Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [149]
72. JFK had had to deal with a worrisome drain of gold reserves to Western Europe.
73. By now, Jacqueline's once-benign attitude toward Johnson as leader has hardened, along with Robert Kennedy's. Later in 1964, when Jacqueline studied a draft of Sorensen's soon-to-be-published book Kennedy, she insisted that the author change or delete almost every favorable mention of her husband's vice president, noting "several glowing references to LBJ, which I know do not reflect President Kennedy's thinking. . . . You must know—as well or better than I—his steadily diminishing opinion of him. . . . He grew more and more concerned about what would happen if LBJ ever became president. He was truly frightened at the prospect." Refuting a Sorensen claim in the draft that the President had "learned" about campaigning from Johnson, she wrote, "Lyndon's style always embarrassed him, especially when he sent him around the world as Vice-President." In later years, however, time, distance, the end of Robert Kennedy's rivalry with Johnson, the death of LBJ, and her cordial relationship with Lady Bird softened Jacqueline's attitude toward her late husband's successor. She distinguished her objections to certain Johnson policies—especially the Vietnam War escalation, which she insisted Jack would never have countenanced—from her personal fondness for both Lyndon and Lady Bird, whom she made an effort to see during the 1980s and early 1990s when both former first ladies summered on Martha's Vineyard. In a 1974 oral history about Johnson for the Johnson Library, Jacqueline said that after the assassination, LBJ "was extraordinary. He did everything he could to be magnanimous. . . . I was really touched by that generosity of spirit. . . . I always felt that about him."
74. JFK had appointed Johnson to chair the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, as well as his space council.
75. In Johnson's defense, Kennedy was eager to give his vice president dignity, but—knowing his tendency to overreach if given the chance—not a great deal to do. He sent Johnson on so many trips in order to distract him from his boredom and powerlessness. As Johnson's aide and friend Jack Valenti later described LBJ as vice president, "this great, proud vessel was just simply unable to move. Stuck there in the Sargasso Sea—no wind and no tides."
76. On this Mrs. Kennedy was absolutely right. In the spring of 1963, during a meeting when JFK was debating whether to send a civil rights bill to Congress, he asked Johnson for his opinion, and the vice president acidly said he could not respond because no one had given him enough information to have a judgment. In a 1965 oral history interview, Robert Kennedy recalled that during the missile crisis, LBJ "never made any suggestions or recommendations as to what we should do. . . . He was displeased with what we were doing, although he never made it clear what he would do."
77. During a 1961 trip to Pakistan, LBJ invited a camel driver named Bashir Ahmed to see him in the United States. To his surprise, Ahmed took him up on his offer, and Johnson hosted him for a well-publicized visit to his Texas ranch.
78. Before the inauguration, Johnson had made a misguided attempt to persuade Democratic members of the Senate to allow him to continue to lead their caucus. When they slapped him down by formal vote, JFK noted that "the steam really went out of Lyndon."
79. In the last year of his life, JFK asked his friend Charlie Bartlett whether he thought the 1968 Democratic nominee would be "Bobby or Lyndon." Other sources have it that the President was vaguely pondering the liberal North Carolina governor Terry Sanford as a possible 1964 running mate, if necessary, or as the 1968 presidential nominee.
80. The President hosted a regular breakfast with congressional leaders.
81. EVERETT DIRKSEN (1896–1969) was senator from Illinois and leader of Senate Republicans