Lady Bird and Lyndon by Betty Boyd Caroli

Author:Betty Boyd Caroli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

14

LINCHPIN IN THE LAUNCH OF THE GREAT SOCIETY

ON JANUARY 20, 1965, as thousands gathered on the side of the Capitol and millions more tuned in on TV to watch the inauguration of Lyndon Baines Johnson, they got a surprise. For as long as anyone remembered, a congressional aide had held the Bible for the swearing in, so the incoming president could raise his right hand and put his left hand on the Scriptures as he took the oath of office. But on that sunny Wednesday, as Lyndon faced Chief Justice Earl Warren, who would administer the oath, Lady Bird stepped forward to hold the family Bible.

A Johnson spokesman informed reporters that Lyndon had told his wife it would “mean a lot to him” if she took this new role in the ceremony, and she had not objected. In her diary, she confessed it was “sweet” of him to want her at his side at this special moment. With Lyndon towering nearly a foot above her, she had to tilt her chin sharply upward to fix her eyes squarely on his, while the congressional aide, who had not been warned about the change, stood awkwardly aside. In her buttoned-up American Beauty red coat and brimmed hat, she would appear in the same frame as Lyndon in nearly every photo of the event.

Bird’s break with precedent that day might be written off as inconsequential, a trivial altering of an old ritual. But it was much more. It signaled the valuable partner role she played. Her strategic linchpin status in her husband’s administration would be underlined time and again in the next four years as she served as sounding board, collaborator, and emotional stabilizer. Moreover, that change in the inauguration rite would become the new tradition, solid as steel half a century later. Even spouses of lesser public servants—mayors and governors across the nation—routinely take the same part as Mrs. Johnson did that day.

Anyone well acquainted with the Johnsons knew how much he depended on her. Those who had worked with him very long were accustomed to hearing, when a difficult matter had to be settled, “Ask Lady Bird.” Or, when Lyndon was frazzled or tired, “Call Bird in here.” Even when things were going well, he craved her company. His aide Joseph Califano Jr. reported how that dependence was demonstrated one night when he was finishing up the day’s work with the president in his bedroom, during his rubdown. Drowsy from the late hour and the massage, Lyndon soon waved Califano out and called Lady Bird in. He “relished [her] pillow talk,” according to Califano, “and was lonely when she was not there.” If she had to be away overnight, he would invite an employee to sleep in her room, with instructions to leave the door open in case he called out for help.

• • •

As with most of his speeches, Lady Bird had had a hand in shaping the short but rousing inaugural speech, and at the end she rushed over to kiss him on the cheek and whisper in his ear that he had been “wonderful.

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