Personal History (67 page)
Authors: Katharine Graham
In addition, because it was all so painful to me, I had found Phil’s illness and death difficult to talk about—even to the children, which must have added to their own heavy burden. At first I didn’t talk about Phil at all; I just shut the door, a mistake with an impact on all of us. Lally somewhat assuaged my guilt about Bill and Steve by writing me:
Yes, of course it’s ghastly for Billy and Stevie but I still believe so firmly that they were oh so lucky (moi aussi) to have had him for a father—even if it was only for eleven or fifteen years. Because even if I try desperately hard to be objective I find them both rather perfect and certainly think that so much is due to Pa and above all to you and Pa
together
.
On the social scene, one thing that happened was that I began to be asked out on “dates.” My principal suitor was Adlai Stevenson, who turned up increasingly in my life. It’s hard to judge exactly where I ranked among all his lady friends. For my part, I was always fond of him and admiring, but I was not at all enamored of him. I didn’t share the breathless enthusiasm my mother and daughter—and many other ladies—had for him. I used to get impatient with his indecision. A mutual friend, the British economist Barbara Ward, told me that I had to understand him and be more patient, but I found it difficult. Perhaps Phil’s ambivalent attitude
toward him had left me with some of
his
annoyance, but I think this was genuinely my own reaction. Nevertheless, I saw a great deal of Adlai. He stayed with me frequently when he came to Washington, and we went out in New York, too. I suspect that this was one of the few friendships he had with women in which there was more enthusiasm on his side.
In the summer of 1964, the
National Enquirer
did a story on the two of us, fueling all kinds of rumors:
UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson is involved in a romance that could become the hottest political story of the year. He is courting Mrs. Philip Graham, widow of the late publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, and the owner of a chain of TV stations.
If Mrs. Graham should agree to a wedding before the Democratic National Convention in August, friends of Stevenson report that his chances for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination would soar.
Not only would Stevenson gain an attractive wife but with her would go control of one of the most powerful TV-magazine-newspaper combines in the U.S.
I sent the clipping to Adlai with a bantering note, joking, “I am sure you didn’t realize the treat you have in store for you. After all, what could do your Vice Presidential chances more good than to marry a TV-magazine-newspaper combine? I am ready and waiting but we’d better announce before Atlantic City.”
T
HAT SUMMER
, Pam Berry came over from London to visit me and follow some of the political campaigning, so she and I and Joe Alsop set out for the Republican Convention in San Francisco on July 10, and Lally joined us as the convention began. I wrote my mother that I knew of “no nearer resemblance to the three witches in Macbeth huddling around the caldron than the thought of Pam and Lally and me in one establishment.”
We were all in a high state of alarm about the likely nomination of the extremely conservative—we thought reckless—Barry Goldwater. His views on nuclear issues disturbed us, as did his views on civil rights. In addition, he had attracted all the John Birch kind of Republicans. Goldwater seemed menacing to us at the time, but I realize now that we had a very distorted view of him—and an unfair one.
Memorable for me was a speech that former President Eisenhower made in which he attacked newspaper columnists; convention-goers throughout the entire hall started booing the press. Eisenhower’s theme
was taken up by every other speaker. One man who was seconding the nomination of the vice-president actually spat out the words: “Walter Lippmann, Walter Reuther,
The New York Times
, and
Pravda.”
This brought down the house, with everyone cheering wildly except those of us in the press section, who sat mournfully quiet. I felt we were watching a minority take over a major party.
