Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol

Author:Jeff Shesol [Shesol, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780393345971
Google: ZVbLhMBMVeMC
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1998-10-17T00:21:16.625551+00:00

Kennedy continued to cultivate Bill Moyers, and vice versa. They spoke often—to review a speech draft or just sound out views. “God … he was on the phone every day with Moyers!” Joe Dolan exclaimed. This was no surprise to Frank Mankiewicz, a close comrade of Moyers from their Peace Corps days. Mankiewicz considered Moyers “the best presidential press secretary that ever was” and a role model of sorts. Dolan, however, didn’t like the connection. He didn’t trust Moyers, didn’t understand how he could “serve two masters.” Nor did Dolan consider the dialogue “a proud moment in Robert Kennedy’s life.… How does he defend talking to the president’s press secretary when he’s supposed to be at war with the president?”

Dolan might have put the same question to Moyers: how did the president’s closest adviser defend talking to the president’s nemesis? At times Moyers needed no defense—particularly when he called Kennedy at Johnson’s behest. “[Johnson] had assigned me to the task of trying to moderate Bobby Kennedy’s opposition to the war,” Moyers later explained. But as time passed, according to Rowland Evans, Moyers was prodding Kennedy to speak out on Vietnam. “If that’s so,” argued George Christian, “the president knew about it. No question in my mind.… He kept tabs on everything through the Secret Service or the Signal Corps or somebody.… If there were a lot of contacts between Bill and Bobby Kennedy, then he knew about it.”

And if that was so, he did not like it. Johnson was never sure just how close Moyers and Kennedy had grown. He became constantly suspicious, fearful that Moyers would betray his trust and hurt his presidency. “That’s the trouble with all you fellows,” Johnson shouted at Moyers after McGeorge Bundy had appeared on television without permission. “You’re in bed with the Kennedys.” By mid-1966, this feeling intensified Johnson’s other concerns about his press secretary—that Moyers was building his own fiefdom within the West Wing, aggrandizing himself at the president’s expense, leaking freely, and widening the credibility gap by telling reporters too much or what they wanted to hear.

Among his colleagues in the press office, Moyers fretted openly about the president’s growing suspicions. The strain between them was becoming obvious and Moyers labored to prove his loyalty to LBJ. Though he continued making visits to Hickory Hill and calls to Kennedy’s office, Moyers played increasingly to Johnson’s prejudices. He forwarded a clipping from the London Daily Telegraph to LBJ with the message “Mr. President: This anti-Kennedy piece was done by one of the most distinguished writers in Britain.” Moyers added, as if relishing a victory over the Georgetown crowd, that the writer “recently came to this country and was wined and dined at one dinner party after another by the Kay Grahams, Joe Alsops, etc.” Of course, Johnson well knew that Moyers was being wined and dined by Graham and Alsop; in such memos Moyers seemed to scramble for critical distance. Similarly, Moyers used inside knowledge of Kennedy’s plans to prod Johnson to action.

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