Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (76 page)

Although these conspiracy theories attracted a host of adherents in the late 1960s and 1970s—years of intensifying distrust of government—they were visible even in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. Prior to release of the Warren Report, 52 percent of Americans told pollsters that they believed there had been some kind of conspiracy.
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For many Americans at that time the killing was a shattering event that once and forever damaged their faith in the future. 'For me," a radical student recalled, the assassination "has made all other acts irrelevant and trivial; it has displaced time with paranoia, good with evil, relative simplicity with incomprehensibility, and an ideal with dirt."
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A perceptive historian added later that the United States "stopped being a place of infinite progress and ever-expanding promise. Instead, there were suspicions of dark and far-reaching conspiracies."
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The belief in conspiracy reflected widespread feelings then and later, especially among people who had wanted to think that Kennedy—young, handsome, vibrant, heroic—had been the last best hope for a New Frontier. Something bright and irreplaceable had gone out of their lives, and they yearned for explanations.

The assassination, finally, made a martyr of Kennedy. While President he had enjoyed considerable political popularity. But he was never so admired as he was after his death, whereupon he frequently ranked in public opinion polls (not among historians) above Washington, Lincoln, and FDR as a "great" American President.
⁷⁵
Some of this adulation stemmed from the martyrdom caused by the assassination; Lincoln, too, had become a legend after he had been shot. Some of it also depended on the response of Jackie and on the extraordinary power of television to dramatize the three days of post-assassination ceremonies that she had a major hand in designing. Millions of Americans huddled before their television sets to watch Jackie, dressed in black, walk alongside her late husband's coffin, borne by a riderless horse to Washington's St. Matthew's Cathedral for funeral services. The Kennedy children, five-year-old Caroline and three-year-old John, were at her side. Following the service John stood at attention, as he had seen the soldiers do, and saluted the coffin. The horse-drawn procession then moved in stately slowness through Washington to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. There Kennedy was laid to rest, his grave to be marked by an eternal flame overlooking the city.

Five days later Jackie called the journalist-historian Theodore White to the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, where she told him a story that White placed in
Life
magazine on December 6. People should realize, she said, that Jack had been sickly as a boy and had spent hours reading about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In the last days of his life he had responded warmly to Lerner and Loewe's Broadway musical
Camelot
, which sentimentalized those wondrous days of chivalry and heroism. At night in his bedroom he played the recording from
Camelot
before going to sleep, and he especially loved the lines

Don't let it be forgot,
that once there was a spot,
for one brief shining moment
that was known as Camelot.

Jackie added in White's article, read by millions, that the Kennedy administration had been Camelot, "a magic moment in American history, when gallant men danced with beautiful women, when great deeds were done, when artists, writers, and poets met at the White House and the barbarians beyond the walls were held back." But "it will never be that way again. . . . There'll never be another Camelot again."
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If Kennedy had been alive to read this, he would probably have derided it. And rightly so, for it was myth-making of maudlin proportions. Still, it had an apparently lasting appeal to millions of people who had been shaken by the assassination and who were looking for ways to affirm the meaning of Kennedy's life. As they tried to cope with the future they were somber, to be sure. They also yearned to erect monuments to his memory.

18
Lyndon Johnson and American Liberalism

Five days after Kennedy's assassination Lyndon Johnson went to Capitol Hill to address the Congress. Millions of Americans across the country watched anxiously. The new President, a tall and deliberate man, spoke slowly and clearly. "All I have," he said, "I would gladly have given not to be standing here today." He then moved to his main theme, that he would finish what Kennedy had started: "John F. Kennedy lives on. . . . No words are sad enough to express our sense of loss. No words are strong enough to express our determination to continue the forward thrust of America that he began."
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Kennedy, Johnson reminded his audience, had proclaimed at his inaugural in 1961, "Let us begin." Now, Johnson said,
"Let us continue."
Focusing on domestic problems (as Kennedy had not), Johnson enumerated some of the "dreams" that he said Kennedy had pursued: "education for all of our children," "jobs for all who seek them," "care for our elderly," and above all, "equal rights for all Americans whatever their race or color." Johnson stressed the issue of civil rights. "No memorial or oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough about equal rights in this country. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and write it in the books of law."

It was a solemn yet uplifting oration. When Johnson finished, his audience, which yearned for leadership in the aftermath of the assassination, jumped to its feet and applauded enthusiastically. Public opinion polls suggested that Johnson had also impressed the American people. Unlike Truman, who had floundered upon taking office in 1945, Johnson, congressional aide in 1931, congressman in 1937, senator in 1949, majority leader of the Senate from 1955 through 1960, Vice-President since 1961, seemed knowledgeable and assured. The fifty-five-year-old Texan sounded like a President.

