Friday, Nov. 29, 1963
"Some Day You'll Be Sitting in That Chair"
The office of Vice President has often been deemed, especially by men who held it, a job fit only for a nonentity. It was called "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived" (John Adams, the first Vice President), "a fifth wheel to the coach" (Theodore Roosevelt), "as useful as a cow's fifth teat" (Harry Truman), and not worth a "pitcher of warm spit" (John Nance Garner).
But as Lyndon Johnson would readily agree, and as the U.S. may rest assured, he is far from being a nonentity. Perhaps still another Vice President best described his skills. "He is," Richard Nixon once said, "one of the ablest political craftsmen of our time." During Republican Dwight Eisenhower's two terms, Johnson was the Senate's Democratic floor leader, and between presidential election years he was generally recognized as the U.S.'s most powerful Democrat. By the time he accepted his party's vice-presidential nomination, he was probably the only Democrat in the country who could step down to the nation's second-highest office.
Those Aching Arms. No one who ever saw him as Senate leader could ever forget it. He seemed to be everywhere --in the chamber, the cloakrooms, the caucuses and the corridors--cajoling, persuading, convincing and sometimes threatening. A fellow Senate Democrat once explained Johnson's techniques in relatively benign terms: "The secret is, Lyndon gives and takes. If you go along with him, he gives you a little here and there--a dam, or support for a bill." But a good many Senators can testify that when such conciliation failed, they had their arms twisted almost permanently out of place.
During those years, Lyndon loved to insist that he did not want to be Presi dent of the U.S. Once, while he was Senate majority leader, he and Ike were conversing in the President's office.
Pointing to the chair behind his desk, Ike volunteered: "Some day you'll be sitting in that chair." Replied Lyndon: "No, Mr. President, that's one chair I'll never sit in." He may have thought he meant it. But he is, in fact, as ambitious as he is able. And no man with the political capabilities and chemistry of Lyndon Johnson could help aspiring to the White House.
A Senator Is Born. His profession was forecast on the very day that he was born in a little frame house among the pecan and sycamore trees on the banks of the Pedernales River near Stonewall, Texas. On that momentous occasion his grandfather, Sam Ealy Johnson, an old Indian fighter and cattleman, raced around on horseback announcing to everyone within range of his roar: "A United States Senator's been born to day." Lyndon inherited his interest in politics; both his grandfather and father were members of the Texas legislature.
At 15, Lyndon and some chums went to California and took up odd jobs. But Johnson soon returned, borrowed $75 to get started at Southwest Texas State Teachers College. In 1932 he went to Washington as a congressional secretary, reorganized a group of Capitol Hill staffers who called themselves "The Little Congress," got himself elected "speaker," and turned the outfit into a hotbed of New Deal ideology.
He also became the particular protege of family friend and fellow Texan Sam Rayburn, who got President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to appoint Johnson director of the National Youth Administration for Texas. Lyndon used his position as a springboard to a successful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. He was then 29, and except for seven months in the Navy, he has held national elective office ever since.
Those Missing Ballots. In 1941 Congressman Johnson ran for the Senate in a special election, came in second out of 29 candidates. In 1948 he tried again --and beat former Governor Coke Stevenson in a runoff primary by precisely 87 votes out of 988,295 cast. Stevenson of course charged fraud, but couldn't prove it--the suspect ballots had mysteriously disappeared.
In the Senate, Johnson drew early attention by organizing and running the Preparedness Subcommittee after the start of the Korean war. The subcommittee saved the taxpayers $500 million by recommending changes in the tin program, another $1 billion by discovering that the Government was paying too much for natural rubber. Johnson's talent for getting his colleagues to agree was already in evidence: all 46 of the subcommittee's reports were unanimous.
Partly on that basis, but mostly at the urging of Georgia's Democratic Senator Richard Russell, Lyndon was elected Democratic floor leader in 1953. As leader of the Senate he often put in 18-hour days, and, at 6 ft. 3 in. and 200 Ibs., seemed as hale and hearty as anyone in Washington. But a massive heart attack in 1955 slowed him down temporarily, cut his smoking from three packs a day to none, and tempered his ambitions for even higher office.
Only One Boss. Johnson is now President of the U.S. because he changed his mind at the last minute about accepting John Kennedy's offer to be his running mate. At the 1960 convention, Johnson was Kennedy's strongest opponent, and Lyndon had some rather unkind things to say about Jack. But after Kennedy won on the first ballot, he asked Lyndon to take the vice-presidential nomination. At first Lyndon refused to trade "a vote for a gavel." But he finally accepted. Said he to Kennedy: "I know there is only one boss. That's you."
As candidate, Johnson helped secure Texas for the Democratic ticket, and as Vice President, he served the President well. Johnson's tongue can turn nasty. But if anyone ever heard him say anything disloyal to his White House leader, the fact is not on record.
Being Vice President, Johnson automatically became a member of the National Security Council and head of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. He also sat in at Cabinet meetings. Kennedy beefed up the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and put it under Johnson's chairmanship. Lyndon also became Kennedy's sometime emissary overseas. In 1961 he went to Southeast Asia, continued around the world. Later that year he was rushed to Berlin when The Wall went up. In 1962 he barnstormed through the Middle East, struck up his famous friendship with Bashir Ahmad, the camel driver. So far this year Johnson has been in Scandinavia and the Benelux countries.
Indeed, L.B.J. was so often out of the U.S. that speculation inevitably arose that J.F.K. was just trying to keep him out of the White House's way. Things got to the point where Kennedy recently had to deny at a press conference that he was planning to "dump" Lyndon in 1964.
Not Far Apart. In fact, despite differences of background, personality and political technique, Johnson and Kennedy were not far apart in their basic policy views, and the 36th President is generally expected to carry out the programs of his predecessor. Some views recently expressed by Johnson with which Kennedy would have concurred:
sb PEACE. "Reciprocity is the key to peace. If the Soviets want America's cooperation, they can earn it. If the Soviets want America's hostility, they certainly can provoke it."
sb NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY. "We are not taking any needless risks for peace. But neither are we foreclosing the future. We have no desire to perpetuate the burdens and dangers of the cold war, no ambition to doom mankind to the accumulated folly of an intensified arms race, no wish to convince the Soviets that even reasonable proposals will be rejected by us without fair or adequate consideration."
sb CUBA. "We shall not be content until the last of the Soviet forces are with drawn from Cuban soil."
sb SPACE. "We are not reaching for prestige in space; we are reaching for peace. We do not know--and the Soviets do not know--what the stars will tell us. We do know that to defaul-the exploration of the universe of space would surely be as catastrophic in its consequences as if we had defaulted exploration of the universe of the atom."
sb CIVIL RIGHTS. "Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans--white and Negro together --must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now. Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact."
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