Surprisingly, I am just now getting around to reading William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President”. It is a fascinating book to read. I am only part way through it but the accounts of the mass confusion that occurred on 11/22/63 are amazing. Anyway, here is a snip from the book about succession of the Vice President to the office of President. I was surprised to learn that the way that has evolved wasn’t the intent of the founding fathers. And learning why LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it) solved one of the mysteries of that day that I have wondered about for almost sixty years. I was taught that the VP automatically became the President. Now, I feel like Paul Harvey has told “the rest of the story”.Good stuff. I'll have to go back over Manchester's book. I believe the 25th Amendment, added in 1965, correct a lot of this, removed a lot of this confusion. As in "Section 1: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President."
Had Vice President Johnson assumed the Office of President at 1 P.M. in Parkland, there would have been no void. The transition would have been immediate. The fact that he failed to do so may be traced to the riddle of Presidential succession, which had confounded constitutional scholars for 122 years. The American Constitution, that imperfect classic, specifies in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, that “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President”—a solecism which should have made the Founding Fathers blush. What is meant by “the Same”? If the phrase to which it refers is “Powers and Duties,” then the Vice President remains Vice President, exercising those powers and performing those duties until the people can choose a new President. We know now that this was the desire of the men who framed the Constitution. The notes of James Madison, published long after his death, provide a cogent record of the secret deliberations of 1787. The founders never intended that any man should become Chief Executive unless he had been elected to that office. The wording they approved stated that in the event of the death of an incumbent the Vice President should serve as acting President “until another President be chosen.” This unequivocal provision was then dropped by the Constitutional Convention’s five-man committee on style, which made constitutional interpretation the art of the impossible. It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
But the Madison papers appeared too late. The second possible antecedent for “the Same”—“the said Office”—had become hallowed by precedent. In 1841 William Henry Harrison caught cold during his inauguration and became the first American Chief Executive to die in office. His Vice President, John Tyler, learned the news while playing marbles with his children in Williamsburg, Virginia. Tyler, who didn’t know about Madison’s notes, never doubted that he was entitled to occupy “the said Office.” Several eminent American statesmen dissented, notably Henry Clay and former President John Quincy Adams, who, on April 16, 1841, seven days after Tyler’s inaugural address, made acid reference in his diary to “Mr. Tyler, who styles himself President… and not Vice-President acting as President.” Tyler, however, had powerful allies, chiefly Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and he had already moved into the White House. Time and custom were working for him. By the end of June even Adams was calling him “Mr. President.”
During the next century death elevated six more Vice Presidents—Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman—and the claims of each to “the said Office” were uncontested. The Tyler precedent held, despite grumblings that few running mates to emerge from conventions were big enough to lead the ticket. Roosevelt and Truman excepted, the six were an uninspiring and undistinguished group. In the words of one scholar, the Vice Presidency was “a comfortable sinecure with which to honor some of the country’s more able politicians.” The qualifications of the second office in the land bore little relationship to the demands of the first. Nevertheless the silent engine of succession was still there, waiting to be used. Tyler had led the way. Succession had, in effect, become automatic.
Or almost automatic. Tyler did something else which acquired a special significance in Dallas. His action arose from the realization that men like Adams were certain to contest his right to occupy the White House. When he picked up his marbles in Williamsburg, convinced in his own mind that he was already the tenth President of the United States, he was aware that Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, of the Constitution stipulated that a Chief Executive, “before he enter on the Execution of his Office,” must swear or affirm his support of that Constitution. Although he had already done that as Vice President, he resolved to make assurance doubly sure. Leading the Cabinet to the Indian Queen Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, he repeated the pledge on April 6, 1841. It was administered by Chief Justice William Cranch of the District of Columbia Circuit Court, who immediately afterward signed an affidavit setting forth the legal situation. The document declared that Harrison’s successor deemed himself qualified to take over “without any other oath than that which he has taken as Vice President,” but that he had asked to be sworn in again “as doubts may arise, and for greater caution.”
John Tyler has much to answer for. Apart from annexing Texas and taming the Seminoles he did little for his country during the next four years, and in tightening his grip on the Presidency at the Indian Queen Hotel he had left an exasperating constitutional trap for Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Truman, all of whom fell into it. No one remembered Cranch’s affidavit. The document was filed away in the National Archives and forgotten. But everyone recalled the dramatic oath, and each of the six men who were to stand in Tyler’s shoes felt obliged to repeat it. An act undertaken “for greater caution” was magnified out of all proportion. The ceremonies, conducted while the grieving republic mourned its fallen leaders, became folklore, and the very Bibles on which the new Chief Executives rested their hands were integrated into the myth. The Constitution, of course, mentions the Bible nowhere.