Johnson and his liberal allies, however, had to cope with a range of serious problems, the largest of which was the war in Vietnam. At home he had to preside over the resolution of major dynamics of American life that had been strengthening in recent years: the extraordinary moral power of egalitarian ideas as nourished by the civil rights movement, and rapidly rising popular expectations, many of them propelled by the promises of Kennedy. Interrelated, these dynamics peaked in the mid-1960s. They excited still grander expectations—demands, in fact, for government entitlements—that were both exhilarating and divisive. It was the peculiar fate of Johnson, a master of coalition-building on Capitol Hill, to have to deal with forces that were on their way to fragmenting the United States.
²

J
OHNSON WAS BORN
and raised in the hill country of southcentral Texas, the son of a rough-edged father who struggled to make a sometimes precarious living and who served as a populistically inclined state legislator, and of a strong-willed mother, who yearned for a more genteel style of life. Strains afflicted the marriage and, biographers have surmised, left their mark on young Lyndon, their eldest. People who remembered him as a boy and a young man describe him as in many ways the son of the father: crude, boisterous, a little wild. They remember him also, however, as in awe of his mother, who sternly withheld all signs of affection when she was displeased with him. As he had yearned to win the love of his very different parents, Johnson always seemed desperately eager to make people love him. He also became adept at conciliation, a wonderful skill for anyone who hopes to advance in politics. Throughout his life he labored long and hard to bring people together.
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People close to Johnson, however, also felt that his upbringing left him insecure as he battled his way up the political ladder. Unlike FDR, his role model, he lacked a patrician background. Unlike Kennedy, to whom he was often unflatteringly contrasted, he lacked inherited wealth and good looks. (Many contemporaries made fun of his ears, which were large and jutted out from his head.) Instead, Johnson had had to struggle at every turn, barely losing a senatorial primary in 1941 (his opponent probably stole it from him) and barely winning one in 1948 (he surely stole that). Following this narrow victory opponents derided him as "Landslide Lyndon." After re-election in 1954, he finally had a secure political base, which he used to run for President in 1960. But by then he had acquired a reputation as a self-aggrandizing wheeler-dealer.

Regional identification remained strong in the United States, and Johnson felt especially insecure about this aspect of his background. Among his southern and western colleagues on Capitol Hill, it was a political asset which he used to full advantage. As he grew wealthy he acquired a cattle ranch, in which he took great pride. He relished the chance to put on his boots and cowboy hat, load visitors into his Cadillac, and drive them, terrified, at ninety miles per hour about his far-flung property. But many easterners, especially well-educated people who admired the polished and stylish Kennedy, considered Johnson to be a virtual caricature of all that they associated with Texas. Many, noting his shiny, wide-lapeled suits and slicked-back hair, likened him to a riverboat gambler. These aspersions stung Johnson, a proud and vain man. Whatever he did, he came to believe, the eastern Establishment would disparage.

In the minds of Johnson and many of his admirers this Establishment had a broad reach. It consisted, they thought, of reporters and columnists for eastern media empires, such as the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
, and of their acolytes, highly educated esthetes and snobs from expensive eastern schools and universities. The
Times
, Johnson complained in 1967, "plays a leading part in prejudicing people against [me]. Editors won't use the word, 'President Johnson,' in anything that is good. Bigotry [against Texans] is born in some of the
New York Times
people."
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Johnson especially identified Kennedy-lovers with the Establishment. Bewildered by the adulation that Kennedy received while he had lived, Johnson grew resentful when the "Kennedy people" did not rally unconditionally to his side after 1963. "It was the goddamnest thing," he later told a biographer. "He [Kennedy] never said a word of importance in the Senate and he never did a thing. But somehow . . . he managed to create the image of himself as a shining intellectual, a youthful leader who would change the face of the country. Now, I will admit that he had a good sense of humor and that he looked awfully good on the god-damn television screen and through it all was a pretty decent fellow, but his growing hold on the American people was a mystery to me."
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If Johnson had been a more reflective man, he might have understood why many Americans failed to warm up to him. For Johnson was in many ways unlikeable. Stories about his towering vanity are legion. As a senator he offered to give a calf from his ranch to parents who named their babies after him. When he became President, he ordered White House photographers to record his movements for posterity. One estimate concludes that he had 500,000 photos taken of himself. Johnson enjoyed studying these shots and regularly gave them to visitors and dignitaries. Johnson also had plastic busts made of himself, which he was known to stroke affectionately while conversing with people in the White House. Paying a visit to the Pope, he was presented with a fourteenth-century painting as a gift. In return he surprised the Pontiff by giving him a bust of himself.
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Jokes, most of them unkind, featured Johnson likening himself to Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or—most commonly—to Jesus or God.

