Personal History (76 page)

The American home front was experiencing tremendous tumult and upheaval that spring. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered, and the country went up in flames. The situation in Washington deteriorated throughout the night of his assassination. I stayed at the paper, and several of us climbed up onto the roof to look out over the city at the large fires—especially on 14th Street, near the
Post
. Rioting and looting were taking place everywhere. Finally, over fourteen thousand National Guard troops were joined on the streets by the District’s full contingent of nearly three thousand police officers. Joe Califano, LBJ’s aide, later said that they got one report at the White House that Stokely Carmichael was organizing
a mob at 14th and U to march on Georgetown and burn it down. Joe recalled that President Johnson read the report, smiled, and said, “Goddamn, I’ve waited thirty-five years for this day,” preserving his sense of humor in the middle of the riots while venting his ever-present disdain for what he viewed as an elitist enclave.

T
HE PHONE RANG
in my bedroom very early on the morning of June 5. Ben was calling to tell me that Bobby Kennedy had been shot, adding, “We need to stop the presses and replate with the story. Jim Daly refuses to stop the presses, and I think you had better get down here.” Daly, the
Post
’s general manager, was haunted by the prospect of late delivery and dissatisfied subscribers. I arrived at the plant and found Harry Gladstein, the circulation director, on the back platform and asked him what our alternatives were. We decided that since it was already 4 a.m., beyond our usual delivery hours, we would go ahead and deliver the papers that had been printed and then recover the routes with a special edition. It would be expensive, of course, but if we wanted to tell our readers about this shattering piece of news, this was what we had to do. My decision to proceed caused yet another problem in my relationship with John Sweeterman. I should have checked with him, but I was there on the spot and simply didn’t think in that kind of managerial way. In fact, John had been on his way in to the paper, and when he got there he said to me icily, “I hear you’ve been giving orders on the loading dock.” I said I had, and that time we both retreated. I imagine that John would have given the same order, because he was always willing to spend money when it mattered, and it clearly mattered in this case.

Another change in a relationship took place at the time Bobby died—this one not directly connected with me but with the paper. Herblock had drawn a cartoon with a roll of dishonor on it, listing all the senators who had voted against gun control. The caption on it was “Murder.” It seemed to Phil Geyelin that publishing Herblock’s cartoon on the day of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination was just too rough, and he decided to take the caption out and leave the cartoon. Herb was furious and reacted strongly. Not only did the incident result in “no-speak” between the two of them for at least six months, but Herb gradually removed himself from editorial control, becoming more and more independent. He started to—and still does—walk out into the newsroom to check his judgment with a group of people whom he likes and trusts. It was an irritating arrangement for Geyelin, but by that time Herb was so powerful and respected that he could get away with flaunting his independence.

The next day, June 6, I went to “Resurrection City” with the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, a black minister and city leader, to see the muddy,
cold area where the blacks and civil-rights leaders who had marched on Washington at that time were camped. On the seventh, I flew to New York for Bobby’s funeral the following day at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was a highly emotional service, followed by an equally wrenching ride back to Washington on the funeral train for the burial in Arlington Cemetery. The memory of that day is seared into my mind, watching the mourners lining the railroad tracks and the weeping people in the stations, and making the sad climb up to the spot on the hill in the cemetery beside where his brother was buried.

To me, Bobby was a complex character. He could be very tough—as he was and probably had to be as JFK’s campaign manager. We had occasionally been at odds, and he had once reduced me to tears over a piece on Jackie Kennedy that had appeared in the
Post
. At a dinner at Joe Alsop’s, Bobby attacked me and the paper about the article, saying sharply to me, “You have lost your husband, too. You should know better.” His comment caused Joe to shake his head and mutter, “It’s like a young nephew attacking his rich old aunt.” We had both got past that and become friends. Like thousands of others, I saw him grow and change and become a significant political figure, relating to people with a charisma different from but as compelling as JFK’s. Though I had some concerns about Bobby’s positions on certain issues, he had become a passionate and articulate advocate for many of the things in which I deeply believed.

