Personal History (68 page)

The president complained despairingly about his living quarters in Atlantic City: “Will you tell me how I ended up in a two-bedroom un-air-conditioned house fifteen minutes from the center of town with no food? After I changed my shirt once and my pajamas twice, I just gave up. It was right on the street with people outside the window, so you couldn’t even open the windows, and there were fifteen people in the two bedrooms. Then, when I wanted to go out, Security had locked the doors. Bird, how did that happen?” he yelled out.

We then went on to discuss various people in the media. Of those at
Newsweek
, LBJ said that he had not trusted Ben Bradlee at first but was impressed with the accuracy of his reporting of the interview that both Bradlee and Jack Steele of
Time
had with him; he was beginning to change his mind about Ben. He said that Eddie Folliard was his favorite
Post
reporter, and maybe his favorite reporter, period.

He then moved on to the newspapers that would be for him, naming the Cowles papers, Tom Vail’s Cleveland paper, Oveta Hobby’s, and the
Kansas City Star
, the latter two of which did indeed endorse shortly thereafter. He speculated on others and said he thought that Otis Chandler and the
Los Angeles Times
would not endorse. He was obviously hoping for our endorsement, but I wasn’t yet prepared to change the policy inherited from Phil and my father. After some remarks about various possibilities for the Cabinet, the president suddenly said he was going back to the bedroom and left, and I returned to the front of the plane.

As I was chatting with Mary Rather, the president’s secretary, an air-force major came by and said, “You are to get in the number-one chopper.” Lady Bird followed and told me to remember “the Gay bedroom” if someone asked where to put my bags or where I was to go. I took the opportunity to suggest that I just return to Washington from Austin, telling her I felt the president had been carried away and that I had enjoyed the trip immensely but that I really shouldn’t be there when she was so tired and he needed to confer with Humphrey. She insisted that I come, but said she hoped I’d understand if she disappeared into bed for about twenty-four hours. She never did, poor thing.

There were several hundred people waiting in the broiling heat at the air-force base near Austin where we landed, and all four of the principals—Lyndon and Lady Bird, Hubert and Muriel—worked the line for a long time. Later, the president mentioned choosing to shake a “colored” hand over several white ones, substantiating something Bill Moyers had said to me when I expressed worry about the quick invitation: “Don’t be silly; he’s impetuous but he always knows what he’s doing.”

The hand-shaking and picture-taking finally ended, and a kind airforce major took me to the helicopter at a discreet moment when the wives were entering and before the candidates got there. I was glad to be out of the limelight, having spent a great deal of time jumping around to try to avoid being included in public events or photos with the two families.

I was charmed by the Humphreys, whom I hadn’t known very well. I found him truly funny, utterly human and honest, and her the same. During the helicopter ride, there was a marvelous exchange between the candidates, begun by Humphrey, who said he just wished his daddy could have been there at the convention on Thursday night. LBJ said he only wished
his
daddy had lived to see him in Congress, which had been the height of his father’s ambition for him. “My dad lived that long,” Humphrey responded. “I was elected in January and he had a stroke the following March, but he was there when I was sworn in. When I looked up at him he was in such a glow of pride he looked as if he had a halo around his head.”

At one point Johnson said that he would love to make Arthur Goldberg, who was on the Supreme Court, attorney general, but concluded, “I’ll probably put Katzenbach in, at least for a while. I’d like Goldberg to do it, but he probably won’t want to get off the Court. I started to talk to him about it the other day, but I just started to get my hand up his skirt when we were interrupted”—typical of Johnson’s earthy language.

I was momentarily alarmed when LBJ’s head fell over in a snooze, but the short nap seemed like a shot in the arm and revived him completely. He woke up just in time to point out the ranch and the swimming pool as we landed in a swirl of dust that blew across the cattle looking up from the surrounding fields. He invited me to sit beside him in the front of an electric golf cart, which he drove. Lady Bird sat on my other side, and the three Humphreys climbed in behind and we lurched away.

