The Path to Power (51 page)

His silence in this area was especially conspicuous because of his volubility in all others. If political tactics, for example, were being discussed, Johnson would be the center of the discussion; if the discussion concerned political issues—philosophy, principles, ideas, ideals—Johnson would not even be part of it. Realizing, as he entered a room in which a bull session was being held, that its topic was a serious issue, he would try to duck back out of the room before he was seen. If he was already participating in a bull session and it turned to such an issue, he would quietly slip out of the room, or, if he remained, would refuse, even if drawn into the discussion, to allow himself to be pinned down to a specific stand. He would refuse to take a stand even when directly challenged to do so, turning aside the challenge with a joke, or a Texas anecdote. Pressed to the wall, he would say he simply hadn’t yet made up his mind on the issue. During those first exciting years of the New Deal, discussion of great issues swirled through Washington, and nowhere was discussion more animated than in that basement home of a hundred bright young men in government. Amidst the swirl of ideas, Lyndon Johnson seemed unmoved. The son of the man who had said, “It’s high time a man stood up for what he believes in” seemed ready to stand up for nothing.

At San Marcos, it was assumed this behavior stemmed from ambition. “He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood,” one student had said. “He was only interested in himself and what could help himself.” The feeling in Washington was the same.

T
HE YOUNG MEN
at the Dodge saw the ambition expressed in other ways as well. The Texas State Society, composed of all Texans in Washington, held monthly dances in various hotels. At these dances, young men danced mostly with young women, but not Lyndon Johnson. He danced almost exclusively with older women. “I don’t remember his ever taking a girl [to a dance], but he would dance with all the wives of all the Congressmen and Cabinet officers,” Brown recalls. Even the adoring Latimer felt he knew why: “because the wives would introduce him [to their husbands],” he says. Other aides held the same opinion. Brown recalls standing with a group of
friends from the Dodge and watching Lyndon dancing, and one of them saying: “Do you notice he ignores the young, pretty, single women? He’s dancing with all the wives.” Another said: “Lyndon’s campaigning for something.” And a third chimed in: “He never quits campaigning. He’s always campaigning.” The young men commented to each other on remarks he made; once one of his three assistants drafted for his signature a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., on behalf of a constituent. The salutation in the draft was “Dear Henry,” and Johnson crossed it out, writing “Dear Mr. Secretary” in its place, saying, “Look, I can’t call him Henry.” There was a pause, and then Lyndon Johnson added: “There’s going to come a day when I will, but it’s not now.” And Brown recalls that once, after Johnson had been introduced to someone as an assistant to Congressman Kleberg, “he kind of objected to being classified as an assistant because, he said, ‘I’m not the assistant type. I’m the executive type.’”

Ambition was not uncommon among those bright young men in the Dodge, but they felt that Johnson’s was uncommon—in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs. “There’s nothing wrong with being pragmatic,” a fellow secretary says. “Hell, a lot of us were pragmatic. But you have to believe in
something
. Lyndon Johnson believed in
nothing
, nothing but his own ambition. Everything he did—
everything
—-was for his ambition.” A saying about Johnson had gained wide currency among these young men because they felt it described him accurately: “Lyndon goes which way the wind blows.”

To those closest to him—the three assistants who worked in the same office—the statement that “Lyndon Johnson believed in nothing” is an oversimplification, and not merely because during the discussions with the Roy Miller clique which they could overhear, their Chief “was always as conservative as ever.” Lyndon Johnson, they feel, did possess beliefs—quite conservative beliefs. His “earliest orientation,” Brown says, “was on the conservative side.” Says Jones: “Intrinsically, he was conservative.” But, they feel, the crucial point is that this statement has no relevance in any discussion of Johnson’s career. Having spent years in close proximity to Johnson, they are certain that any beliefs of his, regardless of what they may have been, would have not the slightest influence on his actions. In his actions, Jones says, “I don’t think Lyndon was either a conservative or a liberal. I think he was whatever he felt like he needed to be. … Winning is the name of the game. I have no doubt that he could have become either an ultra-liberal or an ultra-conservative, if that would have brought victory. Now that suggests hypocrisy, doesn’t it? But, well—winning is the name of the game.

“Lyndon was a trimmer,” he says. “He would be guided by no philosophy or ideals. He would trim his sails to every wind.”

S
OON THERE WAS
symbolic proof of this.

During the 1933 redistricting, San Antonio (Bexar County) and its 240,000 inhabitants had been split off from the Fourteenth Congressional District and placed in a new—Twentieth—District. In 1934, it would elect its own Congressman. One of the candidates had been impressed, during a visit to Washington, by Kleberg’s “very efficient” secretary, with his “ready entrée into all of the government departments”; upon his return to Texas, he told reporters that “Lyndon B. Johnson … is considered to be the brightest secretary in Washington.” He asked Johnson to work for him during the 1934 Democratic primary, which would be held during Congress’ Summer recess. Johnson, with Kleberg unopposed in the primary, agreed—although the candidate was Maury Maverick, the fiery radical whose Utopian schemes and fierce defense of Communist organizers in Texas had already caused an opponent to charge him with a desire to “supplant the American flag with the Red flag of Russia.” (Sam Johnson was very proud at praise for his son from such a source; mailing him a newspaper clipping containing Maverick’s quote, he wrote on it: “Breaking into front-page space. Mighty fine, and worthy of it all. Them’s my sentiments—Sam.”)

