a heartbeat away”
:
Connally interview.
“One heartbeat away”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 125.
Rowe couldn’t;
“On balance”
;
“I want”
:
Rowe interview; Rowe OH II; Senate Daily Diary, July 14, 1960. See also Office of the President Files, Box 8, (Moyers folders), LBJL.
“And that one heartbeat”
:
Rowe interview.

“Quiet”
:
Connally interview.
“Passive”
;
“Well, I’ll probably”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 125.
“Well, I don’t”
:
Connally interview.
“Oh, you can’t”
:
quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 256.
“I was wrong”
:
Thornberry, quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 256; Evans and
Novak,
LBJ,
p. 279.

Rayburn had seen—Roosevelt Garner feud:
Caro,
The Path to Power,
pp. 558–71.
“No man”
:
Caro,
Means,
p. 558.
“This New Deal”
:
Garner, quoted in Caro,
Path,
p. 563.
“I saw Jack Garner”
:
Rayburn, quoted in Krock, Memoranda, July, 1960, p. 1, Arthur Krock Papers, LBJL.
“The first thing”
:
Eugene Worley OH.
“A premonition”
;
“They are going”
:
Steinberg,
Sam Johnson’s Boy,
p. 528.
“Obvious”
:
Clements, quoted in Drew Pearson Papers, LBJL.

“If he were available”
:
“I asked Lyndon if he were available for the vice presidency. He told me that he was. He then suggested that I discuss the matter with various party leaders while he conferred with his own advisers” (John F. Kennedy, “A Day I’ll Remember,”
Look,
Sept. 13, 1960).
“There are a couple of problems”
:
Johnson to Hardeman “and others,” July 1960, quoted in Hardeman and Bacon,
Rayburn,
p. 441. They write that in this conversation “Johnson said he was committed not to accept without Rayburn’s approval. He had been trying frantically all morning to reach the Speaker.”
Couldn’t even think:
Krock,
Memoranda, July 1960, p. 1, Arthur Krock Papers, “Reference File,” LBJL. Lyndon Johnson was to give many different versions of what had occurred. For example, in a tape recording he made for guidance for the ghostwriters of his autobiography, he said “he wanted me on the ticket. I said, ‘You want a good Majority Leader to help you pass your program.’ I didn’t want to be vice president. I didn’t want to leave the Senate.… I told
Kennedy, ‘Rayburn is against and my state will say I ran out on them.’ Kennedy said, ’Well think it over and let’s talk about it again at 3:30 …. The President said, ‘Can I talk to Rayburn?’ … Kennedy talked Rayburn into it …” (“Reminiscences of Lyndon B. Johnson, transcript of tape recording, Aug. 19, 1969,” OH Collection, LBJL). On another occasion, he said that Kennedy had
begun by saying “that he had said many times that he thought I was the best qualified for the presidency by experience, but that as a southerner I could not be nominated. He said he felt that I should be the one who would succeed if anything happened to him” (Schlesinger, “Author’s View on How Johnson was Chosen—J.F.K.—’I Held It Out … He Grabbed at It,”
Life,
July 16, 1965). He gave a similar
version to Potter: “He said he hoped I could run with him, that he had said many times …”

Kennedy said he had already checked;
“people like”
:
Jenkins, quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 257.
If Rayburn had anything:
Johnson, quoted in Philip Potter, “How LBJ Got the Nomination,”
The Reporter,
June 18, 1964. “Senate Daily Diary,” July 14, 1960. This “diary” was kept
by Johnson’s secretaries. Based of course on what Johnson told them about this meeting, it says, “Senator Kennedy … did ask Senator Johnson to be his running mate. Senator Johnson told him he was not interested.”
Kennedy said:
Potter, “How LBJ Got.”
“With quick nods”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 126.
Whatever had been said:
Mazo wrote that the conversation between the two men touched only obliquely on the real purpose of the visit.… Nothing was offered in so many words. It wasn’t necessary. Nor did Sen. Johnson protest his innocence of any desire for the office. That was not necessary either. The two men understood each other, according to their intimates” (
NYHT,
July 16, 1960). According to Potter, Johnson gave him the following
account. “He said he hoped I could run with him.… He said he felt that I should be the one who would succeed if anything happened to him.… I told him I appreciated his offer but thought I should stay as majority leader.… I said I would give it thought, however.…” (Potter, “How LBJ Got”).
“We talked mostly”
:
LAT,
July 15, 1960.
“You were right”
:
Connally interview.
“He said”
:
Jenkins, quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 257.
“That he had just”
:
O’Donnell and
Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
p. 190; Miller,
Lyndon,
pp. 257–58.
The Vice President should be:
Jenkins, quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 257. Hale Boggs recalls that Corcoran and Foley “told me that President Kennedy had offered the vice [presidency] to Johnson, but that Johnson was going to do whatever Mr. Rayburn told him to do” (Boggs OH).

Kerr and Baker:
Baker,
Wheeling,
pp. 126–27.

