Remembering America by Richard N. Goodwin

Author:Richard N. Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497655218
Publisher: Open Road Media

16 / Lyndon’s Landslide

IN THE MIDDLE of all this we won a presidential election.

In retrospect it was an astonishing performance. This “accidental” president, who could never have reached the presidency from the outside, without any natural constituency beyond his home state of Texas, by the spring of 1964, from within the Oval Office, had blended the powers of his position with the immensely persuasive force of his personality to achieve complete command over the party that had rejected him only three years before. And, before the year was over, he so dominated American public life and had won the approval of the nation on so large and varied a scale, that the election was over even before the votes were counted. The sardonic nickname “Landslide Johnson,” bestowed when, in 1948, he had won a Senate seat by ninety-six disputed votes, became a description of reality as he attained the most crushing majority over a Republican opponent since Roosevelt buried Alf Landon in 1936.

From the moment of his succession to the presidency, Johnson knew the only threat to his nomination came from that same liberal wing of the Democratic party which had mounted an unsuccessful rebellion against his nomination as vice-president. And so almost from his first day he acted — not to assault his potential opposition, but, more characteristically, to reassure and seduce them. The humiliations of his years as vice-president were put aside, seemingly forgotten (but not really, never truly forgiven), and those he supposed to be the authors of his degradations, whose contempt — real or imagined — had so poisoned his days that his physical health was endangered, were embraced as treasured companions. “I understand how you feel,” he told many a Kennedy aide, placing his huge arm over the shoulder, drawing him closer to tones of whispered intimacy, “I feel the same way. I loved Jack Kennedy. I need you now. I need you more than he ever did. You have to help me.”

He summoned Adlai Stevenson (unforgettably and unfairly characterized by Johnson with the remark “He squats when he pees”) from New York where he was enjoying an honorable exile as ambassador to the United Nations: “Listen, Adlai, I know these folks in Washington haven’t been paying much attention to you.… I want you to be right at my side whenever I have to make an important decision, and I don’t care what those fellows over at the State Department think.” A relieved and delighted Stevenson returned to New York to inform his acolytes and former supporters that the country was in very good hands indeed.

Reaching out to established party constituencies, Johnson counseled Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP, on how black pressure could be most effectively exerted on the Congress to pass the civil rights bill, and, as a bonus, encouraged Wilkins to suggest a black candidate for a vacant federal judgeship, whom Johnson then promptly nominated. The warring titans of organized labor — George Meany and Walter Reuther — were, separately, assured by

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