Dead Presidents

Maybe I’m getting lazy, but I’m going to let Lyndon Johnson tell this story himself, thanks to the LBJ Library’s Oral History Project and with an assist from LBJ Library Director Mark K. Updegrove’s awesome new book Indomitable Will: LBJ In The Presidency (BOOK•KINDLE).

According to LBJ:

I was three months old when I was named.  My father and mother couldn’t agree on a name.  The people my father liked were heavy drinkers — pretty rough for a city girl.  She didn’t want me named after any of them.

Finally, there was a criminal lawyer — a country lawyer — named W.C. Linden.  He would go on a drunk for a week after every case.  My father liked him and he wanted to name me after him.  My mother didn’t care for the idea but she said finally that it was alright, she would go along with it if she could spell the name the way she wanted to.  So that is what happened.

I was campaigning for Congress.  An old man with a white carnation in his lapel came up and said, “That was a very good speech.  I want to vote for you like I always have.  The only thing I don’t like about you is the way you spell your name.” 

He then identified himself as W.C. Linden.

When Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation on March 31, 1968 by announcing that he would not seek another term as President, there was more behind his decision besides Eugene McCarthy’s near-upset of LBJ in the New Hampshire primary and growing anti-war sentiment against Johnson’s Vietnam policy.

While Johnson’s domestic accomplishments had been overshadowed by the stain of Vietnam, LBJ also worried about his own health.  He had suffered a major heart attack in 1955 when he was Senate Majority Leader and had recurring nightmares that he might fall ill and end up incapacitated like Woodrow Wilson after his 1919 stroke.  LBJ often mentioned that his father and grandfather had died in their early-60’s and he had a premonition that he wouldn’t live past the age of 64.  After he left the White House, Johnson told a reporter visiting him at the LBJ Ranch, “My daddy was only 62 when he died, and I figured that with my history of heart trouble I’d never live through another four years.  The American people had enough of Presidents dying in office.”

Had Lyndon Johnson sought and won re-election in 1968, his term would have ended on January 20, 1973 — a few months after his 64th birthday.  Instead, he retired to the LBJ Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, grew his hair out long, started smoking again, and tried to enjoy the time he had left.  His premonition, however, was correct.  In an eerie coincidence, Lyndon Johnson died at the age of 64 — on January 22, 1973, two days after his term would have ended had he been re-elected in 1968.

On the night that Lyndon Johnson died, George Foreman — a young boxer who escaped his troubled life in the Houston ghetto with the help of LBJ’s Job Corps program to win a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics — knocked out Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica to win the World Heavyweight Championship.  Foreman felt so indebted to LBJ and the Job Corps for helping him achieve his goals that he donated his championship belt to the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas where it is on display today.

The very next evening after LBJ’s death, his successor, President Richard Nixon, announced an agreement with the North Vietnamese to bring an end to the war in Southeast Asia that had caused Lyndon Johnson so much grief.  In his speech that night, President Nixon said, “Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died.  In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war.  But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.”

There have been instances where I knocked my experience in Texas, but one thing that I always will remember fondly is the wonderful LBJ Library at the University of Texas — the best Presidential Library and Museum in the entire federal system of Presidential Libraries.  Every time I visited the LBJ Library, I was always mesmerized by the amazing exhibits, the accessibility of such fascinating historic artifacts, and the kindliness and attentiveness of the staff and volunteers.  The LBJ Library will always be my favorite memory of Austin and Texas.

My appreciation has only grown since I left Texas, and I wanted to share why.  A couple of weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to Brittany, who is a docent at the LBJ Library and a fellow Tumblr user.  I mentioned a photograph that was on display at the LBJ Library that I fell in love with when I first saw it.  It’s a photo of LBJ after he left the White House.  He’s at the LBJ Ranch and, to me, the photo is one of my favorites of any President.  Knowing LBJ’s personality and how badly he missed being President while also knowing how saddened he was that he had to leave office as he did, the photograph seems to tell a dozen different stories.

I didn’t know when the photo was taken, who took the photo, and couldn’t give much information besides mentioning to Brittany what I remembered it looking like.  Brittany passed along my e-mail and the other day, I received an e-mail from staff at the LBJ Library who had located the photo and sent a copy to me so that I could frame it and hang it in my office.  I thank Brittany, first of all, but also the staff at the LBJ Library Tumblr and specifically, Laura, Liza, and the archivists in the LBJ Library’s audio-visual archives in Austin.  I’m so thankful that they would take the time to find the photo for me, and it just confirmed what I already figured: the LBJ Library is the best Presidential library, museum, and archives in the United States.