Still, though I was clearly a Johnson supporter, I was intent on keeping the paper independent and maintaining the
Post
’s basic policy of nonendorsement. Mac and Mary Bundy came down to Glen Welby for a weekend in late July, between the two conventions. Just a few days afterwards, Mac wrote a memo for the president on what we had talked about. I didn’t know about this until more than thirty years later, when it was found in the Johnson Presidential Library. The memo is interesting for its insider look both at what Mac and I discussed that weekend and for its insight into Johnson’s hopes for an endorsement and the way an administration dealt with the press:
Mary and I had a delightful weekend at Kay Graham’s, in the course of which I told her that it would be a great help if the Post would endorse us openly. I told her that this seemed only a reasonable request in the light of her violent comments on the Republican Convention and on Goldwater himself. She asked me with a smile whether I was acting for you, and I said of course; I asked her whom else she thought I would be acting for. She then told me that if I were a Washingtonian I would know that the Washington Post has never given its formal endorsement to anyone, and she told me that if any of us at the White House can’t tell whom the Post is for, then it must be because we can’t read. I told her in reply that just because the Post had never endorsed someone, it ought to begin now, when the stakes are so high and the issues so clear, but I got no commitment.
My very strong impression is that Kay Graham needs a little personal attention from you. Not from her but from other people in the Post-Newsweek establishment, I have heard snippy remarks to the effect that Harry Luce, the arch Republican, seems to be more welcome around the White House than people who have supported the Kennedy-Johnson Administration 90% of the time. I find that the parable of the laborers in the vineyard does not do much good with such people (it is not the most persuasive of the parables for most of us).
My suggestion is that you might ask Kay to come for lunch or an informal dinner some day, on the same basis that Harry Luce
came the last time. If you ask her and then ask her to bring any three or four of her people from either the magazine or the newspaper, I think a lot of good can be done. I know that a lot of these individuals are not your favorites, but I cannot help thinking that if we can swing the Chamber of Commerce, we ought to be able to handle the busy liberals—especially as Kay herself is very sensible when she hears both sides.…
Mac offered the president three options: work out a lunch, work out an informal dinner, let it wait a while. LBJ chose the last. Someone else had put a handwritten note on the memo before it went to the president saying that Bundy had been shown how many times I had been invited to the White House in the last six months. Those occasions had included a luncheon for Queen Frederika of Greece, a dinner for the prime minister of Denmark, a luncheon for “women-doers” that I’d regretted, and a lunch for newspaper publishers.
As it happens, just two days after Mac’s memo had gone to the president, I wrote to Senator Goldwater. In my efforts to bend over backwards to be fair in the paper and in
Newsweek
, I wanted to ensure that we were not giving him short shrift:
I know you knew my husband Philip Graham and regret very much that I don’t know you. I would like very much to come to see you on a “get acquainted” basis if you should have a few minutes within the next few weeks. I will call your office to see if this is possible. We would also like to have you to lunch here at the paper or at Newsweek or both if possible, and I feel it would help us in our coverage of your campaign. If you could do one here, I would be glad to have the Newsweek editors down.
In the meantime I want to say to you how very much it has been my desire and will continue to be my desire to cover the campaign as fairly and objectively as we can. Of course I include the three parts of The Washington Post Company when I say this—The Post itself, Newsweek, and the television stations here and in Jacksonville.
When I use the words “fairly and objectively” I realize how difficult this is to achieve at all and how differently too it can be viewed.
I would appreciate it very much if you would send any differences of opinion on this subject to me at once should they arise—or we would also be glad to cooperate with you or your staff in any way you feel we can help insure complete and accurate reporting.
These are not idle words as I believe very deeply that we in control of news media have a solemn obligation to this kind of news reporting and that much depends on our ability to fulfill it.
Nor were they idle words. I believed intuitively—and the feeling grew with experience—that the news columns
had
to be fair and detached, even while recognizing that there really is no such thing as “objectivity.” The very act of deciding what is news and what is not involves the use of judgment, and editors should use their best detached judgment to achieve fairness in news columns. The editorial page and editorial views are so completely separate from the news columns that they sometimes are not even in touch, and certainly don’t influence each other.
The Democratic National Convention of 1964 began in late August in Atlantic City. I took Don around with me a good deal, and he got a lot out of it. A former girlfriend of his was also at the convention, but—somewhat to my embarrassment, I have to admit—she was there as part of the “human chain” around the auditorium, demonstrating on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Party.
