Remembering LBJ
They don’t make ‘em like Lyndon Johnson anymore.
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“I want to give Bennett a real send-off,” the President told us. “I want everyone in town to know that he has the full blessing and power of the President behind him. We’re going to do something for Indians, not just talk about it. Hell, even my hero Andy Jackson broke every damned treaty he ever made with the Indians.
“Well, we’re going to reverse that,” he said. “We’re going to give the Indians first-class citizenship. Now I want you two to go back to your office and write me a speech worthy of the occasion. Put some compassion into it. Come up with some programs that will help those people out. Call around the government. Tap some brains.”
Three drafts later took us to the morning of the swearing-in ceremony. It still wasn’t exactly what the President wanted, but he had to go with it.
He started off the speech following the text, talking about Robert LaFollette Bennett bearing an illustrious name and about his being “the right man at the right time for the right job.” The Indian leaders responded warmly. Then the President began recounting the ills we had vested on our Indian citizens, having ignored Thomas Jefferson’s plea to treat them “with the commiseration that history requires.”
The Indian leaders were getting with it now, nodding to each other and applauding. This was all LBJ needed to start winging it. And the more he winged it, the more enthusiastic his audience became. It was like a perpetual motion machine. His fervor sparked their enthusiasm—and their enthusiasm redoubled his fervor.
Still ad-libbing and pacing back and forth, hitting his fist in the palm of his hand for emphasis, he told them why he was swearing Bennett in at the White House: “… to let the country know some of these facts. Because if the President won’t tell the country … we can’t do anything about this 90 per cent substandard housing and about incomes of under $2,000 a year.”
He turned to Bennett and gave him his mandate: Go back to your office “and begin work today on the most comprehensive program for the advancement of the Indians that the Government of the United States has ever considered. And I want it to be sound, realistic, progressive, adventuresome, and farsighted.”
He talked about the need for better housing, better schools, better health programs, and better job opportunities.
The audience was going wild.
He admonished the Cabinet officers and Congressional leaders present to give the new Commissioner the support he needed, “so we can remove the blush of shame that comes to our cheeks when we look at what we have done to the first Americans in this country.”
Turning back to Bennett, he ordered him to go over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and “clean out the cobwebs”—set up some Civil Service Boards, fire people, if necessary.
And then, to the immense delight of the Indian leaders, he told Bennett that if he ran into any resistance, to go over to the Smithsonian Institute and get a tomahawk.
I was standing at the rear of the room. While the audience was cheering and stomping and whistling, Jim Duesenberry of the Council of Economic Advisers rushed over to my side and said, “Holy God! Someone run over to the Budget Bureau and get Charlie Schultze. He’s giving the country back to the Indians.”
I’ve since thought what a great news lead that remark would have made. Lyndon Johnson would have been proud of it.
Bob Hardesty, former LBJ speechwriter
The Cure for Baldness
George Christian, then LBJ’s press secretary, was in the White House one morning talking with LBJ while the president was in the bathroom. Through the mirror above him the President noticed a thinning spot on Christian’s head. “George, you’re getting bald,” he said. Christian agreed. “It’s because you don’t comb your hair right. Sit down here and let me show you how to comb it.” And with that the President took out comb and brush and for some minutes thereafter very carefully brushed and combed Christian’s hair so that it would cover the bald spot. The President seemed quite satisfied with his results and told Christian that this was the way he ought to wear his hair every day. Christian felt that the President’s style for Christian—which meant combing it pretty much straight forward—made him look like a freak, and as soon as he was out of LBJ’s view he went back to combing it the regular way, which exposed his bald spot.
Dr. Joe Frantz, UT Oral History Project
The Tables Turn
Six months after the1964 election the honeymoon was over and the President began to be roundly criticized in the press. Arriving in his bedroom early on those mornings I would find him fuming and snorting at a story or column lambasting him. When his mood was especially dark I would try to console him: “You have to take the long view, Mr. President. Don’t take it personally. A century from now no one will remember that piece.” He would only glower. One morning my own honeymoon with the press ended abruptly with a sharp—and, of course, unfair—attack from a columnist. When I entered the President’s bedroom, I was almost apoplectic with indignation. He was propped up in bed, reading the story. Looking at me over his glasses, he roared with glee: “Now don’t take this personally, Moyers. Remember the long view. A hundred years from now no one will remember…” On photographs he later inscribed to me, LBJ wrote: “To Bill, who forgot his own counsel when it was his ox…”
Bill Moyers
A Texas Evening
On a crisp Sunday morning in Washington in 1966, our “unlisted” residence phone rang, and a voice said, “The White House is calling …” Mrs. Johnson’s voice came on the wire, and she said to Opal: “Ann and Ed Clark are coming in this afternoon for a visit before their return to Australia (he was the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, appointed by President Johnson), and are to be our guests in the White House for several days. We thought it would be fun for a few of their and our Texas friends to come to the White House for dinner tonight—very informal.”
Ed Clark had been the most successful American Ambassador to Australia in history, and President Johnson wanted to show his appreciation. The Jake Pickles and the Jack Brooks were there. We spent the evening in the family quarters upstairs, and the dinner was served there in the family dining room. After dinner we gathered in the lovely round sitting room—from which there is a breathtaking view of the monuments, Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson.
The night was crisp, cold, and bathed in moonlight. To enjoy the magnificent view more, we stepped out on the Truman balcony. The President began to yodel to his dogs in the kennels below, to the south of the White House grounds; the dogs answered with full cry, bugling and baying. The President yodeled louder; the dogs bugled and bayed louder, worthy of a Texas coon, wildcat, or fox hunt. The President chuckled and said, “I wonder what those Georgetowners think is going on at the White House tonight.” Indeed the noise was so loud and the night so still that the Georgetowners might have heard the duet loud and clear! Someone in the group said, “Oh, Mr. President, those first families of Virginia who reside in Georgetown must like it, for they think you have transported a Virginia fox hunt (which is so dear to their hearts) to the White House grounds. No doubt they wish they were here with you.”
It was a Texas night at the White House.
Ralph and Opal Yarborough
My Library