M
UCH OF THE SUMMER
of 1968 was taken up with political matters of one kind or another. Without Johnson and Kennedy in the picture, the presidential-election campaign took on a different shape, with Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Wallace all in the running. Having made his famous “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” speech, Nixon had returned to political life. He had a number of image problems to overcome and had worked throughout the primary season to accomplish that. In mid-July, he came to an editorial lunch at the
Post
. Among those who attended were Don Graham, safely back from Vietnam only a week earlier, as well as several reporters and editors. Rockefeller had been there the week before, arriving for lunch with an entourage of sorts. Nixon came alone. He began by saying how glad he was to be at the
Post
and welcomed the gathering. I mentioned that I thought he and I had first met in 1946. “No, Kay,” he said, confidently, “it was 1947. We met at that marvelous house of your parents. There were a lot of very prominent people there and I couldn’t figure out what I, a very poor congressman, was doing in that company.”

We sat down to lunch, which Nixon refused to eat on the grounds that
he had to watch his weight. I persuaded him to have some iced coffee, which he took but never touched. At least two people made notes after the lunch, and two memos—one from an editor, Al Horne, and one from Ward Just—have survived which recall what we discussed and what Nixon said at the time. He felt confident that he would win the nomination on the first ballot and commented that Rockefeller had even less chance with the Republicans than McCarthy did with the Democrats. He was already thinking about his running mate but knew it would depend on which state he needed to win the general election. He mentioned several possibilities—Spiro Agnew not among them. He offered the opinion that Humphrey would do best if he ran in the opposite direction from the administration’s record—which turned out to be accurate, but Humphrey separated himself from Johnson too late to make much difference.

On the Vietnam War, Nixon felt that things had changed a great deal since he was last in a position of power, that the domino theory wasn’t as valid in 1968 as it had been. He also recognized that the public clearly wanted to end the war, but that the new president had to hold out for some kind of “honorable settlement.”

Nixon handled himself so brilliantly throughout the lunch that we were all truly impressed. Meg Greenfield, who had only just come to the paper, said she’d have to go home and lie down to think over what she’d seen and heard. Geyelin, in reflecting on this episode later, said he thought it was one of those rare moments in Nixon’s life when he didn’t feel threatened by anybody; he was on top of the world, with the convention all locked up. But as soon as he got to Miami, at the slightest challenge from Rockefeller and Reagan, Nixon began to feel threatened, worrying that those two would somehow get together and stop him. It was then that he turned mean again, according to Phil. I attended the Republican Convention and witnessed Nixon’s nomination, an extraordinary comeback from his defeat for the governorship in California.

Later, Steve and I flew together to Chicago, right into the stresses of the Democratic Convention. Humphrey emerged the winner over McCarthy, the peace candidate, but the chaotic convention hurt him mortally going into the fall campaign. Few would soon forget the images of the violence of the demonstrations outside in the streets—which I witnessed close up along with Nick von Hoffman—or the picture, televised nationally, of Mayor Daley signaling to cut the demonstrators off by making a slashing motion across his throat.

At the
Post
, we stuck by our policy of nonendorsement, at least in theory. In effect we supported Humphrey indirectly by saying in our editorials, “If you believe in this or that, then you’ll want to vote for X or Y.” At the time of Nixon’s nomination, the
Post
had carried an editorial saying that he “had shown an admirable understanding and restraint in his public
approach to Vietnam; a commendable comprehension of some aspects of the Nation’s social ills.” However, it also said that in private “he has revealed a disquieting disregard for principle, not to say good sense, in his discussion of the war, of the courts, of open housing and gun control and other things. As well as we ought to know him by now, he remains remarkably unknown.”

We had also editorialized about Nixon’s choice of a running mate. In an editorial titled “The Perils of Spiro,” we said, “Given enough time, Nixon’s decision … to name Agnew as his running mate may come to be regarded as perhaps the most eccentric political appointment since the Roman emperor Caligula named his horse a consul.” Ward Just, then writing editorials, wrote this one and also said, “[Y]ou can view Agnew with alarm, or you can point to him with pride, but for now we prefer to look on with horrified fascination.”

My mother, ever the political commentator, wrote me before the election, sending along a form letter she had received from Nixon that had been addressed to “my fellow citizens of the Jewish faith,” and extending Jewish New Year’s greetings. She appended the note: “I do think that he gives
The Washington Post
more opportunities for humor than the Editorial Department realizes.”