The heat and humidity in Atlantic City were intense, and we were all glad when the week wound down. Hot and tired, we headed for the airport. I had with me my secretary, Charlie Paradise, and Luvie Pearson and Lally, along with a few
Post
reporters and photographers who were going to fly back with us on the company plane. Because of some confusion, we arrived at the airport an hour later than the intended takeoff time, and when we got there, Air Force One was drawn up at the gate and our plane was way off across the field. When it finally pulled up closer, our bags and the photographers’ gear were loaded, the nine of us were collected, and we all boarded the plane and sat there melting in the extreme heat while the airfield was shut down because the helicopters with the president and vice-presidential candidate aboard were arriving.
I was gnashing my teeth when Lally said, “Oh, Ma, let’s go see the helicopters land.” With the temperature at a steaming one hundred degrees inside the plane, I agreed. By the time we had run over to the fence, the president was out of the helicopter with Lady Bird and had started walking down the long line of the crowd gathered at the airport, shaking hands across the fence. Luvie, Lally, and I were at the end of the line, between two parked cars and the fence. I didn’t think the president would come down that far, but he did. He wasn’t really looking as he walked right past me, shaking hands automatically. I was wearing a bandanna around my sweaty head, a sleeveless cotton dark-blue dress, no stockings, and moccasins, so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize me. Involuntarily I exclaimed, “Hi, Lyndon,” never having called him anything but “Mr.
President” since November 22. He stopped, looked surprised, and said, “Hello, Kay, what are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to leave,” I replied.
“Do you want a ride?” he asked.
I was so flabbergasted that I assumed absent-mindedly that he was going to Washington and asked if Lally and Luvie could come too. He said, “Sure, but you realize we’re going to Texas?”
“Texas!” I exclaimed. “I can’t go to Texas.” Steve was expecting me in Washington, and I had houseguests already waiting at Glen Welby; obviously I had to get home. Luvie kicked me hard in the shins and said firmly, “Go.”
“Come on,” the president continued. “Have you got a bag?”
“Yes, but don’t bother with it. I don’t want to keep you waiting, and I’d love to come.” Before I could turn around, two Secret Service men descended and asked where my bags were. Another one, who turned out to be the president’s chief agent, Rufus Youngblood, said, “Follow me.” Rufus and I became friends, and he told me later that Johnson had said, “Lift that woman over the fence.” Happily for me, Rufus had pointed out that there was a gate and ushered me through it. Luvie had heard the whole exchange, but I only had time to say to Lally as I was whisked past her, “I’m off to Texas.” Considering my two suitcases full of dirty, smelly clothes worn in the damp heat of Atlantic City, I believe no one ever started out for a state visit so inadequately prepared.
The president grabbed my arm and took me to the stairs of the 707. I hung back, waiting for him to go up, but instead he pushed me ahead of him into the jet. A reporter asked my name as we went up the steps, the door closed, and off we went.
I hastily looked around the small compartment into which I had stepped, which included only the Humphreys—Hubert had just been nominated for the vice-presidency—and the Tom Connallys and the Humphreys’ son, Douglas, then sixteen. I fled to the front of the plane, where I found, besides a press pool, every Texas politician I had ever heard of and other important Texans from business and industry. From the White House staff were George Reedy, Jack Valenti, and Bill Moyers, the latter two chomping at the bit, having been suddenly herded onto the plane when they were exhausted from the campaign and the convention and had been promised time off.
I settled down with someone from the governor’s staff and had just begun to talk Texas politics when Lady Bird came down the aisle and said, “Kay, there’s a man back there who wants to see you.” I went back to where the president was, sat down at a table opposite him, and began by congratulating him on the way the convention had gone, the outcome of
the credentials fight, the selection of Humphrey, and the manner in which he had handled it all. The president then launched into a description of what had gone on from his point of view regarding his choice for the vice-presidency. “I have never touched so many bases on any issue,” he said, enumerating some of the two hundred or so calls he had made. He emphasized that he had wanted the process to get to a point where people were fairly unanimous in their choice and were urging him to take someone, rather than his pushing them to accept his choice. In the end, I gather, the Kennedys and other crucial people were all entreating him to name Humphrey, and that is exactly as he wished it to happen.