Arriving in San Antonio with Latimer and Jones in tow (he had persuaded the genial Kleberg to “donate” all three of them to the Maverick campaign), Johnson put them to work mailing out brochures. He himself began writing them. Maverick saw that this young secretary understood without being told what many politicians never understand: that voters’ reluctance to do extensive reading makes simplicity the key to successful political prose. As the worried opponent—San Antonio’s corrupt and long-entrenched “City Machine”—stepped up its advertising, Maverick asked Johnson for help writing his own advertising, as well as his speeches. Soon Johnson was not only a writer but an adviser—one of Maverick’s inner circle. “The significant thing was—and you could see this very clearly—that the older men trusted him,” Jones says. And he was a campaigner as well—a campaigner whose “very unusual ability to meet and greet the public” was as effective in San Antonio’s teeming Mexican-American ghettoes as in the isolated little towns of the Hill Country. The
abrazo
, or embrace, was a key element in campaigning among Mexican-Americans, and Lyndon Johnson had always been addicted to hugging and kissing. Towering above swarthy men in bright-colored shirts and old women in black
rebozos
, the tall, skinny, pale young man with big ears and long arms was a conspicuous figure as he abrazoed his way enthusiastically through the crowded, pushcart-jammed San Antonio slums. Maverick won the June primary, but not by the requisite plurality, so a second primary, in August, was required. Johnson spent most of the intervening two months handling Kleberg’s affairs in Corpus Christi, but on weekends he would race back to
San Antonio; during the Summer of 1934, therefore, Lyndon Johnson was working simultaneously for one of the most reactionary members of Congress—and for a man who would, immediately upon his arrival on Capitol Hill a few months later, be one of the most radical.

T
HE
1934
MAVERICK CAMPAIGN
also marked Lyndon Johnson’s first involvement with one of the more pragmatic aspects of politics. Awakening early one morning a day or two before the election, in the big room in San Antonio’s Plaza Hotel that he shared with Johnson, L. E. Jones experienced an awakening of another sort. Johnson was sitting at a table in the center of the room—and on the table were stacks of five-dollar bills. “That big table was just
covered
with money—more money than I had ever seen,” Jones says. Jones never learned who had given the cash to Johnson—so secretive was his boss that he had not even known Johnson had it—but he saw what Johnson did with it. Mexican-American men would come into the room, one at a time. Each would tell Johnson a number—some, unable to speak English, would indicate the number by holding up fingers—and Johnson would count out that number of five-dollar bills, and hand them to him. “It was five dollars a vote,” Jones realized. “Lyndon was checking each name against lists someone had furnished him with. These Latin people would come in, and show how many eligible voters they had in the family, and Lyndon would pay them five dollars a vote.”

“E
VERYTHING WAS FOR HIS AMBITION
.” “Elective office,” Johnson was starting to say now, was what he wanted. “You’ve got to be your own man if you’re going to amount to anything,” he told Russell Brown. He knew
which
elective office he wanted. Once, Brown recalls, “he was talking about somebody who … had run to succeed his boss … and he said: ‘That’s the route to follow.’”

A few adjustments began to be made in the physical arrangement of Suite 1322. In most congressional offices, the senior aide placed his desk as far as possible from the front door, so that subordinates would “handle”—and shield him from—casual visitors, who would be mainly tourists from the district. Now Johnson moved his desk immediately inside the entrance door, “so that,” in Latimer’s words, no visitor could “possibly advance further without his interception.” In part, Latimer says with his wry, knowing grin, the purpose of the shift was “to keep the typewriters humming. If anyone talked to L.E. or me, we’d have to stop typing. And that typing was supposed never to stop.” But Latimer began to suspect there were other reasons as well. Johnson did not want to be shielded from visitors from the district; visitors were voters. The new position of his desk ensured that he met voters. A favor routinely bestowed by Congressmen’s offices—
passes to House and Senate galleries—frequently impressed visitors and made them grateful. Johnson wanted visitors—voters—to receive that favor from him, and the position of his desk ensured that they would. “The casual visitor who just ‘happened to be in town’ was weeded out” by Johnson, who “talked with him thirty seconds, and had him out of the office and on his way in another thirty, happily clutching” his passes, Latimer says. (“All the while, the typewriters never lost a beat.”) Sometimes, moreover, a casual visitor would turn out to be what Latimer calls “an important person” back home. “The Chief would steer him into Mr. Kleberg’s [vacant] private office,” sit down—behind the Congressman’s desk—chat with him, ask if there was any favor he could do for him, strike up a friendship—which would be cemented a few days later by a “buttering up” letter from Latimer.

Noticing that such private audiences were held not only with “important persons” but with any visitor who happened to mention an interesting piece of district political gossip, Latimer felt there was still another reason for the change in the position of Lyndon Johnson’s desk: “He didn’t want anything concerning his district, no matter how small, going on without him knowing about it.” Positioning himself right at the door was Johnson’s best defense against such a contingency, Latimer understood.

This defense contained one loophole. Each of the two rooms in a Congressional suite had its own door to the corridor outside, and, in the casual atmosphere of the 1930’s, those doors were both generally kept unlocked. Visitors—particularly knowledgeable late-afternoon visitors who were aware which door led to Kleberg’s private office, and who wanted to see the Congressman without being cleared by his staff—were therefore able simply to walk in that door, knowing they would receive his invariably pleasant welcome.

Now that loophole was closed. Johnson locked his boss’ door—and kept it locked. Kleberg never objected to this new development—he may not have noticed it: he customarily entered and left the two-room suite through the anteroom so that he could chat with his staff. If he did notice it, he did not understand its significance. But Latimer understood. Johnson did not want even his boss doing anything without him knowing about it. “He didn’t want anyone to see Mr. Kleberg without going through him first; he didn’t want anyone seeing Kleberg that he didn’t know about.” Locking Kleberg’s door was an effective device to prevent that. Another effect of this device was in a small but not insignificant way (since a visitor knowledgeable enough to know the right door was probably an important visitor) to isolate the Congressman from his district, to give a tighter hold on it—at his expense—to his secretary.