Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (33 page)

VICE PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Abbie Rowe, National Park Service/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

What about on political advice or dealing with Congress or so on? Did he seem to figure there?

No, Jack used to say— Then once he wasn't majority leader anymore, he'd either think—either Jack thought this or Lyndon thought this—but he wouldn't do anything with Congress. I don't think they'd have paid much attention to him. I mean, then they didn't like the vice—the Executive stepping in.
⁷⁸
And Jack used to say more times, just amused—I told you, to Ben Bradlee—"My God, Mansfield gets more accomplished"—and you know, it was really Larry O'Brien and Mansfield. But I—and I think I might have said this on an earlier tape, but one of our last dinners at the White House, maybe two or three weeks before Dallas, Ben Bradlee was there, and Jack kept saying to him, "Now why don't you put Mansfield on the cover of
Newsweek
? Why doesn't someone write something nice about him?" Did I say that?

No.

And he said, "He's done more," and he said—The thing is, Lyndon snowed everyone so much. He wasn't cutting up Lyndon, because he never cut Lyndon up. But he was saying, he snowed everyone so with his personality. But he said, "After all, look, it was under Eisenhower, and after all, what was done?" And he named very negligible things. And he said, "The situation's so much worse now, more difficult"—and all these things and he named, I remember, sixty-eight percent of our program the first year, seventy-one or seventy-three, the second, and he said, "We're going to get this and this and that by." And then Ben was needling him, saying, "But you're not going to get the tax bill by and the civil rights bill by this year, as you've said. Anyway, the tax bill, as you said." And he said, "God, what does it matter, Ben? We're going to get the tax bill. It's going to come by in February. O.K., it's not this year but it's two months later." And the civil rights he predicted exactly—everything that would happen as the date. And Mansfield, he just thought, was extraordinary and that nobody recognized it because the man played quietly. So Lyndon, as vice president, didn't just do anything. But it was all right. It was fine.

The story has been printed to the effect that there was some consideration of dropping Johnson in '64.

Not in '
64
. But Bobby told me this later, and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, "Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?" So many times he'd say it—or if there was ever a problem. I mean, stories would come out about '
64
, but I don't see how you could drop him in '
64
.

Very hard.

But in '
68
, I know, he was thinking in some little way, what could you do? Well, first place, I thought Lyndon would be too old then to run for president. I mean, he didn't like that idea that Lyndon would go on and be president because he was worried for the country. And Bobby told me that he'd had some discussions with him. I forget exactly how they were planning or who they had in mind. It wasn't Bobby, but somebody. Do something to name someone else in '
68
.
⁷⁹

Do you remember anything in particular about the congressional campaign in '62? Of course, it was so dominated by the—overshadowed by the Cuban crisis. You didn't go out, I think.

No, I mean, he didn't ask me to go out. I don't know.

At the beginning, he planned a rather short campaign and then made a longer one. On the question of—would he ever talk about the legislative breakfasts?
⁸⁰

Oh, yes, because sometimes they used to be upstairs and, you know, the children would wander in. And sometimes, I'd wander out of my room in my dressing gown and all those men would come out in clouds of smoke. And—

The breakfast was on the second floor?

Sometimes they'd be, and then later on they were in the Family Dining Room. The first one, all the antique chairs that Harry du Pont had, broke one by one. But he would talk about them and what was said if it was a good one.

Whom did he like particularly? Hubert? What did he say about—

Well, he loved Mansfield and Dirksen was always very nice with him. I don't know, I guess he was really, was very sad when Sam Rayburn died. And McCormack he'd always had trouble with. But, I guess McCormack was always alright at them. I don't know. It really wouldn't be fair for me to say. I don't know.
⁸¹

One of the great mysteries around the White House was the—

I know one thing about the legislative breakfasts that Larry O'Brien told me. This is something interesting about Ted Sorensen. Larry couldn't stand Ted Sorensen, so one night he was telling me—well, they were obviously—the Irishmen would be jealous of the Sorensens—but he said so many times Larry would have prepared an agenda for the breakfasts and just before they were about to start Ted would ask to see it and take it. And he'd just change one or two sentences and then initial it "TCS" and pass it all around that way. And you'll see that heavy hand of Ted Sorensen in more places. I mean, he—you know, he wanted his imprint on so many things.

The self-assertion.

Yeah. I told you about the
Profiles in Courage
thing, and well, I mean, he was doing it to Larry O'Brien, everyone. That's just so sneaky.

