The Passage of Power (130 page)

“The thing I feared”
:
Johnson interview with Goodwin,
Lyndon Johnson,
pp. 199, 344.
“Might have incurred”
:
Baker with King,
Wheeling and Dealing,
p. 271.

Power always
reveals:
Caro,
Master of the Senate,
p. xxi.
“Well, what the hell’s the presidency for
:
Fortas, quoted in Miller,
Lyndon,
p. 337; Fortas interview.
“They’ve got the bit”
:
McPherson interview.
“Murdered”
:
Transcript, “10:10 P.M., to Ted Sorensen, preceded by Bill Moyers and Sorensen,”
TPR,
Vol. I, p. 168.
“At that moment”
:
Johnson,
The Vantage Point,
p. 40.
“So spontaneous”
:
Heller OH I.

When he was young:
The description of Lyndon Johnson on the road gang is from Caro,
The Path to Power
, pp. 132–34; of him picking cotton, Caro,
Path,
p. 121. For his work in a cotton gin, Caro,
Path,
p. 132.

“From the day”
:
Caro,
Path,
p. 535; Rowe interview.
“By
God
”
:
Hopkins interview.
Greenbrier incident:
Caro,
Path,
pp. xiii–xvi.

REA offer:
Caro,
Path,
pp. 576–77.
Urged in 1946:
Caro,
Means of Ascent,
p. 120.
“Couldn’t stand”
:
Harbin, quoted in
Path,
p. 229.
“Detour”
;
“dead end”
:
Caro,
Master of the Senate,
p. 111.
“Here’s
where”
:
Connally interview, quoted in Caro,
Means,
p. 120.
“He believed”
;
“FDR-LBJ”
:
Busby interview, quoted in
Means,
pp. 137–39.

“He was”
;
“Watch”
:
Caro,
Master,
p. 136.
“I never”
:
Edward Clark, Corcoran interviews, quoted in
Master,
p. 157.
“The right size”
:
Jenkins, quoted in
Master,
p. 136.

“Obsolesence”
:
Galloway,
The Legislative Process in Congress,
p. 584.
“Were the happiest”
:
Lady Bird Johnson interview, quoted in
Master,
p. 1040.

Johnson at 1956 Convention:
Caro,
Master,
pp. 803–27.
“Don’t you worry”
:
Steele to Johnson, July 8, 1960, SP.

Rayburn’s plaque:
Steinberg,
Sam Rayburn,
p. 236.
“Consequential action”
:
Graham to Johnson, Dec. 20 1956, box 101, LBJA SF, quoted in Caro,
Master,
p. 848.
“If he didn’t”
:
Corcoran interview, quoted in Caro,
Master,
p. 850.
“If I failed”
:
Johnson, quoted in Caro,
Master,
p 850.
“Armageddon”
:
“Lyndon Johnson, Civil Rights and 1960,” Rowe to Johnson, July 3, 1957, Box 32, LBJA SN, quoted in
Master,
p. 923.
“It opened”
:
Reedy,
Lyndon B. Johnson,
p. 120, quoted in
Master,
p. 1003.
“It’s just”
:
Johnson, quoted in McPherson,
A Political Education,
p. 148, quoted in
Master,
p. 1003.

“We can never”
:
Russell, quoted in
Master,
pp. 853, 1127. By 1957, George Reedy says, “Russell was very determined to elect Lyndon Johnson President of the United States, Reedy OH VIII, p. 100, quoted in
Master,
p. 787

Ranch memo:
Herring, Kilgore interviews.
“He was big all right”
:
Donald Oresman interview, quoted in
Master,
p. 120.
When they called Connally and Jenkins:
John Connally, Jenkins, Herring, Kilgore interviews.

