Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [128]
19. LBJ had called an extraordinary post-convention session of the Senate. Jacqueline had always liked Johnson—he felt she was "nicer" to him than anyone else in the Kennedy entourage, but this passage suggests some disenchantment with the new president. Two days before Christmas 1963, LBJ demonstrated his tendency to overreach. He telephoned Mrs. Kennedy to wish her a happy holiday ("How's my little girl?") without telling her that he had reporters listening in so that he could show off his closeness to the revered widow. And Robert Kennedy, who detested Johnson, had regaled her with such tales as LBJ's hasty request of JFK's personal secretary on the morning after the assassination to vacate her West Wing office "so I can get my girls in" and his reversal of various Kennedy appointments, policies, and intentions. But, although unsettled by Johnson's periodic gaucheries and his negation of a number of JFK policies, Mrs. Kennedy liked LBJ and had great fondness and admiration for Lady Bird, who had often filled in for her as First Lady. Jacqueline was also grateful to her successor for pledging to complete her White House restoration designs and to preserve the White House Historical Association and her other improvements intended to ensure that the mansion would remain a museum-quality showcase of American history and culture.
20. PHILIP GRAHAM (1915–1963) was publisher of the Washington Post and a close Johnson ally who, in the habit of many newspaper proprietors of the time, liked to be involved in politics behind the scenes. But in his posthumously published memorandum on his role in LBJ's selection, he in no way suggests that he was anything close to a kingmaker. Nor does Alsop in his memoirs. By Graham's account, his own role was limited to urging both men to run together and then—after JFK went down to Johnson's Biltmore Hotel suite and made the deal with him—encouraging LBJ not to bolt the ticket when angry liberals threatened a floor fight. RFK, who even in 1960 disliked the Texan, much later insisted that his brother's offer of the vice presidency had been merely pro forma, and that Johnson had "grabbed" it. Graham, Alsop, and others insisted that JFK had planned in advance of his nomination to make a serious offer to Johnson in order to carry important southern states and thus win the presidency. There is unlikely to ever be a definitive verdict on how much Kennedy really wanted Johnson on his ticket.
21. Now John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
22. Meaning JFK's father, the former envoy to the Court of St. James's.
23. Referring to the director, who made pictures such as The Informer (1935), about an Irish rebel who betrays a comrade.
24. JOHN CONNALLY (1917–1993) was a lawyer and Texas crony of Lyndon Johnson's. At a press conference before the balloting in Los Angeles in 1960, Connally had demanded a medical evaluation of whether Kennedy was healthy enough to serve as president. Nevertheless, JFK made him secretary of the navy. Elected governor of his state in 1962, Connally and his wife Nellie rode with the Kennedys through four Texas cities on November 21 and 22, 1963. During the Dallas motorcade, in the last words they spoke, Connally, a conservative Democrat, told the President of a soon-to-be-published poll that showed him running ahead of JFK in Texas in 1964. Kennedy replied, "That doesn't surprise me."
25. One of the purposes of the Texas trip of November 1963 was to resolve an intra-party feud in that state which pitted Johnson and Connally against their political nemesis, Texas senator Ralph Yarborough. Connally refused to ride in the presidential motorcades with Yarborough. Yarborough refused to ride with Johnson. In Fort Worth that final morning, JFK had been compelled to tell Yarborough, "For Christ's sake, Ralph, cut it out!" The other politician with the same name was liberal