Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [94]
No.
And he said, "He's done more," and he said—The thing is, Lyndon snowed everyone so much. He wasn't cutting up Lyndon, because he never cut Lyndon up. But he was saying, he snowed everyone so with his personality. But he said, "After all, look, it was under Eisenhower, and after all, what was done?" And he named very negligible things. And he said, "The situation's so much worse now, more difficult"—and all these things and he named, I remember, sixty-eight percent of our program the first year, seventy-one or seventy-three, the second, and he said, "We're going to get this and this and that by." And then Ben was needling him, saying, "But you're not going to get the tax bill by and the civil rights bill by this year, as you've said. Anyway, the tax bill, as you said." And he said, "God, what does it matter, Ben? We're going to get the tax bill. It's going to come by in February. O.K., it's not this year but it's two months later." And the civil rights he predicted exactly—everything that would happen as the date. And Mansfield, he just thought, was extraordinary and that nobody recognized it because the man played quietly. So Lyndon, as vice president, didn't just do anything. But it was all right. It was fine.
The story has been printed to the effect that there was some consideration of dropping Johnson in '64.
Not in '64. But Bobby told me this later, and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, "Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?" So many times he'd say it—or if there was ever a problem. I mean, stories would come out about '64, but I don't see how you could drop him in '64.
Very hard.
But in '68, I know, he was thinking in some little way, what could you do? Well, first place, I thought Lyndon would be too old then to run for president. I mean, he didn't like that idea that Lyndon would go on and be president because he was worried for the country. And Bobby told me that he'd had some discussions with him. I forget exactly how they were planning or who they had in mind. It wasn't Bobby, but somebody. Do something to name someone else in '68.79
Do you remember anything in particular about the congressional campaign in '62? Of course, it was so dominated by the—overshadowed by the Cuban crisis. You didn't go out, I think.
No, I mean, he didn't ask me to go out. I don't know.
At the beginning, he planned a rather short campaign and then made a longer one. On the question of—would he ever talk about the legislative breakfasts?80
Oh, yes, because sometimes they used to be upstairs and, you know, the children would wander in. And sometimes, I'd wander out of my room in my dressing gown and all those men would come out in clouds of smoke. And—
The breakfast was on the second floor?
Sometimes they'd be, and then later on they were in the Family Dining Room. The first one, all the antique chairs that Harry du Pont had, broke one by one. But he would talk about them and what was said if it was a good one.
Whom did he like particularly? Hubert? What did he say about—
Well, he loved Mansfield and Dirksen was always very nice with him. I don't know, I guess he was really, was very sad when Sam Rayburn died. And McCormack he'd always had trouble with. But, I guess McCormack was always alright at them. I don't know. It really wouldn't be fair for me to say. I don't know.81
One of the great mysteries around the White House was the—
I know one thing about the legislative breakfasts that Larry O'Brien told me. This is something interesting about Ted Sorensen. Larry couldn't stand Ted Sorensen, so one night he was telling me—well, they were obviously—the Irishmen would be jealous of the Sorensens—but he said so many times Larry would have prepared an agenda for the breakfasts and just before they were about