Personal History (50 page)

Johnson fell asleep at once, and Phil scribbled out some thoughts and had them typed. At 2:50 Phil handed a sleepy Johnson his notes, and at
3:00 Johnson appeared at the debate looking rested and well. Kennedy spoke first, then Johnson, using Phil’s notes but continuing on ad lib with some thrusts at Kennedy “which he kept within the bounds of propriety,” according to Phil.

Later Tuesday, Phil got the wild idea of a message from Kennedy to the convention to be read by Stevenson on Thursday, asking the delegates to draft Johnson for vice-president. Just before he went to bed, he left me a note to call Steve Smith and ask for a Kennedy appointment:

1. Don’t think me bereft of my senses. I have a hell of an important idea.
   
2. Therefore please call MA6-3592, say you’re calling for Phil Graham and want Steve Smith, and it is important.
   
3. Tell Smith who you are and say “I had a 5 o’clock in the morning inspiration as to how to accomplish the substance of the two items Senator Kennedy discussed with Joe Alsop and me. It will take 5 minutes to lay before the Senator but this should be done before the Wed. session, either at the Biltmore or at his house near the Convention. I can arrive either place within less than an hour. I asked you to convey this because I am sleeping owing to early morning inspiration.”
   

I woke Phil at 9:30 to tell him he had an appointment at 10:40.

Kennedy appeared with the increasing aura of a nominee and suggested Phil ride across town with him. As they rode along on Wednesday morning, Phil explained his idea and Kennedy said to leave it with Mrs. Lincoln. He said he might be twenty votes short of nomination—with the nominating session to begin in four hours—and asked Phil if he could get any Johnson votes out of the vice-presidency offer. Phil replied he could think of none, unless George Smathers would try to swing some of Florida’s votes—to which Kennedy responded that the trouble was, Smathers also wanted to be vice-president. Phil then assured Kennedy that he’d never miss the nomination by twenty votes; indeed, that afternoon Kennedy was nominated.

Unbeknownst to Phil at the time, the previous afternoon Kennedy had formally offered the vice-presidency to Symington through Clark Clifford. After conferring with his wife and two sons, who were opposed to the idea, Symington told Clark to accept, but added presciently, “I bet you a hundred dollars that no matter what he says, Jack will not make me his running mate. He will have to pick Lyndon.” Clark called Kennedy back and accepted for Symington.

Early Thursday morning, Kennedy called Johnson, waking him up
and making an appointment to see him a little later. At that meeting he offered him the vice-presidency—both because he thought he had to and because he thought that Johnson would not accept. Kennedy went back to his headquarters and, according to Arthur Schlesinger in
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, told Bobby, “You just won’t believe it. He wants it.” Phil had been right. Johnson would indeed accept.

Everyone around the Kennedys, especially those connected with the labor movement, was upset. Apparently, they all spent much of the day thinking how they could undo what they had done. Bobby went down to see Lyndon twice, once to feel him out and the second time to tell him that there was going to be a lot of opposition, that it was going to be unpleasant, and to offer him instead the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

In the meantime, Joe and I and some others arrived at the Biltmore and entered the Grill for lunch. Phil said, “Order me a roast-beef sandwich and I’ll be back.” He disappeared, and for the next couple of hours, people joined us, ate Phil’s sandwich, and left, and others sat down. We reordered the sandwich several times, and it kept getting eaten by friends who came along. Phil never came back.

Finally, we broke up, and as I started down a long hall toward the
Post’s
headquarters, I met Betty Beale, society columnist for the
Evening Star
, running toward me. “Have you heard?” she exclaimed.

“No, what?” “It’s Johnson.” “Who says?” I asked.

“Kennedy says,” she replied firmly. He had just said it in the Bowl, which was a small auditorium on the floor below where the press offices were, used for public announcements. I went on to our offices, where Phil shortly appeared in a state of high tension, almost trembling all over, and said, “You can’t believe what I’ve just been through. Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you.” At a restaurant in the convention center, he grabbed a drink and sandwich and told me the story of what had happened.

When Phil had appeared in the Johnson suite at about 1:45 p.m., Johnson seized his arm and said that Bobby Kennedy was with Sam Rayburn, speaker of the House and Lyndon’s great mentor, offering Johnson the vice-presidency. Phil said he thought he had to take it. Lady Bird was somewhere between negative and neutral. The evening before, Rayburn had called especially to tell him not to take it if offered.