Instead of taking us to the house, he started down the driveway, across the Pedernales River, and out the front gate and down the highway. The cars passing by slowed up to look. People waved. The president exchanged greetings. Cameras were hanging out of every car, and he willingly stopped for pictures.

As people got out of their cars to shake hands, traffic stalled. The
Secret Service, used to Johnson’s sudden whims, kept things fairly calm and good-natured, but I noticed that they had emerged suddenly from everywhere and were very much on the lookout. Finally, the president turned back to the house, by then talking about boating. Lady Bird firmly but gently got him to rest in bed, while the Humphreys and I went swimming.

The president reappeared after only a short rest and asked if we wanted to go boating. When we agreed, to Muriel’s and my utter astonishment we found ourselves back in the helicopter, to be swept across what looked like a brown desert to pick up a friend and then flown back to a huge inland lake where the president’s boat was kept.

“Come on, Kay,” the president said, “you go in the little boat with me.” The rest of the party got in a larger motorboat, while he and I and his young secretary, Vicky, got in a rakish speedboat behind which she water-skied at his request. By now it was dusk and quite cold in the water. The president drove at breakneck speed, occasionally bouncing on the water as if it were concrete, which slowed him down only temporarily. Two Secret Service boats followed us, trying to steer clear of the skier.

He finally handed over the speedboat to a Secret Service agent and we got into the big boat with the others, whereupon he again started reviewing Humphrey’s nomination. He mentioned that he owed his own nomination largely to Phil and talked about how Phil had always thought that he, Johnson, was better than other people did. He also confided that many people, especially conservatives, had urged that he take Robert McNamara for vice-president, not realizing, said Johnson, that McNamara was far more liberal than they thought, assuming he must be conservative because he had been the president of Ford Motor Company.

The discussions at dinner were wide-ranging and always political. That first night we talked about the loyalty of Mrs. Earl Long in the Louisiana delegation, at which point—right in the middle of the conversation—the president picked up the ever-present phone from under the table and tried unsuccessfully to call her. Later, he referred to the next year’s budget and said that, although it would have to increase, he still wanted to keep it under $100 billion—which, by all sorts of game-playing, he managed to do.

Although we were all ready to collapse from such a long day—not to mention such an action-packed week—when dinner was over, LBJ suggested a walk down the road to call on Cousin Oriole and Aunt Jessie, who lived in a little cabin at the end of the lane. Aunt Jessie was the youngest of the previous generation of Johnsons and the only surviving member. Oriole was almost completely deaf, and the president had to beat on the door and yell like a banshee before they woke up and opened the door.

We waited for a moment while they put on wraps; then we all sat on
the porch where Aunt Jessie had been sleeping. The president actually lay down on the bed and went to sleep while the rest of us talked to the old lady, a ritual which the secretaries told us was followed every time he went home. Hubert carried on a conversation with Aunt Jessie, drawing out her stories—one about LBJ’s father announcing his birth by saying, “Here is a senator”; another about a birthday party of hers to which many people had brought presents. The president had brought only a cake, but when she cut into it, she was relieved to find a $100 bill inside.

On the way back to the ranch house, Lady Bird turned to me and said, “Kay, I’m afraid I don’t know how to tell you to ring for breakfast in the morning. We used to have a real simple system in the house, but it has all been replaced and I don’t understand it.” She asked an agent walking beside us what I should do. “Just ask the operator, ma’am, and he can get you any place in the world.” I laughed and asked if he could get me something as simple as the kitchen.

Saturday was much like the previous day. The two candidates discussed campaign strategy, Humphrey volunteering to go into farm areas, where he felt at home. After another outing on the boat, we got back late for a country barbecue that LBJ had to attend in honor of his birthday. He grumbled all the way, complaining that Lady Bird had gotten him into it. He was so savage about her that I, sitting in the front seat, spontaneously said, “She also got you where you are today.” This angered him even more, and he went on blaming her and complaining, until I finally heard myself saying, “Oh, shut up, er … Mr. President”—after which I was acutely embarrassed. I was half in awe of him and half felt as though I really knew him. There was a brief silence, broken by Hubert being his usual jovial self and making some comment that alleviated the tension.