I’m going to share the photograph in a different post because the thank you deserves to stand alone.  Thank you again, and I encourage all of my followers to check out the LBJ Library Tumblr, as well as the Our Presidents Tumblr from the National Archives.

Harry C. McPherson, who was one of Lyndon B. Johnson’s most trusted aides, died on Thursday in Bethesda, Maryland, at the age of 82. 

As one of LBJ’s closest confidants, he served the former President as a speechwriter, counsel, and wore many hats in the Johnson Administration.  Due to his proximity to LBJ, McPherson has been an invaluable source for researchers of LBJ, the Johnson Administration, and the era in which Johnson served.  If you have read a biography about Lyndon Johnson, there is a good chance that the author interviewed McPherson or used information from the extensive oral histories of McPherson at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.

I’m saddened to hear of Mr. McPherson’s death and disappointed that I missed my chance to see Mr. McPherson speak at the LBJ Library when I was in Austin.  It would have been a privilege to have listened to him in-person as I have always been fascinated by the insight that Mr. McPherson was able to provide in his speeches, writings (including a wonderful memoir, A Political Education, published in 1972), as well as the aforementioned oral histories that he left behind.  

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a young man from Texas won a gold medal in heavyweight boxing while an old man from Texas proudly watched from the White House in Washington, D.C.

As a teenager growing up in Houston’s rough Fifth Ward, George Foreman was spending his days and nights fighting in the streets and committing petty crimes.  Foreman had little education, few role models, no direction and found the crippling poverty that he lived in to be unbearable.  Then, in 1965, he heard of the Job Corps.

One of the foundations of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War On Poverty, the Job Corps was created in 1964 to provide vocational training and technical education, free of charge, to students aged 16 through 24.  For many young Americans, the Job Corps as an opportunity.  For George Foreman, it was a path to superstardom and success.

After beginning his Job Corps training in Oregon, Foreman was stationed at a center in California where a Job Corps supervisor named Doc Broadus encouraged the 6’4” Texan to consider boxing.  Just three years after he signed up for the centerpiece program of LBJ’s Great Society, George Foreman was representing his country in the Olympics. 

To this day, Foreman credits the Job Corps for saving his life.  Later, he would proudly declare that “Job Corps took me from the mean streets and out of a nightmare lifestyle into a mode where the most incredible dreams came true.”

Following Foreman’s gold medal victory at the 1968 Olympics, he was invited to the White House by President Johnson and became a proud symbol of a Great Society success story.  At the White House, President Johnson asked Foreman when he thought he’d win the world championship and Foreman recalled that “I told him I hoped it would be quick, as I needed the money.  He laughed about that.”

As LBJ headed into retirement in Texas, George Foreman embarked on a successful professional boxing career and with a 37-0 record, he prepared to fight for the undisputed heavyweight championship against the undefeated champion — Joe Frazier.  Foreman started going by the nickname “The Fighting Corpsman”, paying tribute to his Job Corps roots because “it had been President Johnson’s Job Corps which changed my direction in life.  I thought all those Job Corps men out there would see that one among them was making it, and maybe it would help them believe they could as well.”

The Fighting Corpsman was a heavy underdog on January 22, 1973 as he challenged Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight championship in Kingston, Jamaica.  Most boxing reporters and students of the game thought that the match wouldn’t last very long and they were correct.  Foreman dominated Frazier, knocking him down six times in two rounds before the referee finally stepped in and stopped the beating.  As millions watched the fight on television, sportscaster Howard Cosell made one of the most famous calls in history, “Down goes Frazier!  Down goes Frazier!  Down goes Frazier!”.  At just 24 years old, George Foreman — the Fighting Corpsman — was the heavyweight champion of the world.

The victory was George Foreman’s, but no one would have taken more pride in the results of that fight than the architect of the program that turned Foreman’s life around, Lyndon B. Johnson.  Sadly, Johnson never saw the fight.  Just hours earlier on the very day that Foreman won the title in Jamaica, Lyndon Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack at the LBJ Ranch near Johnson City, Texas.  As fans were filing into the arena in Jamaica, Lyndon Johnson died en route to a hospital in Texas.