Washington meeting in 1957:
Corcoran, Reedy, Rowe interviews. The meeting is described in
Master,
pp. 948, 949.
“You know”
:
Reedy interview. Corcoran was to tell the author also that he told Johnson flatly, “If he didn’t pass a civil rights bill, he could just forget [the] 1960 [nomination].”
“It was … time”
:
Reedy interview.
Explaining:
Rowe interview. During this time, Rowe and Johnson would be discussing the purport of their conversations with, among others, BeLieu, Busby, Connally, Corcoran and Oltorf, and they confirm and supplement Rowe’s account.
“An
almost mystical”
:
Reedy OH IX.
Rowe’s memorandum:
McCullough,
Truman,
pp. 590–92; Rowe interview.
“Tend the store”
:
Time,
July 18, 1960; Hardeman and Bacon,
Rayburn,
p. 436.
“Thirty years”
:
Newsweek,
1958.
A “playboy”
:
Douglas, OH, JFKL.
“Sickly”
;
“He never said a word”
:
“Here was a young
whippersnapper, malaria-ridden and yellah, sickly,
sickly,” Johnson said. Goodwin,
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,
p. 780.

“I was so anxious”
:
“Telephone Conversation between Abe Fortas and Walter Jenkins,” May 21, 1960, “Transcript of Telephone Calls, May 1960,” OFWJ, Series 2.
“I’m trying”
:
Hardeman interview.
“Speculation”
:
Steele to Williamson, March 4, 1958, SP.
“The Congresional [
sic
]”
:
NYT,
June 19, 1960.
“You can cross”
:
“Telephone Conversation between Secretary Anderson and Walter Jenkins,” June 28, 1960, “Transcripts of Telephone Calls—June 1960,” OFWJ, Series 2.

“He said he wasn’t going to do
anything
”
:
Rowe OH II.
“Endlessly”
:
Corcoran interview.
“Seen in ’56”
;
“I wrote him a memo”
:
Rowe interview.
When, in August:
Rowe to Johnson, Aug. 27, 1958; Johnson to Rowe, Sept. 3, 1958, Box 32, LBJA SN.
Just a day;
“It won’t do you any good”
:
Rowe interview.
“He wasn’t really”
:
Kilgore interview.
“One so often”
:
Reedy OH II.

“He’s never had”
:
Busby OH, JFKL, Busby interview.
No campaign to manage:
Connally, Jenkins interviews.
As much as
“he [Johnson] wanted”
:
Connally, quoted in Connally with Herskowitz,
In History’s Shadow,
p. 160.

“He wanted one thing”
:
Rowe interview. “He started this thing and ran away from it. Because of his insecurity,” Rowe said. In an interview with the author, Horace Busby laid Johnson’s “hesitancy” to “this combination of self-doubt—that he was rising too high.… ‘Don’t try for it because
you’re not going to get it.’ ”
Jenkins warned Baker;
“a fighting record”
;
“Johnson feared”
;
“haunted”
:
Baker,
Wheeling and Dealing,
p. 45. “When counting noses
for LBJ … was often cautioned never to overestimate our strength because Johnson feared losing on the Senate floor.”
“Fear of being defeated”
;
“petrified”
:
Baker,
Wheeling,
p. 44. Baker also said (
Wheeling,
p. 119), “I think it was Lyndon
Johnson’s deep fear of defeat that … led him to declare himself a noncandidate.”

Vomiting:
Caro,
Master,
p. 211;
Time,
May 21, 1965.
“He had a horror
:
L. E. Jones interview.

“Dog run”
:
Described in Caro,
Path,
p. 52, as it was when Sam Ealy and Rebekah moved into it. A second “shed room” was later added behind the house. The Johnsons moved to the ranch in January 1920, and moved off it, back to Johnson City, in September 1922.

People of Johnson City felt:
Among the residents of Johnson City who knew Lyndon Johnson as a young man whom the author interviewed were his brother, Sam Houston Johnson (SHJ); his sister, Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt (RJB); his cousin, Ava Johnson Cox, and Ava’s husband, Ohlen Cox, and son, William (Corky) Cox; as well as Milton Barnwell, Louise Casparis, Cynthia Crider Crofts, John Dollahite, Truman Fawcett, Stella Gliddon, Jessie Lambert, Kitty
Clyde Ross Leonard, Cecil Redford, Emmette Redford, Clayton Stribling, Mrs. Lex Ward.
Had brought to the dog run:
This account of the Johnsons’ time on the ranch, and the rest of Lyndon Johnson’s boyhood is from Caro,
Path.
All the quotations can be found in those chapters, and the sources for them are in the notes at the end of
Path.