At the barbecue, the president ended up speaking at great length and seriously about world affairs. When I commented on this on the way back, he said that he didn’t want all those reporters to think these were hick people whom he didn’t take seriously, but that he had talked much longer than he had meant to. I thought the speech very good.

There were some neighbors in that night for a late dinner. Again, the conversation ranged across a lot of subjects, but, despite his talking on and on, LBJ seemed so preoccupied that I asked him if he was worried about the Vietnam situation, which had not yet been mentioned. “Yes, very,” he replied, without elaborating. At one point he turned to Humphrey and said, “God has a funny way of taking care of things. I think it’s because I always try to do right.”

That night, after dinner, Johnson and Humphrey and some of the staff who were there at the ranch sat up until 2:00 a.m. working on campaign plans. We were supposed to leave at 9:00 the next morning, but our early departure got pushed back, though, when it was decided we would
all go to church in Fredericksburg, about thirty miles from the ranch. Even though this was an unannounced stop, there were a number of reporters and cameras. It was such a tiny church that after the Johnsons took communion they had to leave their seats in the front row and stand outside until everyone else had taken communion, when they returned for the end of the service.

As we returned to the ranch, the president was again at the wheel, followed by an increasingly long line of cars, all headed for his old birthplace, which had been fixed up. As we got out, he picked up the intercom and told the Secret Service agents to allow only photographers to follow us. There ensued about an hour and a half of picture-taking, first at the house, then at the old family graveyard, then outside in a field of cattle, and finally at the superintendent’s cottage. It was an extraordinary performance, especially Humphrey’s remark when he stepped in a cow flop: “Oh, Mr. President, I’ve just stepped on the Republican platform.”

Lunch was ordered by telephone to be ready in twenty-five minutes. Two hours and several telephone calls later, we finally all sat down, fourteen strong, to a Mexican meal of chili and tamales at which the discussion was about getting around the Dirksen Amendment in order to preserve foreign aid.

The plane, which we had planned to board in Austin, was told to come to the ranch to pick us up. Just before we left, I asked for two minutes alone with the president. He took me into his bedroom and sat me on a chair while he lay down on the bed. I then talked in terms I had inherited from Phil and in a way I would never have done later—and that embarrasses me now. I told him I had the feeling that he thought my point of view was different from Phil’s, but that in general Phil and I had agreed. I said that, much as I admired and loved President Kennedy, Phil personally had got along with him much better than I had. I also said that I admired the legislation he himself had got passed and was for him and wanted to make sure he knew it. Although we had a policy at the
Post
against contributing to campaigns, it had been followed loosely. Phil hadn’t actually contributed to campaigns, but I had. I guess I forgot I was now in the other seat, because I told the president that my mother and I both wanted to contribute to his campaign. Later, I came to believe that the paper had to be completely neutral, and I decided never to make another contribution to a presidential campaign. In any case, the president said he had appreciated our help in the past and added warmly that we must see more of each other. He didn’t mention an endorsement, said that he understood I had to run an independent paper, and gave me a goodbye kiss.

Publicly, I maintained my independent stance throughout the campaign, but privately and openly among my friends, I was clearly an LBJ
supporter. My support for him actually got me in trouble with Russ Wiggins. Sometime that fall, Russ and I were together with the president. Chal Roberts, in his history of
The Washington Post
, reported that I told the president that the
Post
would not endorse him. According to Chal, “When tears welled up in LBJ’s eyes, she added, ‘Oh, we’re for you 100 percent.’ Wiggins was appalled at her remark; he knew his boss still had a lot to learn.” That was partly true. Though I had made it clear to LBJ from the beginning that we wouldn’t endorse him, I felt he could read between the lines of the paper and realize that the
Post
was positive about his programs. Yet Russ was right to be upset that I had said we were for him.