The weeks after the assassination may have been the “finest moment” in Johnson’s life, argues Robert Caro in this fourth—but not final—volume of his defining series on one of America’s most complex and compelling politicians.
By blending the outpouring of goodwill from the tragedy with his own legislative mastery, Johnson had got Kennedy’s stalled programme of legislation moving again in less than two months. That included the landmark civil-rights bill, which would forever bar discrimination in hotels and other public venues.
Johnson, Mr Caro writes, refused to campaign actively until it was too late because, much as he desired the presidency, deep down he feared the humiliation of losing—and not trying meant not losing. And so, indeed, he lost out to Kennedy, a man he described at the time as a “little scrawny fellow with rickets”.
Indeed, writes Mr Caro, in 1960 he told his staff to look up how many presidents had died in office. The answer was seven out of 33—and several more vice-presidents got elected in their own right after their predecessor left office.
Johnson took the odds, but the nearly three years he spent under Kennedy were sheer misery. He gave up enormous power as Senate majority leader to assume the sideline role of vice-president.
But the Kennedys shut him out. He became mocked around Washington as “Uncle Cornpone” and was left off the invitation lists for Camelot’s decadent parties (thrown by the “Harvards”, as Johnson called the Kennedy set).
Johnson in the vice-presidency is described as a “bull castrated very late in life” (Daniel Patrick Moynihan), a “great horse in a very small corral” (Bill Moyers), and a “cut dog” (Johnson himself).
By November 1963 things looked especially dire for Johnson. A former aide was under investigation for bribery, and journalists had begun looking into Johnson’s own business dealings. Washington chatter held that Kennedy might drop him from the 1964 ticket.
But when the president was shot, Johnson took over with preternatural calm.
He made a huge effort to retain Kennedy’s advisers, even those who had previously spurned him. And he gave new hope to black leaders, who emerged from his office amazed (and heartened) that a Texan would be so committed to desegregation. The odds against passing civil-rights legislation had been high because of the chokehold Southern senators had on Congress, yet Johnson schemed and cajoled and threatened, and in the end got it done—something Kennedy, for all his eloquence, had not managed.
From book review of The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