“All of a sudden”
:
Anna Itz, quoted in
USN&WR,
Dec. 23, 1963. (See Caro,
Path,
p. 100.)
“The most important”
:
SHJ interview.
Vacillating in 1948:
Clark, Connally, Oltorf interviews.
“ ‘Humiliation’ ”
:
Clark interview.

In command:
The picture of Johnson running the Senate is from Caro,
Master.
All the quotations except those cited here can be found in that book.

“A splendid”
:
Sidey,
A Very Personal Presidency,
p. 45.

His assistants would hear:
This account of Johnson’s indecisiveness in his office is from interviews with Busby, Gonella, Jenkins and Reedy, and from Baker,
Wheeling.
Among the seventeen:
Steele to Williamson, March 4, 1958, SP.
He told Reedy:
Reedy OH, Reedy interview.
$10,000 diversion:
Evans and Novak,
Lyndon B. Johnson,
p. 244.
“Had decided”
:
Sidey interview.
“This is my home”
:
Corcoran interview.

“He didn’t do anything”
;
“I finally said”
:
Rowe OH II.
“I think”
:
Rowe to Johnson, Jan. 17, 1959, Box 32, LBJA SN. The letter refers to “our long phone
conversation of last Tuesday night.”
“Jim betrayed me”
:
Corcoran, Rowe interviews.

“Frail, hollow-looking”
:
Van Zandt interview.
“Laddie”
:
Burns,
John Kennedy,
pp. 71–72.
Dressed like one:
Burns,
John Kennedy,
p. 71; Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys,
p. 158; Damore,
The Cape Cod Years of
John F. Kennedy;
Paul F. Healy, “The Senate’s Gay Young Bachelor, “
SEP,
June 13, 1953. Parmet,
The Struggles of John F. Kennedy,
pp. 149–50.
“Very much”
;
“a skinny kid”
:
Davis, quoted in Blair and Blair,
The Search for JFK,
pp.
511–12; Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys,
p. 158.
“Oh, Grace”
:
Grace Burke, quoted in Blair and
Blair,
Search for JFK,
p. 549.
Lyndon Johnson himself:
Caro,
Means of Ascent,
pp. 46–53.
Everyone on Capitol Hill:
Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys,
p. 157; Parmet,
Struggles.
“A Hollywood hotel”
:
Dallek,
An Unfinished Life,
p. 150.
Told Tierney:
Tierney with Herskowitz,
Self-Portrait,
pp. 147, 153, quoted in Parmet,
Struggles,
p. 131.
In magazines:
For example, Healy, “Gay Young.”
“Well, I
guess”
:
Dallek,
An Unfinished Life,
p. 136.

“He had few”
:
Burns,
John Kennedy,
p. 98.
“About his only”
:
O’Brien,
John F. Kennedy,
p. 26.
“He told me”
:
Smathers, quoted in Blair and
Blair,
Search for JFK,
p. 524.
“He never seemed to”
:
Douglas, quoted in Parmet,
Struggles,
p. 167.
“A good boy”
:
Hardeman and Bacon,
Rayburn: A Biography,
p. 434.
“Large and fabulous”
;
“every woman”
:
Healy, “Gay Young.” “In all, a total of 60,000 women decided they could not afford to pass up an opportunity to meet the wife of the former Ambassador to the Court of St. James [
sic
], her three lovely daughters and her unmarried son” (Healy, “Gay Young”).
“Could live”
:
Whalen, “Evening the Score,” quoted in Dallek,
Unfinished,
p. 171.
“No town”
:
Powers, quoted
in Goodwin,
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,
p. 755.
“Boyish”
:
Ralph M. Blagden, “Cabot Lodge’s Toughest Fight,”
The Reporter,
Sept. 1952.
“Jack was being”
:
Healy, “Gay Young.”

“Stand back”
:
Healy, “Gay Young.”