Johnson's vanity probably served to compensate for the insecurities that seemed central to his character. His urge to dominate may have had similar roots. Whatever the sources, his need for total loyalty among associates was legendary. Staff members came to understand that they not only had to work long hours; they also had to honor him and to surrender to his imperious will. When Johnson became President he dictated dress codes for his aides. He insisted that they be reachable at all times of the day or night. To be assured of getting in touch with Joseph Califano, one of his most trusted advisers, Johnson had a telephone installed next to the toilet in Califano's office bathroom. Worst of all for a staff member was when he was summoned to confer in Johnson's bathroom while the President was sitting on the toilet.
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Johnson demanded not only loyalty but also subservience from people around him. To humiliate and even to frighten others was to heighten his own sense of himself. He explained to an aide, "Just you remember this: There's only two kinds at the White House. There's elephants and there's pissants. And I'm the only elephant." A disenchanted press secretary, George Reedy, later observed that Johnson "as a human being was a miserable person—a bully, sadist, lout, and egoist. . . . His lapses from civilized conduct were deliberate and usually intended to subordinate someone else to do his will. He did disgusting things because he realized that other people had to pretend that they did not mind. It was his method of bending them to his desires."
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How could such a man rise so high in American politics by 1960? One reason was desire. Beginning in 1931, when he first arrived in Washington as a twenty-three-year-old congressional secretary, Johnson was obsessively ambitious. He worked extraordinarily long hours and drove himself to near exhaustion in many of his campaigns. Running for the House in a special election in 1937, he lost forty-two pounds in forty days. Seeking a Senate seat eleven years later, he lost some thirty pounds before squeaking through to victory in a primary. He was always careless of his health, bolting down food, smoking heavily, and drinking recklessly. In 1955, when he was only forty-seven, he suffered a severe heart attack and cut back on cigarettes. He remained driven and restless, unable to settle for what he had done in life.

With his eye on the future, Johnson always displayed shrewd political instincts. As a young man he sought the attention of FDR, who named him in 1935 as director of the National Youth Administration (NYA) in Texas. Johnson was then only twenty-six. Once in the House he quickly befriended Sam Rayburn, the powerful Texan who became Speaker in 1940 and held that office (except during four years of GOP control) until his death in 1961. Rayburn, a lifelong bachelor, treated Johnson almost as a son. When Johnson moved to the Senate in 1949, he became a protege of Richard Russell of Georgia, leader of the southern Democratic bloc in the upper house and one of the most influential men in American government. Carefully cultivated connections such as these helped Johnson to rise with remarkable speed. When he became Democratic leader in the Senate in 1953, he was only forty-five years old, the youngest man in modern American history to hold such a position.

Johnson's ability to manipulate the political system, while unmatched, only partly explained his advancement. Equally important was his great skill as persuader and coalition-builder, especially in the Senate, where he established his national reputation in the 1950s. Johnson made it his business to know everything he could about the personal foibles and political needs of his colleagues, whom he assiduously wooed with courtesies and small favors. He knew when to flatter, when to bargain, when to threaten. He worked hard to familiarize himself with the details of legislation and counted noses carefully before going out on a limb. When he decided on a course of action, he expected to win, and he usually did.
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Colleagues on the Hill who resisted Johnson often received what contemporaries described in awe as The Treatment. This was Johnson the persuader at his most compelling. Senator George Smathers of Florida described The Treatment as "a great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed in around you." It could last a few minutes or several hours. As the journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak described it, Johnson "moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless."
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Liberals who observed Johnson in these Senate years refused to be beguiled. Most of them continued to regard him as a smooth and self-serving political operator who had engaged in vote fraud in order to enter the Senate. Some of his aides, such as right-hand man Bobby Baker, seemed even more slippery. Liberals also refused to credit him with true instincts for reform. Noting his friendship with conservative southerners like Russell—and his reluctance to criticize Eisenhower—they further denounced him for his support of Texas oil interests, his coolness to organized labor, and what they assumed was his ambivalence about civil rights.

Liberals had ample cause for questioning Johnson's claims to be one of them. Especially before 1954, he felt he had to tread carefully lest he offend politically powerful conservative business interests in Texas. Johnson, however, was more liberal than many contemporaries imagined. Obsessed though he was with advancing himself, he also hoped to advance social justice. As director of the NYA in Texas in the 1930s he had worked effectively to direct federal help to the young people who were the targets of the legislation; no other state director was so energetic or successful as Johnson. He strongly backed other New Deal social programs, especially rural electrification and public housing. When he ran for the House in 1937, he was the only contender enthusiastically to support Roosevelt's controversial plan to pack the Supreme Court. Then and later FDR remained his idol.
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