The Passage of Power (41 page)

Clearance was required in other areas as well. During the new Administration’s first months, Johnson’s
Air Force aide, Colonel
Howard L. Burris, simply submitted a request to the Air Force each time Johnson was scheduled to travel somewhere. Johnson was often chagrined by the response to the requests, since he was not routinely assigned one of the three Boeing 707s—the same model as
Air Force One—in the pool of planes the Air Force maintained for travel by high-level government officials, but was sometimes given, despite his protests, a Lockheed JetStar, a ten-passenger plane originally designed as an executive jet. The contrast between his plane and Air Force One was further heightened by the fact that instead of having “United States of America” painted on its fuselage, the lettering on the sides of the JetStar was “United States Air Force,” and two prominent insignias on each side of the plane identified it as part of the Air Force’s Military Air Transport Service. Descending from so small a plane before a welcoming delegation of local dignitaries Johnson considered an embarrassment. There was a more substantive problem as well: none of the MATS JetStars were outfitted with the powerful communications equipment that kept Air Force One in continual touch with the White House, and when Johnson asked that one JetStar be assigned permanently for his use, and that the equipment be installed, he was rebuffed. For a while, however, at least no barriers were placed to his requests for a plane to travel in. Then, however, that changed, and he was informed that before his requests could be submitted to the Air Force, they had to be approved by the White House, specifically by Special Assistant to the President
Ralph
Dungan.
“You
had to ask for, and get approval,” every time Johnson wanted to travel by plane, says
Marie Fehmer, who went to work for Johnson as a secretary in June, 1962. “How do you think that made him feel?” And the plane he was assigned was, all too often, the detested JetStar. After many requests, the Air Force agreed to remove the MATS insignia; when he asked that “United States of America” be painted on its side, Burris had to report to Johnson that
“Mr
. McNamara’s office was informed” of the request and “the determination was to retain” the wording. His
LBJ Company then leased a larger Grumman Gulfstream, which could carry up to twenty-four passengers, for his use on trips he made for political purposes—to speak at a Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, for example—but this attempt was curtly rebuffed. A message from the White House was dictated over the phone to
Walter Jenkins:
“The
President has reached the following conclusion on travel policy: Both the President and Vice President will use Government planes whenever the occasion requires for both official and unofficial trips, including trips for political purposes.”

Some of the insults were inadvertent. When Kennedy staffers, accustomed to calling him “Lyndon,” continued to call him that instead of “Mr. Vice President,”
“he
just couldn’t stand that; he felt they were doing that deliberately to humiliate him,”
Sam Houston Johnson says.

One insult, which O’Donnell was to excuse in his memoirs as merely a
“terrible
mistake,” involved a sixty-four-year-old lawyer and longtime Johnson ally from Dallas,
Sarah T. Hughes. Early in 1961, Johnson asked Robert Kennedy to nominate Mrs. Hughes for a Federal District Court judgeship, but the reply from the Justice Department, which was trying to get younger judges on the federal bench, was that she was too old. Telling her that she couldn’t have the appointment, Johnson had then offered it to another Texas lawyer.

In turning her down, however, the Kennedys had been unaware of a salient fact: Ms. Hughes was an ally not only of Lyndon Johnson but of Sam Rayburn. Rayburn did not contact them on the subject, but after several months Robert Kennedy realized that a bill important to him, one that he had expected to make its way smoothly through the House Judiciary Committee, was in fact making no progress at all. He asked Rayburn for an explanation—and got it.
“That
bill of yours will pass when Sarah Hughes gets appointed,” the Speaker said.

Bobby explained that she had been ruled too old for the job.
“Sonny,
everybody seems old to you,” Rayburn replied. Ms. Hughes’ appointment was announced the next day.

Rayburn’s remark—and Hughes’ appointment—had occurred while Johnson was on an overseas trip for the President. When he returned, O’Donnell says, “You never saw such an outrage.… He went through an act which is beyond belief with the President and me. ‘Mr. President, you realize where this leaves me? Sarah Hughes now thinks I’m nothing. The lawyer I offered the job to—he thinks I’m the biggest liar and fool in the history of the State of Texas.’ ” The outrage was understandable. In the Evans and Novak summary, “The Speaker had
demonstrated that he possessed” enough power “to make the Attorney General waive [the] age requirement”—and that Johnson didn’t. And, of course, “the story of how Sarah Hughes got to be a judge quickly made the rounds” in both Washington and Texas. “Johnson felt … his reputation” had been unfairly damaged, O’Donnell says, “and he was right, he was totally right.… It was a mistake.”