Hubert Humphrey had become a friend of mine. I admired him greatly and feel he would have made an ideal president. Humphrey, however, had never been a favorite of Lyndon Johnson’s, who considered him gabby, going so far as to remark often to Jack Valenti, “Those people from Minnesota, they just can’t keep their mouths shut.” LBJ felt Humphrey’s gabbiness got him into trouble, because he ended up leaking information that cost the administration. He didn’t think that Humphrey leaked deliberately but that he was so effervescent he would talk when he should have been listening.

Of course, Johnson was right about Humphrey’s being effusive, but he could also be remarkably eloquent, reducing people to laughter and tears almost simultaneously. He often made off-the-cuff, brilliant remarks, but then would not be able to stop, and would go on and on until the dazzling effect wore off and the audience grew restless instead of mesmerized. Hubert’s saving grace was his humor. He was just incredibly funny, and I found him to be a wonderful companion always.

But despite Humphrey’s attractive qualities, Richard Nixon was elected, in one of our closest elections. Phil Geyelin wrote the
Post’s
editorial on Nixon’s victory, saying he had “fully earned the opportunity to test himself, he has also earned encouragement, cooperation, good wishes and an open mind among those whose security and welfare have been placed in such large measure in his hands.”

Even Herblock provided Nixon with a honeymoon—however short.
In his cartoons throughout the campaign—indeed, throughout Nixon’s entire political career—Herb had drawn him with a five-o’clock shadow that seemed to grow darker as the weeks (and years) went by, becoming almost a beard at some point. Russ Wiggins had sent Herb a razor, suggesting that maybe it was time to give Nixon a shave. When we discussed the beard at an editorial conference one day, Herb pointed to a picture of Nixon in that day’s paper which clearly showed a heavy growth of beard to be a distinguishing feature of the man. He claimed that the dark face was a characteristic like any other—large ears, a prominent nose, whatever—and therefore fair game for a cartoonist. Actually, Herb’s cartoon that appeared after election day made it clear he recognized that a president of the United States has to be handled somewhat differently from a candidate for the office. He drew his own office as a barbershop with a sign on the wall that read: “This shop gives to every new President of the United States a free shave. H. Block, proprietor.”

Much had been going on at the
Post
while this political year proceeded. Typically and modestly, Russ had notified me in June 1968 that he would indeed retire on his sixty-fifth birthday, “without any undue fanfare or attention,” at the end of the year. As Russ explained in his letter to me, he had a “personal distaste for a lot of flap” and also felt that this way would be better for the institution.

I wrote Russ that I literally could not imagine the
Post
without him. Of all the helpful people there when I was new to my job, Russ was the most helpful: “The nicest thing you did was to take me seriously when a lot of people wouldn’t have, but not too seriously, which was just right.” In fact, Russ left earlier than expected, because President Johnson appointed him ambassador to the United Nations in late September. It had been twenty-one years since Russ’s arrival at the
Post
, and it was a wrench for me to see him leave.

Russ’s departure caused a series of changes in the structure of our organization and in the management of the news-and-editorial side of the
Post
. Being nonpolitical and nonpartisan, Ben was geared to hard news and never much interested in editorial, so, when he became executive editor after Russ left, we both agreed that the editorial page, which was now under Phil Geyelin, should report to me rather than to him. I didn’t know Meg Greenfield very well then, and at first I was puzzled that Phil took her everywhere with him. Meg rapidly made her own place in the organization, and only ten months after she had come to the paper, I sent Phil a note saying I’d been thinking about the necessity for him to have a “No. 2” eventually, and wondered if it might be Meg—“Or do you discriminate? Or would she hate it?” Just a year after she arrived, Phil named her deputy editor of the editorial page. I gave him great credit for appreciating Meg’s amazing mind and extraordinary ability both to write and to
edit, and her prodigious capacity for work. It was foresighted of Phil to make her his deputy—well ahead of upward mobility for women. For Phil, Meg was a real partner; he once described their working together as being like “two people at the piano playing ‘Chopsticks.’ ”