Lyndon Baines Johnson

Democrat - Texas
1961-1963

All things considered, 1960 was not a banner year for Lyndon Baines Johnson. He was entering his sixth very successful year as Senate Majority Leader, but he caught the bug and decided it was time for him to be President. Such was his faith in his power and the inevitability of his nomination that he remained on the job in D.C., leaving it to Hubert Humphrey and JFK to fight it out on the hustings while he would “stay here and mind the store”. He planned on the nomination coming down to the convention where the delegates would select him overwhelmingly, and he could bring JFK onboard to balance the ticket and clean Richard Nixon’s clock in November.

To the surprise of Johnson and everyone else, Kennedy pulled out a stunner in the West Virginia primary, and the delegates gave JFK the nomination on the first ballot. To the surprise of Kennedy and everyone else, Johnson accepted Kennedy’s courtesy offer of the #2 spot on the ticket. “I didn’t offer the Vice-Presidency to him,” said JFK later. “I just held it out like this, and he grabbed at it.”

Many said it made sense for Johnson, given the stresses of his job (he’d had a Texas-sized heart attack in 1955 that almost killed him, forcing him to reduce his workday from 18 to 14 hours) and that a growing number of liberal Democrats in the Senate threatened his reign as an effective Majority Leader. He could help deliver the South to the Democrats, and—elusive as it had been to past Vice Presidents—he was LBJ, and this could still be a step toward the White House. “Power is where power goes,” he reasoned.

Still, by any measure, it was a step down. The party was less than united (the convention chairman tried to put LBJ’s nomination through on a voice vote rather than a state-by-state vote, but it still didn’t seem as if Johnson had enough “Ayes” in his favor, and the chair awkwardly gaveled for the nomination anyway). Many of LBJ’s close friends and associates were incredulous. (“Who’d want to be Vice President for that man?” said one. Another friend, oilman and fellow Senator Robert S. Kerr was slightly more exercised. “Get me my .38!” he yelled at LBJ, Lady Bird, and their friend Bobby Baker. "I'm gonna kill every damn one of you. I can't believe that my three best friends would betray me.")

On Election Night, Lyndon Baines Johnson appeared to hold little joy in seeing his new job become a reality. Had Joe Kennedy and Richard Daley not teamed up to bring home the great state of Cook County for JFK, Johnson could have kept his seat in Washington, thanks to the adoration of the Texas state legislature who allowed him to run simultaneously for the Vice Presidency and re-election to the Senate.

Instead, from a position where some historians have called him the best who ever held the post, Johnson took a job that most agreed was beneath him. In a note to Johnson, his friend, Senator Barry Goldwater, wrote simply, “I’m nauseated.”

With JFK’s assassination, LBJ did ascend to the Presidency, using Kennedy’s post-mortem goodwill to pass much of his Great Society legislation, but the pull of Vietnam drew him closer and closer to—and finally down—the drain. He was reviled by much of the electorate, declined to run again for the Presidency, and left Washington for good in 1969. Returning to his Texas ranch with a renewed enthusiasm for alcohol and nicotine, he grew his hair long and lamented how the kids had been right before finally dying of a broken heart on January 22, 1973.

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT BOX 13: Johnson’s victory in the 1948 U.S. Senate primary can most charitably be described as “curious”. In a recount, Johnson emerged victorious by a margin of 87 votes. The election turned on 202 “found” votes from Precinct Box 13 in tiny Alice, Texas. A later examination of the votes—all but two cast for Johnson—would reveal that the names were added to the poll list in a handwriting and ink different from the originally counted votes, and all in alphabetical order. An election-night miracle!

Well, it wasn’t quite so magical. Local election judge Luis Salas would tell many years later of a meeting in Alice with LBJ associate and local crony George Carr (known as “the Duke of Duyal County” in Texas political circles). Carr said that LBJ was pleading for 200 more votes, so Carr ordered Salas to make it so. LBJ’s supporters would deny this charge throughout and after his lifetime, but their defenses weren’t always predicated on Johnson’s inherent goodness. “He was much more devious than that”, said one. Others were more shocked at the continued ballyhoo over this alleged “scandal”. “Of course they stole that election," said a former LBJ aide. "That's the way they did it down there.”

The Texas Observer’s founding editor, Ronnie Dugger, interviewed LBJ in Texas near the end of his life. Dugger claimed that LBJ showed him a picture of five county officials posing with Precinct Box 13. When Dugger attempted further inquiries, LBJ only smiled. Years later, Dugger interviewed an aging Luis Salas, who produced the same photo.

AHMAD-IST PROPOSAL: Early in 1961, JFK sent his Vice President on a visit to Asia. Always the campaigner—and likely stuck with some leftover inventory from the previous election—Johnson popped into slums in India to hand out pencils reading, “Complements of your Senator, Lyndon Baines Johnson—the greatest good for the greatest number.”

During a stop in Pakistan, Johnson heartily told a camel driver that if he were ever in the United States, “Y’all come and see us, ya heah?” Like the hundreds of other times he offered the throwaway courtesy, he likely forgot it immediately.

Bashir Ahmad, though, thought it was a splendid idea. He couldn’t write or read, didn’t speak a word of English, and arrived in New York City wearing shoes for the first time in his life. LBJ welcomed him warmly to the United States and took him for a stay on his ranch in Texas, with a brief stop in Kansas City to visit former President Truman. Johnson even made arrangements for Bashir to visit Mecca on his way back to Pakistan.

ORIFICE MEETING: Johnson distrusted, and in some cases despised, Kennedy’s inner circle as much as they did him. After he assumed the Presidency, he delighted in dragging the occasional “delicate Kennedyite” into the bathroom with him to continue a meeting, even if he wasn’t going in there to floss his teeth—or even empty his bladder. He had no qualms evacuating his bowels in front of anyone, but he took special pleasure in affronting the sensibilities of the Kennedy crowd who stayed on as aides and associates.