And some of the insults weren’t inadvertent. As Johnson’s “laments” had multiplied, O’Donnell says, he and Kennedy had “worked out a set routine for handling” them. “The President would first hear him out alone, and then call me into his office and denounce me in front of Johnson—‘Damn it, Kenny, you’ve gone and done it again’—for whatever the Vice President was beefing about. I would humbly take the blame and promise to correct the situation, and the Vice President would go away somewhat happier.” On one occasion, however, a different routine was prepared—one that didn’t leave Johnson happy at all.

Once again, it involved Rayburn. Having to deal with the Speaker on his legislative program had made John Kennedy more aware than ever of his power; appointing his friend, the painter
William Walton, to the chairmanship of the federal
Fine Arts Commission, he had only one instruction for him:
“Don’t
get me crossways with Rayburn.” And he was aware also of how much Johnson needed the old man—and of how wary Johnson was of doing anything to irritate him. And when, suddenly, there was a possibility of a dispute between the two Texans, the President knew just what to do about it, and worked out with O’Donnell a scenario designed for Johnson’s maximum discomfiture.

The potential dispute was over an appointment to an
Agricultural Department commission. With little interest in Texas patronage—except for old friends who needed jobs—Rayburn had been allowing Johnson to clear all appointments for Texas (Kennedy had agreed that Johnson could do so), but he had an old friend who had been on the commission for years until he was removed by the
Eisenhower Administration, and he wanted him back on it. Rayburn’s friend had once annoyed Johnson, but Rayburn wasn’t aware of this—and in the case of an old friend it would not have mattered to him if he
had
known. When O’Donnell asked if the appointment had been cleared with Johnson, Rayburn said, “I don’t care. I want this fellow.” Appearing some hours later in O’Donnell’s office, Johnson told him that Rayburn’s friend was an alcoholic who was “going to embarrass the President,” added flatly, “I don’t want that fellow appointed” and reminded O’Donnell of his appointment-clearing agreement with Kennedy.

Saying he would have to let the President decide, O’Donnell ushered Johnson into the Oval Office, where the President, after listening to the dispute as if he’d never heard about it before, told Johnson, “Well, I’ll stick by my agreement.” Swiveling his chair, he stared out the window as if he had no further interest in the matter—and the scenario began to unfold. O’Donnell put his hand on the telephone on Kennedy’s desk.

“Who are you calling?” Johnson asked.

“The Speaker,” O’Donnell replied.

Hurriedly stretching out his hand, Johnson put it on top of O’Donnell’s to prevent him from lifting the receiver. “What are you going to tell him?” he asked. O’Donnell said he was going to tell him that Johnson wouldn’t clear the appointment.

“You can’t do that!” Johnson said. “You tell him that
you
don’t want him appointed.” O’Donnell said that was impossible, that he had no power over appointments. “Mr. Vice President, it’s either you or the President that’s not going to appoint him, and it’s not going to be the President.”

The President, O’Donnell recalls, was still staring out the window, “enjoying the whole scene.” There was a long silence—during which Johnson’s hand never left O’Donnell’s. Finally Johnson said, “Well, don’t call him.” Telling O’Donnell to let the matter rest until he made a decision, he walked out. A few minutes later,
Walter Jenkins telephoned to say that Johnson was withdrawing his objection.

W
HAT WAS THE EXPLANATION
for treatment of Johnson that had such a personal edge?

Was part of it—an understandable part of it—the simple fact that Jack Kennedy had been too close to death too many times to want to be reminded of his mortality, and that his Vice President was, by his very existence, the most vivid of reminders?

