Latest volume on political career of Johnson can’t come soon enough

A photo of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president, inscribed and signed by Johnson, sold for $21,250 at an August 2018 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Like other reverential fans of author Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, I’m still waiting patiently for him to finish volume five. It will cover the entire span of LBJ’s presidency, with a special focus on the Vietnam War, the Great Society and the Civil Rights era. Caro’s earlier biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, won a well-deserved Pulitzer in 1974.

In 2011, Caro estimated that his final volume on LBJ (his original trilogy had expanded to five volumes) would require “another two to three years to write.” In May 2017, he confirmed he had 400 typed pages completed and intended to actually move to Vietnam. In December 2018, it was reported Caro “is still several years from finishing.”

Since Caro (b.1935) is two years older than me, there may exist a certain anxiety that time may expire unexpectedly. However, it will still be worth the wait and I shall consume it like a fine 3-Star Michelin dinner in Paris. Despite all that’s been written about this period of time, Caro is certain to surprise with new facts and his unique, incomparable perspective.

Recall that planning for the 1963 campaign was well under way by autumn for the 1964 presidential election. The razor-thin victory of JFK over Richard Nixon in 1960 (112,000 votes or 0.12 percent) had largely been due to VP Johnson’s personal efforts to deliver Texas to the Democrats.

Others are quick to remind us that allegations of fraud in Texas and Illinois were obvious and that Nixon could have won if he had simply demanded a recount. New York Herald Tribune writer Earl Mazo had launched a series of articles about voter fraud. However, Nixon persuaded him to call off the investigation, telling him, “Earl, no one steals the presidency of the United States!” He went on to explain how disruptive a recount would be. It would damage the United States’ reputation in foreign countries, who looked to us as the paragon of virtue in transferring power.

Forty years later, in Bush v. Gore, we would witness a genuine recount in Florida, with teams of lawyers, “hanging chads” and weeks of public scrutiny until the Supreme Court ordered Florida to stop the recount immediately. Yet today, many people think George W. Bush stole the 2000 presidential election. I’ve always suspected that much of today’s extreme partisan politics is partially due to the bitter rancor that resulted. His other sins aside, Nixon deserves credit for avoiding this, especially given the turmoil that was just around the corner in the tumultuous 1960s.

Back in 1963, Johnson’s popularity – especially in Texas – had declined to the point JFK was worried it would affect the election. Kennedy’s close advisers were convinced a trip West was critical, with special attention to all the major cities in Texas. Jackie would attend since she helped ensure big crowds. Others, like U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Bobby Kennedy, strongly disagreed. They worried about his personal safety. LBJ was also opposed to the trip, but for a different reason. Liberal Senator Ralph Yarborough was locked in a bitter intraparty fight with Governor John Connally; the VP was concerned it would make the president look bad if they both vied for his support.

We all know how this tragically ended at Parkland Hospital on Nov. 22 in Dallas. BTW, Caro has always maintained that he’s never seen a scintilla of evidence that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved … period. Conspiracy theorists still suspect the mob, Fidel Castro, Russia, the CIA or even the vice president. After 56 years, not even a whiff of doubt.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as president in Dallas aboard Air Force One by Judge Sarah T. Hughes (who remains the only woman in U.S. history to have sworn in a president). LBJ was the third president to take the oath of office in the state where he was born. The others were Teddy Roosevelt in Buffalo, N.Y., following the McKinley assassination (1901) and Calvin Coolidge (1923) after Harding died. Coolidge’s first oath was administered by his father in their Vermont home. Ten years later, it was revealed that he’d taken a second oath in Washington, D.C., to avert any questions about his father’s authority as a Justice of the Peace to swear in a federal-level officer.

On her last night in the lonely White House, Jackie stayed up until dawn writing notes to every single member of the domestic staff, and then she slipped out. When the new First Lady walked in, she found a little bouquet and a note from Jackie: “I wish you a happy arrival in your new home, Lady Bird,” adding a last phrase, “Remember-you will be happy here.”

It was clear that the new president was happy! Just days before, he was a powerless vice president who hated Bobby Kennedy and the other Kennedy staff. They had mocked him as “Rufus Corn Pone” or “Uncle Corn Pone and his little pork chop.” Now in the Oval Office, magically, he was transformed to the old LBJ, who was truly “Master of the Senate.” Lady Bird described him with a “bronze image,” revitalized and determined to pass Civil Rights legislation that was clogged in the Senate under Kennedy. Historians are now busy reassessing this period of his presidency, instead of the prism of the Vietnam quagmire.