Whether Johnson would mind:
Arthur Schlesinger, during interview with Robert Kennedy, Feb. 27, 1965, quoted in Guthman and Shulman, eds.,
Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words,
p. 24.

“The idea”
:
Guthman and Shulman, eds.,
In His Own Words,
pp. 20, 21.
“You just”
:
Guthman and Shulman, eds.,
In His Own Words,
pp. 24, 25.

A “gesture”
:
Charles Bartlett, “On Choosing a Vice President,”
WES,
March 10, 1964.
“I just held it out like this … and he grabbed it
:”
Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days,
p. 49. In an oral history he gave the LBJL,
Bartlett related Kennedy’s words this way: “He said, ‘I didn’t really offer the nomination to Lyndon Johnson. I just held it out to here’—and with his hand he gestured two or three inches from his pocket.” In this oral history, Bartlett says that Jack Kennedy said even more: “He said, ’I hear your editors are upset because you said that Symington was going to be vice president. Well, you can tell them that if
you’re surprised, so am I.” In another oral history, given to the JFKL (p. 49) he quotes Kennedy as having told him, “ ‘I didn’t offer the vice presidency to Lyndon.’ He said, ‘I just held it out to here …’ They told him this was a gesture that he had to make, and then he went down and made the gesture, thinking he’d get it over with early in the morning.… When he went down there he didn’t
think there was a reason in the world to believe that Lyndon would accept the thing.”
“Shocked” when Johnson “seized”
:
Robert Kennedy used the word “shocked” when, not long after the Bartlett article appeared, he was interviewed by Philip Potter.

Schlesinger’s repeating:
His acceptance of Robert Kennedy’s version as accurate began in 1965, with his article (an excerpt from his book,
A Thousand Days,
which would be published that year), “Author’s View on How Johnson was Chosen—J.F.K.—’I Held It Out … He Grabbed at It,”
Life,
July 16, 1965. Kennedy, Schlesinger wrote, “decided to do this [offer
the vice presidency to Johnson] because he thought it imperative to restore relations with the Senate leader.… He was certain that there was practically no chance that Johnson would accept.… Kennedy returned to his own suite in a state of considerable bafflement.” This view is, of course, also in
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
published in 1978. Contrary views were assailed with his customary vigor. Responding to one by the journalist Tom Morgan in
American Heritage,
he wrote, in a letter to the editor, “In fact, as Robert Kennedy’s oral history makes clear, the offer of the vice-presidential nomination was
pro forma;
the Kennedys never dreamed Johnson would accept the offer and when he did, John Kennedy sent Robert Kennedy to do his best to persuade Johnson to change his mind.” (Among his other published reiterations of this view is “Correspondence,”
American
Heritage,
Dec. 1984). Others have repeated it so often that it has been accepted. Hugh Sidey, in
Time,
July 25, 1988, says “Boston-Austin Was an Accident.” But there are Jack Kennedy statements that lead to the other view. For example, the columnist Peter Lisagor says that on the Kennedy campaign plane after the convention, “I said to him, ‘Boy, that was either the most inspired choice for vice president or the most cynical.’ Jack
Kennedy said, ‘Cynical!’ He bristled at the word cynical. He said, ‘It’s not cynical at all. Democrats have always
done this—an eastern candidate and a Southerner.’ He even went to Al Smith, and he said, ‘He chose Joe Robinson from Arkansas. So Democrats have always done this. It wasn’t cynical at all.’ He wanted to win. He said, ‘I don’t think it was cynical.’ And he took great
umbrage at the word cynical. It led me to believe that in the continuing controversy over whether he wanted Lyndon Johnson or not … I’ve always felt as a result of that conversation that he had thought it out fairly thoroughly, and maybe he had toyed with some other people, but the idea of winning some southern states prevailed, and he hoped that Lyndon Johnson would take that” (Lisagor OH, JFKL).

Telephoning Bobby:
Potter, “How LBJ Got”; O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
pp. 191–92; Salinger OH.
“Plus Texas”
:
Potter, “How LBJ Got.”
“How many electoral votes?”
:
Salinger, quoted in Shesol,
Mutual Contempt,
p. 48; Salinger OH.
“Yes, we are”
:
Potter, “How LBJ Got.”
“Thereupon”
:
Salinger OH.

Meeting with northern bosses:
This account is based on Salinger,
P.S.: A Memoir,
pp. 80–81, Salinger OH; O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
pp. 191–92; and Potter, “How LBJ Got.”
Had telephoned Lawrence;
“I don’t want to go”
;
“authorized”
:
McCloskey interview with Donaghy, Nov. 2, 1970, p. 3, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.
The “old pros”
:
WP,
July 15, 1960.
“It looked as though”
;
“All of them”
;
“I could have belted”
:
O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
p. 192.
“Now Nixon”
:
O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
p. 192.
“Wait a min-ute”
:
O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
pp. 192–93.
“I’m forty-three”
:
O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly,”
p. 193.
“You get”
:
O’Donnell OH.
“He wanted”
:
O’Donnell, quoted in Potter, “How LBJ Got.”