Sometimes Kennedy would bring up the subject of presidential succession in kidding terms, in what Sorensen calls
“casual
banter.” Dressing in his bedroom for a flight to Ohio that was going to be made through a storm, he said, “with a laugh,” to Sorensen, with the presidential valet,
George Thomas, listening, “If that plane goes down, Lyndon will have this place cleared out from stem to stern in twenty-four hours—and you and George will be the first to go.” And sometimes when he spoke of the subject, there was, in Jack Kennedy’s tone of voice, no banter at all. Walton, wanting the Fine Arts Commission to preserve two red-brick-and-white-trim townhouses diagonally across Lafayette Park from the White House that were about to be demolished for a modern office building, was considering combining the townhouses and making them the official residence of the Vice President. When he raised the suggestion in the Oval Office, however, the reaction was emphatic:
“You
think I want Lyndon listening across the park for my heartbeat?
No!
” (The townhouses were instead used for the commission’s own offices.)

And was part of the explanation something beyond reminders of mortality?

Unlike Robert, Jack Kennedy appeared not to care that Johnson had, for years, been telling insulting stories about his father—and about
him:
that Johnson had called him nicknames, like “Sonny Boy”—stories that had surely gotten back to his ears. Did he really not care?

Had he “forgiven”—but not forgotten—India Edwards? Says Ted Sorensen,
the aide who was as close to Jack Kennedy as anyone ever got, about India’s statements that Kennedy “wouldn’t be alive” without cortisone: “That was
about
as low as anyone could go.”

There had been years—eight years—when the young senator
“could
not get consideration for a bill until I went around and begged Lyndon Johnson.” How much had Jack Kennedy resented having to beg? Whatever the reasons for a personal edge in his dealings with Johnson, the edge, no matter how many historians and Kennedy aides deny its existence, was definitely there.

T
HEN, DURING THE
F
OURTH OF
J
ULY WEEKEND OF 1961
, while Sam Rayburn was back in Bonham, he felt a terrible pain in his back. Despite his failing eyesight and the way age had shrunken his body, he had been, at the age of seventy-nine, in relatively good health up until then, occasionally even giving one of his rare smiles as a milestone neared for him: on June 12, 1962, he would be Speaker of the House twice as long as anyone else in American history; in January, 1963, he would celebrate his fiftieth year—a half century—in the House, a milestone that also meant a lot to him.

His decline after the Fourth of July was rapid. Back in Washington, he had no appetite and began losing weight; he had cancer, probably pancreatic (no one knows for sure). He didn’t want the House to see him like this; he was going to “get away from here so the boys won’t see me until I lick this thing,” he told a friend. On August 16, he told a shocked and silent House that he was returning to Texas for medical treatment.

He didn’t leave for a few more days, and during those days there was a moment
Lady Bird Johnson never forgot. On the weekend of August 18, Lyndon Johnson was in Berlin, as President Kennedy’s representative to assure that city of American support in a Russian-instigated crisis, and when he returned to Washington, Lady Bird was waiting for him at Andrews Air Force Base.

Almost twenty years before, in January, 1942, Lyndon Johnson and
John Connally had been boarding a train at Union Station, for war service which would presumably take them to the South Pacific. Lady Bird and
Nellie Connally went to the station with them, and, at the last moment, Rayburn said he was going, too. He didn’t presume to intrude on the two young couples as they said their good-byes; he stood well behind them on a platform in the giant terminal. Lady Bird would always remember that short, blocky figure—so massive and strong, then—standing, unmoving and unsmiling, grim as always, amid the tumult of young men rushing for the trains that would take them off to war, and the young couples kissing good-bye; she had never forgotten how hard this man who could never be cheerful tried to be cheerful to her and Nellie as, after Lyndon and John’s train pulled out, he said, very gruffly, the only words he could think of to cheer them up: “Now girls, we’re going to get us the best dinner in Washington.”

Now, in 1961, waiting for her husband’s plane to touch down at Andrews,
Lady Bird happened to glance behind her, and there, to her surprise, standing on the tarmac, shrunken and almost blind, still as grimly expressionless as ever, was Sam Rayburn.

“Dear
Mr. Speaker,” she wrote him a few days later. “As I stood by that airplane in the gray, grizzly morning waiting for Lyndon, I looked up and saw you and my mind went back to so many times and so many trouble-fraught situations when you have stood by our side.… Next April is my twenty-fifth anniversary as a wife of a member of Congress. This quarter century of our lives has been marked most by knowing you.” On August 30, Rayburn wrote back, even in this last letter stilted and formal:
“Dear
Bird, Your note was very refreshing and highly appreciated by me.”