He was a little better in the White House, though, wasn't he?

Oh, yes. But I mean, I just—

Well, that's such a petty thing. To—

Someone said he loved himself and finally he loved one other person, which was Jack.
⁸²
And he also had such a crush on Jack. I can remember when he first started to try to speak like him or dare to call him Jack, and he'd sort of blush. And I think he wanted to be easy all the ways Jack was easy. The sort of civilized side of Jack, or be easy at dinners or if girls like you, and men. Because he knew he wasn't quite that way in the beginning, it almost went into a sort of a resentment. I mean, it was very mixed-up in his own inferior—he had a big inferiority complex, so you can see the thing sort of all working back and forth, but—and I never saw him very much in the White House.

He was very rarely invited—

Never.

Never.

I guess he came to a state dinner or so, but never a private one. Or maybe, maybe he came to one or two of the dances, I think. But that wouldn't have been—I mean, as he and Ted had the problems all day, that would be the last person you would invite at night.

One thing that mystified people over in the West Wing was the way George Smathers survived. The President would get very mad about Smathers, about Medicare, foreign aid, and say, "This will be the final test." Then Smathers would vote against it and then there he'd be again.

And I used to get so mad at that—and hurt. Then he'd say—well, he just had such charity. His friendship with Smathers was before the Senate, really, and before he was—I mean, in the Senate and before he was married. And I guess they'd see each other a bit, off and on in the summer or in—you know, Stockdale was a friend of Smathers.
⁸³
They weren't seeing each other so much lately. And it was really a friend of one side of Jack—a rather, I always thought, sort of a crude side. I mean, not that Jack had the crude side, but you could laugh or hear a story—you know, the kind of stories sort of Smathers tells—I don't know, but he didn't want to stick it to someone who'd once been a friend. And he knew when Smathers was hurting him, and he knew Smathers—

Kenny
⁸⁴
hated Smathers.

Yeah, and I didn't like Smathers. But he wouldn't go back against someone who'd been his friend. And he was hurt by him and he wouldn't—he didn't see him as much and everything personally but he just wouldn't ever—finally say, "O.K.—you're out—now we're enemies," because he was just too kind. So he just let things go on.

Mansfield, he thought, was doing an excellent job in the Senate. And McCormack, all right. Boggs, did he ever mention?
⁸⁵

Well, I know he liked Hale Boggs very much, yes. Hale Boggs had been our friend before the White House. We used to see them. You asked me before who we saw. And Mansfield we saw. He always loved Hale Boggs.

He looked forward to the legislative breakfasts, did he?

Yeah.

They were rather—they were fun. On—unreel this. Shall I send you this list—typed—with anything else that occurs to me?

Oh, just give me the little thing that—you don't have to type it. Just give me the scribbling.

Then I'll make a copy of it myself.

Do you want a piece of paper? Oh, here, I've got a whole pad.

Oh, really? Good. Thanks.
[chatting after the formal interview]
What was this you said about Johnson doing a kind of, on tape, a confession on how inadequate he was?

Oh, no, no. Joe Kraft said that someone who had been at that house got so frightened and was so, you know, rocked by seeing Johnson in his cups at four in the morning, saying he doubted if he had the equipment to be a president. But this person went home and put it on tape.

Oh, I see.

I don't know who that person was.
[ribbing Schlesinger]
Johnson putting it on tape!
[both laugh]

I wondered exactly the—seems improbable.
[long pause follows on tape, then]
Macmillan looked very well.
⁸⁶

He did, didn't he? And the—he didn't have that funny, sort of droopy look he used to have.

No, exactly. He looked very—when I saw him—he looked very sort of spruce and chipper. And he looked like he'd just come in from the country and he looked—

Well, I hope things are looking up for him because he really—

Well, he intervened in a by-election at Devizes and gave a speech and the Tories held that—astonishing—and he felt, I think, very cheerful about that, as if, politically—

You know, in the Cuban crisis—I didn't say it in the tape, but I was so surprised that all these people that did go away whose husbands were working in it.

Really? Was there a—it seems to me that your reaction is sort of the reaction you'd have to have.

Yeah, and well, then, maybe a lot of them were friends and things later, you know, just not in government, or—but you know, the one thought there was, if anything was going to happen they wanted to get out with their wife and—I mean the mother and the children? My God, I don't think that shows you love your husband very much!