Succession

[Charles Collins]

Here are LBJ's approval ratings (Gallup). He's up around 55-60% approval through 1965 and then mostly fades until the very end.

I believe that LBJ lacked foresight that JFK had. Here’s an example from pages 315-316 of “The Death of a President” by William Manchester:


Kennedy was no more a traitor to his class than Roosevelt had been. But as the son of a financial buccaneer who had become one of FDR’s ablest advisers on fiscal reform—the Securities and Exchange Commission and the integrity it brought modern markets were largely creations of Joe Kennedy—JFK had been alert to the vulnerability of the economy to blind panic. During his first week in the executive mansion he had designed an intricate prearrangement to safeguard against such panic. On February 3, 1961, he had sent his proposal to the Congress as a major message, and on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, it lay on the desk of Joe Fowler, Douglas Dillon’s surrogate.

  Historically the relationship between the Treasury and the mansion had always been intimate. The United States was, after all, the oldest and greatest capitalistic democracy, and the two great buildings, standing on either side of East Executive Avenue, were actually linked by an underground tunnel. Since 1902 the Secret Service, as an arm of the Treasury Department, had tightened the bond. Fowler thought first of the Service; he called Chief Rowley and asked that adequate security arrangements be made for the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. Rowley assured him that this was being done. Fowler’s second call was to Robert McNamara, the ranking Cabinet member in Washington.4 Like the men in the White House, he wanted to be sure that 86972 was reversing course. The Secretary of Defense was talking to the Attorney General on another line, but an aide relayed word that the aircraft was on its way back. They hung up, and it was then that Fowler remembered the plan Kennedy had drafted for just such an extremity as today’s.

  To prevent them from turning world markets into casinos, with the United States as the heavy loser, Kennedy had set up what he called a “swap arrangement” with the central banks of other countries. The U.S.A. literally swapped its money for theirs. He had ordered the Treasury to accumulate enormous stocks of pounds, marks, lire, yen, pesos, rands, guilders, French francs and Swiss francs—of every form of international currency. These had then been locked up. They constituted a kind of insurance: the President left a standing order that in any emergency they should all be released at once, with massive offers of foreign exchange being made to counter any dollars thrown on the table. The first occasion for the measure was to be his own violent death.

  Briefly, the President’s strategy was this. The first step was to see that all government security markets suspended trading at once. Second, Fowler instructed Alfred Hayes, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to call Keith Funston of the New York Stock Exchange and Ted Etherington of Amex, requesting them to close down. The gongs rang, and just in time; the assassination of the President, coupled with a shocking vegetable oil scandal which had been exposed earlier in the day, had sent the Big Board into a dizzy spiral. Clearing the floors provided a respite. In itself it was no exploit. Funston, in fact, had anticipated the Treasury. The crux of Kennedy’s design lay abroad. The major risk was speculation against the dollar. Such piracy is easy to detect. Sharks buy gold, betting that the price will rise from $35 an ounce to $40, say, or $45. Stopping them is not so easy, and no solution can be improvised after the balloon of fear has gone up.

  It worked magnificently. The key man was Al Hayes, because New York’s Federal Reserve is more than a reserve bank; it also serves as the government’s fiscal agent. Luckily for Hayes, foreign exchanges had closed before the assassination. Nevertheless America’s great vaults were opened that afternoon, and next day the bales of bills were to be used. On Saturday a few European gold markets opened, notably London’s and Zurich’s. On both, corsairs reached for the panic button. The Kennedy swap blocked them completely. Their dollars were taken, but in return they received other tender, not gold. (On Monday the Jolly Roger was hoisted again—after a few passes the speculators realized the extent of America’s preparations and withdrew. Meanwhile in the United States Wall Street was given the weekend plus an additional twenty-four hours of breathing time. Declaration of a bank holiday would have been alarming, so David Rockefeller, a friend of the Kennedys, persuaded his brother Nelson to halt trading as “a special mark of respect” for the late President. By Tuesday everything was steady.) The entire operation was a financial masterpiece, conducted on so high a plane that the oil and gas men of Dallas who had traduced JFK as a “Comsymp” enemy of free enterprise never even understood what was happening.


And I think that JFK had the foresight to see that the war in Vietnam was not going to be won by inserting bonafide U.S. combat troops and escalating the effort like LBJ did.

[Charles Collins]

Here’s a footnote from page 610 of “The Death of a President” by William Manchester that I think demonstrates a fundamental difference between JFK and LBJ. LBJ said that he wanted to continue the work of JFK. But, sadly, I cannot imagine that, at least once the war in Vietnam grew, LBJ had time to continue this JFK practice:


Kennedy personally wrote the family of every American who died in uniform during his Presidency. The lines to Box 813, Kirbyville, Texas, are particularly eloquent, but there were between forty and fifty such letters each month. Whenever one of them produced a reply, he invited the widow and children to Washington for a talk in the Rose Garden.

[Jonithan Carl]

That's a really interesting perspective! It's fascinating to learn how the rules about Presidential succession have changed over time. The confusion on that day and how LBJ handled stepping into the role of President is something that not many people think about. It's great that this book helps uncover some of those mysteries!