In time of crisis the pull of myth increases tenfold. On November 22, 1963, the typical American, like the typical correspondent in 101–102, was under the impression that the oath was mandatory. He still is. His leaders (though lamentably few of them have thought the matter through) are divided. Speaker John McCormack, who with Kennedy’s death became next in line of succession, echoes the popular misconception. He thinks Johnson had to be sworn in as soon as possible “because the country had to have a President.” Chief Justice Warren agrees. The oath is needed in such circumstances, he argues, to put the new leader’s dedication to the Constitution on record. Reminded that Johnson had taken that vow at the Kennedy inaugural, he replies, “But he hadn’t taken it as President.”2
The weight of informed opinion lies on the other side. Barefoot Sanders, who was the U.S. Attorney on the spot, thinks Johnson became President the moment Kennedy died. So does Robert Kennedy; so does Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, who followed Kennedy as the sixty-ninth Attorney General. Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson chose as his own Vice President, declares emphatically, “A Vice President becomes President when there is no President. Later, when he takes the oath, he puts on the cloak of office. But that act is purely symbolic.” Former President Eisenhower takes the strongest position of all. In the view of Eisenhower—who scorns the second oath—Johnson became Chief Executive the moment it was obvious that Kennedy was dying; that is, before Kemp Clark pronounced him dead. The former President believes that Johnson was entitled to sign legislation at any time after 12:30 Central Standard Time. Had a national emergency arisen between then and 2:38 P.M., when he took that second oath, and had Johnson failed to act, Eisenhower holds that he would have been derelict in his duty and subject to impeachment.
The cadre of professionals who serve the Presidency is similarly split, though they, too, are inclined to dismiss the oath as inconsequential. Because the Secret Service White House Detail lacked forceful leadership on November 22, individual agents are vague. Former Chief Wilson is a more vigorous witness than any of them. When Franklin Roosevelt died, Wilson left one man with Mrs. Roosevelt and immediately reassigned all others, including those who had been guarding the President’s grandchildren, to Truman. “As far as the Service is concerned,” Wilson declares, “when a President dies the Vice President becomes President at once, and all protection goes to him and his family.” Colonel McNally of the White House Communications Agency concurs: “It sounds coldblooded, but the instant President Kennedy died, communications-wise he disappeared off the face of the earth. Oath of office or not, Lyndon Johnson was President in our eyes and head of the government.”
It is improbable that Johnson had considered these complex issues before a blaze of gunfire confronted him with them. Over a year and a half afterward he informed this writer that it was his opinion that “the Vice President becomes President immediately upon the death of the President. He is obligated thereafter to take the oath of office, but there is no lapse in the powers of the Presidency.” Having taken the second oath, he perhaps felt an obligation to defend it. Otherwise the statement conforms with judicial opinion. However, it was made after the full ramifications of the question had been laid before him. In Dallas, he conceded, he had felt differently. Although “immediately aware” of his new responsibilities, the “full realization,” the “subjective identification” of himself as Chief Executive, “came gradually.”
Perhaps anticipation of the consequences of a President’s death should be obligatory for Vice Presidents, but it wouldn’t come easily. There is little evidence that Johnson’s seven predecessors had given the matter much thought. The attitude of national politicians toward the White House is highly ambivalent; they simultaneously crave it and recoil from it. Vice Presidents, like Presidents, are loath to dwell upon the fact that they are a heartbeat away from the executive mansion, and when the beat suddenly stops they are dumfounded. “I don’t know if any of you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on him,” Truman told reporters on April 14, 1945, “but last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me.”
Truman’s reaction should be mulled over if the Dallas transition is to be put in perspective. When the news arrived from Warm Springs, with which he had no connection, he was in Washington. His predecessor had died peacefully. There had been no violence. Johnson’s plight, on the other hand, was ghastly. The President had been visiting the Vice President’s home grounds, and in twenty-four hours the Connally-Yarborough feud had transformed the trip into a Johnsonian disaster. At 12:29 P.M. his career was at a low ebb. He sat sluggishly in the back seat of his convertible, insensitive to the cheers around him, seeking refuge in the blare of a dashboard radio. His prestige had come apart, and for the moment he had apparently abandoned hope of reassembling it. Then, sixty seconds later, the elected President and his lady lay in a welter of blood, and Lyndon Johnson was the leader of the nation.
