Landslide : Lbj and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America (9780812994698) by Darman Jonathan

Author:Darman, Jonathan [Darman, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780812994698
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2014-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

LADY BIRD’S POLITICAL instincts were superior to those of her husband, and to those of the rest of Washington as well. The print publications, assuming their readers would be equal parts titillated and horrified by the Jenkins news, played up the moral outrage. “If any responsible person,” The Christian Science Monitor editorialized, “most of all the President, knew of Mr. Jenkins’ trouble, he was inexcusably reckless in permitting him to remain in office.”

To the political establishment, the broader implications were obvious. In America in that era, homosexuality was synonymous with conspiracy. The city swirled with speculation about who else had shared in Jenkins’s secret. George Reedy chased down rumors of other alleged White House connections to the gay underworld. Most of this talk never made its way into the press beyond snide nudging and winking. Time noted that in the hospital, Jenkins received “a bouquet of mixed fall flowers. With it came a card signed ‘J. Edgar Hoover and Associates.’ There was some doubt about just who those ‘associates’ might be.”

But the country wasn’t interested. As the scandal broke, word came from Moscow that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had been ousted. Shortly thereafter came the news that China had successfully tested an atomic weapon, joining the nuclear club. The two events reinforced the central message of the Johnson campaign, that an era of fragile global peace was no time to have a dalliance with extremism. A week after the Jenkins incident first came to light, Johnson’s poll numbers were the same.

It helped that Barry Goldwater had refused to use the Jenkins episode as ammunition against Johnson. High officials in his campaign tried to push it. “Walter Jenkins came to the White House,” his running mate, Bill Miller, told a crowd in Dayton, Ohio, “and ever since has attended meetings of the National Security Council, the Cabinet of the United States, and has had access to information vital to the security of all mankind and to the survival of the world … Can we stand for four more years of that?” But Goldwater himself hated this kind of talk. “What a way to win an election,” he said with disgust, “Communists and cocksuckers.” Showing a private decency that belied his harsh public persona, he forbade his aides to take advantage of Jenkins’s plight.

For once, Goldwater saw things the same way the voters did. “The really remarkable thing was the mail that came to the White House in the aftermath,” Liz Carpenter said later. “So many people saying, ‘I have that problem in my family.’ … People are more civilized if you give them the chance to be.”

The last-minute reversal in campaign fortunes wouldn’t happen. The Johnson landslide was now inevitable. Inside the Goldwater campaign the mood was bleak. “If they don’t want us,” the candidate concluded, “they don’t have to take us.” On the stump, he appeared more and more unhinged. “Just think about it for a moment,” he implored. “Do you want my opponent to ‘let us continue’? We simply

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