For the new champion, the victory was bittersweet.  “I felt robbed that night while winning it as I had hoped he would be able to read what happened in Jamaica which could never have been possible had he not had that Job Corps idea and that it would include me.”  In 1983, George Foreman donated the championship belt that he won on the day of LBJ’s death to the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas where it is on display today — a memento from a coincidental day 38 years ago when two Texans were united by accomplishment and cemented in history.

1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies
By David Pietrusza
Hardcover. 523 pp.
2008. Union Square Press

After the last of four historic Presidential debates in 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon shook hands with his opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy, and said, “It sure goes by fast, doesn’t it?”. 

As I was reading David Pietrusza’s 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies (2008, Union Square Press) I found myself thinking the same thing: It sure goes by fast.

David Pietrusza writes history the way that novelists strive to write fiction.  Pietrusza takes a seminal event, introduces us to a broad, fascinating cast of characters, and ties together numerous stories filled with drama and even humor to create an exciting, addictive tale.  The most rewarding thing about it is that Pietrusza is writing about something that actually happened and that makes the story even more interesting.  He writes about something that is real and, in the case of 1960, Pietrusza is writing about an election featuring three of the most dominant politicians and leaders of the 20th Century — an election which shaped the last half of the American Century and changed Presidential politics forever.

I flew through this book — partly because I couldn’t put it down and partly because it is supremely readable.  Pietrusza’s research brings us amazing quotes, and the book features complex characters who are full of enough stories that it’s easy to get lost in a book about each of them individually.  In 1960, these individuals are playing a part in the same drama and there is never a moment where you wish the author would switch back to something more interesting.  Every story he tells is interesting.

Among the bold-faced names which give 1960 an all-star cast are Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon Johnson, current President Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon’s running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., mobster Sam Giancana, Barry Goldwater, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Martin Luther King Jr., Tip O’Neill, Harry Truman, Stuart Symington, Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Jackie Robinson, and more.  These are big names with big stories, and during the 1960 Presidential campaign they all played major roles.

One of the most interesting aspects of 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is the ambition of the Kennedy family as a whole, which is matched by the ambition of Richard Nixon as an individual.  Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy is focused on getting his son, Jack, elected President in 1960 and he’s willing to pay any price to do so.  Nixon is similarly focused on the Presidency, but he doesn’t have wealth to back him up, charm to open doors, or the support of his mentor President Eisenhower to give him strength.  Nixon attempts to do it all on his own, and what is so shocking, even in retrospect, is how very close Nixon came to beating JFK in 1960.

Beginning with the battle between JFK and Hubert Humphrey in several state primary contests, the Democratic Presidential nomination comes down to a last-second challenge to JFK from Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas.  When JFK triumphs in Los Angeles and wins the nomination he astonishes everyone by offering the Vice Presidency to LBJ.  From there the campaign — and the book — takes off.

1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is strongest when Pietrusza shares little-known backroom facts and inside secrets, as well as when he disputes myths that have surrounded the 1960 campaign, JFK, LBJ and Nixon.  We learn more details about JFK’s unsavory connections with Frank Sinatra and, through Sinatra, Sam Giancana and the Chicago Mafia.  LBJ’s insecurities as a leader and as a candidate are exposed.  The tenacity and abrasiveness of Bobby Kennedy are spotlighted.  Richard Nixon’s strengths and weaknesses — a foreshadowing of what would eventually finally get him elected President and then eventually topple his career in disgrace — are obvious as he isolates himself and obsesses over campaign details while overlooking big-picture items.

All great historians are able to translate stories about events and facts into stories about people.  All history is personal, and David Pietrusza’s 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is a wonderful book about a transcendent event populated by extraordinary human beings who faced achievements and adversity, triumphs and tragedies.  We know what happened to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon once they moved into the White House, but this is how they got to that point.  It’s a story about America and Americans, and about how 1960 was a turning point for politics and politicians in this country — the beginning of a New Frontier, a Great Society, and a Silent Majority, and the end of American innocence.

As I first learned with his previous book (1920: The Year of the Six Presidents) I love the way David Pietrusza writes history and this is a book about three of the Presidents who fascinate me most.  I highly recommend 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies.  Get it at your local bookstore, Amazon, or through the Sterling Publishing website.