Rayburn entered and said Bobby wanted to see Lyndon. Lady Bird felt he shouldn’t meet with Bobby. Phil agreed, saying, “You don’t want it. You won’t negotiate for it. You’ll only take it if Jack drafts you and you won’t discuss it with anyone else.” Finally, as Phil wrote, “in that sudden
way decisions leap out of a melee, it was decided.” Mr. Sam went off to explain the Johnson position to Bobby, and Phil was to phone Jack with LBJ’s position.

By this time, Jim Rowe and John Connally had joined the nucleus, and Phil went down the public hall, crowded with press, to an empty bedroom. He finally got JFK on the phone and gave him the Johnson message; Kennedy responded that he was having trouble with people urging him to take Symington—as someone who was trouble-free—and that Phil should call back in three minutes. By this time, Phil and Jim Rowe were in a state of nerves—or, as Phil described it, “as calm as Chileans on top of an earthquake.” Each time he wanted to reach Jack, Phil had to go through a telephonic obstacle course—Mrs. Lincoln to Steve Smith or Sarge Shriver, then finally to JFK.

On the phone, Kennedy was calm. “It’s all set,” he said. “Tell Lyndon I want him.” He asked Phil also to tell Stevenson and ask for his full support. Phil called Adlai first, then walked back down the hall to give the message to Johnson, who quizzed him for details. Lady Bird wondered about Stevenson’s reaction, to which Phil shrugged and said, “Oh, you know, sort of silk underwear, as you’d expect.” Phil then left the room to call the
Post
.

Soon, however, LBJ asked him to return, saying Bobby had been back to see Rayburn about twenty minutes before and had said Jack would phone directly, but there had been no call, and what should he do. Phil volunteered to call Jack, who said he had assumed Phil’s message from him to LBJ would suffice. Phil told him what Bobby had told Rayburn, and he said he’d call at once. According to Phil, Kennedy again mentioned opposition to LBJ and asked Phil what he thought. Phil replied that “Southern gains would more than offset liberal losses,” and added that “anyway it was too late to be mind-changing and that he should remember, ‘You ain’t no Adlai.’ ”

Phil was still trying to reach Bobby shortly after 4:00 p.m. when Bill Moyers, LBJ’s appointments secretary, came in and said Johnson needed him at once, and dragged him by the arm through the packed hall to Johnson’s suite. Lyndon took Phil into an adjoining room to avoid one filled with some political types, but they found this other room occupied with fifteen Hawaiian delegates. When Johnson called out that he needed the room, “they solemnly filed out bowing … in turn to all of us at the door (LBJ, Lady Bird, Rayburn, Connally, Rowe and me) with LBJ loudly chanting, ‘Thank you, boys, thank you. Thank you for all you did.’ ”

LBJ, about to jump out of his skin, shouted at Phil that Bobby Kennedy had told Rayburn and him that there was so much opposition he should withdraw for the sake of the party. As Phil wrote, “There was
considerable milling about and hub-bub and finally, Mr. Rayburn said, ‘Phil, call Jack.’ ” When Phil got JFK on the phone, Jack said calmly, “That’s all right. Bobby’s been out of touch and doesn’t know what’s been happening.”

“Well, what do you want Lyndon to do?” Phil asked.

“I want him to make a statement right away; I’ve just finished making mine.” He had done it in the Biltmore Bowl at five minutes past four.

“You’d better speak to Lyndon,” Phil then said.

“Okay,” he answered, “but I want to talk to you again when we’re through.”

Phil, standing between twin beds, handed the phone to Lyndon, who was sprawled out on the bed in front of him, and who said, “Yes … yes … yes,” and then, “Okay, here’s Phil.” Kennedy then chatted on about the problems—Alex Rose was threatening not to list him on the Liberal Party ticket in New York because LBJ was the running mate. Phil responded, “Oh, don’t worry,
we’ll
solve that,” and then, returning to sanity, he said, “You’d better speak to Bobby,” who had just walked into the bedroom looking sullen and tired. Phil said, “Bobby, your brother wants to speak to you,” which, Phil wrote, “at once seemed to me the silliest line in the whole play.” Bobby took the phone, and as Phil left the room he heard Bobby say, “Well, it’s too late now,” and half slam down the phone.