LBJ would go on to vanquish Barry Goldwater, the conservative running as a Republican in 1964, with 61.1 percent of the popular vote, the largest margin since the almost uncontested race of 1820 when James Monroe won handily in the “Era of Good Feelings.” 1964 was the first time in history that Vermont voted Democratic and the first time Georgia voted for a Republican. After declining to run in 1968, LBJ died five years later of a heart attack. Jackie Kennedy Onassis died on May 19, 1994, and the last vestiges of Camelot wafted away…

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Kennedy’s Court Appointments Kept World of Judiciary at Peace

This copy of PT 109, signed by John F. Kennedy, author Robert J. Donovan and surviving crew members, sold for $13,750 at a December 2016 Heritage auction. The book tells the story of one of the most important episodes in Kennedy’s life.

By Jim O’Neal

When war broke out in 1939, all the Rhodes Scholars in England were sent home and this included Byron “Whizzer” White. He went back to Yale and graduated from its law school with honors. Then, in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy, as so many others did. He was serving in the Solomon Islands as PT boat squadron skipper and intelligence officer when John F. Kennedy was a PT boat officer. It was White who personally wrote the official account of the battle events that were later portrayed in the book and movie PT 109.

Flash forward 20 years and there was a famous photo of a smiling Kennedy, now president of the United States, pointing at the front-page headline of the New York Herald Tribune – “WHIZZER WHITE TO SUPREME COURT – LAWYER, NAVAL OFFICER, FOOTBALL STAR.” It was JFK’s first appointment to the Supreme Court.

In August 1962, President Kennedy got a second bite at the same apple. Justice Felix Frankfurter, once styled as “the most important single figure in our whole judicial system,” bowed to the effects of a stroke and announced his retirement. The president acceded to his request and called a press conference to announce he had chosen Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg as the replacement.

This was not a great surprise, since the 54-year-old labor expert was well-qualified and eager to join the court. The only slight reluctance was his close personal relationship to the president and the loss of a highly valued cabinet position. However, both Chief Justice Earl Warren and Frankfurter himself supported the decision and it was made.

The nation’s reaction was universally favorable and the Senate Judiciary Committee was in total agreement. Goldberg was confirmed by the full Senate, with only Senator Strom Thurmond recording his opposition. Thus the new justice was able to take his seat on the court in time for the October 1962 term. The world of the judiciary was at peace, even after the tragic events in Dallas in November 1963 and the Warren Commission investigation that followed.

However, after a mere three years on the Supreme Court, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided that Justice Goldberg should resign from the court and become ambassador to the United Nations, succeeding Adlai Stevenson. It now seems clear that LBJ’s motive was the naive hope that someway Goldberg might be able to negotiate an end to the nightmare in Vietnam. Goldberg was strongly opposed to the move, but as he explained to a confidant, “Have you ever had your arm twisted by LBJ?”

Supposedly, there was also a clearly implied understanding of an ultimate return to the court, which obviously never materialized. Neither did an LBJ suggestion that Goldberg might be a candidate for the 1968 vice-president slot – another false hope that was mooted by LBJ’s decision not to seek reelection.

Lost in all of this was the fact that Goldberg’s intended replacement on the court, Abe Fortas, had repeatedly declined LBJ’s offers to be a Supreme Court justice. In fact, poor Abe Fortas never said yes. The president simply invited him to the Oval Office and informed him that he was about to go to the East Wing “to announce his nomination to the Supreme Court” and that he could stay in the office or accompany him.

Fortas decided to accompany the president, but to the assembled reporters he appeared only slightly less disenchanted than the grim-faced Goldberg, with his tearful wife and son by his side. Goldberg had reluctantly agreed to become ambassador to the United Nations and commented to the assembled group, “I shall not, Mr. President, conceal the pain with which I leave the court.”

It was a veritable funereal ceremony – except for a broadly smiling LBJ, who had once again worked his will on others, irrespective of their feelings. The man certainly did know how to twist arms – and I suspect necks and other body parts – until he achieved his objectives.

He was sooo good at domestic politics, it seems sad he had to also deal with foreign affairs, where a different skill set was needed.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].