In the entrance hall, Phil found the Johnsons standing “as though they had just survived an airplane crash,” with Lyndon holding a typed statement accepting the vice-presidency. “I was just going to read this on TV when Bobby came in and now I don’t know what I ought to do.” Phil, “with more ham than I ever suspected myself of,” then blurted out, “Of course you know what you’re going to do. Throw your shoulders back and your chin out and go out and make that announcement. And then go on and win. Everything’s wonderful.”

Phil described this “soap opera thrust” as “somehow wonderfully appropriate” and wrote that “Bill Moyers echoed loud approval while swinging open the hall doors and pushing Johnson out into the TV lights and the explosion of flash bulbs.” Phil watched Lyndon and Lady Bird stand on chairs, “their faces metamorphosed into enthusiasm and confidence.” At that point, as word spread of Johnson’s acceptance, the area filled with people and Phil fled, to meet up with me in the
Post’s
offices.

Phil wrote all of this in a memo for his own files. He kept it confidential until three years later, when he let Teddy White borrow it when he was working on the book
The Making of the President
for the 1964 campaign. To my surprise, White printed the whole memorandum as an appendix to that book, which I felt Phil would not have wanted. When it was published, Bobby was extremely angry and said that it wasn’t accurate—
that Phil didn’t know the whole story. “What was wrong with it?” I asked. He replied, “My brother and I were never apart.”

Even later, after LBJ was president and the strain between him and Bobby had grown great, I was sitting next to Bobby at dinner at my house when I mentioned that I had seen President Johnson at his request just before the dinner, and I noted that that was odd since Johnson wasn’t really speaking to me. “What do you mean, he’s not speaking to you,” Bobby asked, “when Phil made him president?”

“I thought you told me Phil’s memo was inaccurate,” I responded, incredulous.

“It was,” Bobby replied, “but because of what Phil didn’t know, his role was more important, not less.”

I asked him to tell me what he meant, but he would only say that he would someday; unfortunately, he never got the chance. The explanation, however, can be inferred from various books, especially Arthur Schlesinger’s on Bobby. There is no doubt in my mind, from reading these books and from thinking back, that neither Jack nor Bobby Kennedy really wanted Johnson on the ticket. After vacillating for three or four hours, the Kennedys, according to Bobby, “came upon this idea of trying to get rid of him, and it didn’t work.” When Johnson surprised the Kennedys by accepting the
pro forma
invitation, Jack sent Bobby down to persuade him to withdraw. When JFK realized that Bobby’s mission wasn’t going to work, he made the disingenuous remark that Bobby was out of touch.

Even a year later, Bobby said they were all too tired that day. He told John Seigenthaler, an editor and a friend, “We were right at eight, ten and two, and wrong at four o’clock.” Whatever their real feelings, as Phil and Joe had predicted, they would not have won without Johnson.

B
ECAUSE THERE WAS
only about a week between the conventions, we had planned to go from one to the other without returning to Washington, so Bill and Steve flew out to join us and we had a nice family time with a glorious day at Disneyland. More important, we had a day with my sister Florence, who was now living in California. Previously she had been in Switzerland, near her close friends and mentors, Otto and Maria Halpern. Mrs. Halpern was a handwriting analyst and had several acolytes—wealthy ones—like Flo, whose lives she influenced. Flo had included us in her tensions with the family, and so we had not been in touch with each other in any but formal ways for years. At Phil’s prompting, I had called her and suggested getting together. This reunion was a great success, with even the children all getting along. Phil, Flo, and I enjoyed each other’s
company and were happy to have discovered each other as grown-ups. By this time, Flo had gotten very heavy, but she was still her old self—literate, witty, interesting, intelligent, and sensitive. This visit began a relationship that continued in the two years remaining to her and meant a lot to both of us.

T
HE
R
EPUBLICAN
C
ONVENTION
in Chicago, of course, was entirely different from that of the Democrats. Nixon was the only candidate, but Nelson Rockefeller, who had given up the race in December, acted as a goad to him and to the party. In June, Rockefeller had made a speech saying, “We cannot, as a Nation or a Party, proceed to march to meet the future with a banner aloft whose only emblem is a question mark.”

After Chicago, we went home to Glen Welby, where we spent much of August, but politics reached us even there. Joe Alsop visited often, as did others, including Arthur Schlesinger, who brought along his campaign document—a profile of both candidates, favorably contrasting JFK with Nixon—which I remember poring over.