In the moment it takes to drive over a crack of gray Texas asphalt his life and his country’s history had been transformed. He had no way of knowing why it had happened, but he had been a political creature since youth. The instant his antennae began to sweep the scene he had to deal with the stupendous fact that in the eyes of the United States and the world beyond, a Texas murder had put a Texan in power. The catastrophe had struck him harder than any other man in Dallas. If he was mesmerized, if some of his actions were incomprehensible, the nature of that unprecedented shock has to be borne in mind constantly, and to recapture its impact on him the reel of events must be wound back to 12:36 P.M., when Lady Bird, after a frightened glance at the pink blur at SS 100 X, darted into the hospital behind the wedge of agents surrounding her husband.
Good stuff. I'll have to go back over Manchester's book. I believe the 25th Amendment, added in 1965, correct a lot of this, removed a lot of this confusion. As in "Section 1: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President."
I do remember how he described the absolute chaos and confusion on Air Force One and how everyone was scrambling to try and find out what happened and what they should do. If this was all orchestrated - as some conspiracists claims - they were all helluva actors.
Recall the mini controversy when Obama took office and Chief Justice Roberts read him a "mangled" oath? He had accidentally switched the words "faithfully" and "execute". As a precaution, they went back and did it over again with Robert's giving the accurate oath.
Story here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-obama-oath-idUSTRE50L09A20090122
Robert Caro's "Passage of Power" is s fantastic book on the transition period between the JFK assassination to LBJ's presidency. The focus is mostly on the enormous productivity of LBJ in the first hundred days or so following the assassination (and not so much the details of the assassination) but it's the single best book on the topic in my opinion. Caro has many unfavorable things to say about LBJ (including a suggestion that he might not have been JFK's VP in 1964) but he found zero evidence that LBJ was involved in any manner with the assassination.
Robert Caro's "Passage of Power" is s fantastic book on the transition period between the JFK assassination to LBJ's presidency. The focus is mostly on the enormous productivity of LBJ in the first hundred days or so following the assassination (and not so much the details of the assassination) but it's the single best book on the topic in my opinion. Caro has many unfavorable things to say about LBJ (including a suggestion that he might not have been JFK's VP in 1964) but he found zero evidence that LBJ was involved in any manner with the assassination.Yep, Caro says he loathes LBJ, is disgusted by his crudity and vulgarity and lies. Just a horrible person. He said that LBJ's family refused to talk to him after the first volume came out.
Yep, Caro says he loathes LBJ, is disgusted by his crudity and vulgarity and lies. Just a horrible person. He said that LBJ's family refused to talk to him after the first volume came out.
In those fist few months during the transition LBJ really rose to the occasion. His advisers were telling him to be cautious, that the country was in shock and needed healing. He told them what good is this power if I can't use it? So he focused on getting civil rights through. Shortly after the assassination he called Dr. King up and tells him we need to get this bill passed, it's still stuck in a House subcommittee. He's risking things - splitting the party - over this? And he's put into power by the conspirators to undo JFK's work? He does this? This risk? He's supposed to be a war monger not a civil rights crusader.
Surprisingly, I am just now getting around to reading William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President”. It is a fascinating book to read. I am only part way through it but the accounts of the mass confusion that occurred on 11/22/63 are amazing. Anyway, here is a snip from the book about succession of the Vice President to the office of President. I was surprised to learn that the way that has evolved wasn’t the intent of the founding fathers. And learning why LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it) solved one of the mysteries of that day that I have wondered about for almost sixty years. I was taught that the VP automatically became the President. Now, I feel like Paul Harvey has told “the rest of the story”.
Had Vice President Johnson assumed the Office of President at 1 P.M. in Parkland, there would have been no void. The transition would have been immediate. The fact that he failed to do so may be traced to the riddle of Presidential succession, which had confounded constitutional scholars for 122 years. The American Constitution, that imperfect classic, specifies in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, that “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President”—a solecism which should have made the Founding Fathers blush. What is meant by “the Same”? If the phrase to which it refers is “Powers and Duties,” then the Vice President remains Vice President, exercising those powers and performing those duties until the people can choose a new President. We know now that this was the desire of the men who framed the Constitution. The notes of James Madison, published long after his death, provide a cogent record of the secret deliberations of 1787. The founders never intended that any man should become Chief Executive unless he had been elected to that office. The wording they approved stated that in the event of the death of an incumbent the Vice President should serve as acting President “until another President be chosen.” This unequivocal provision was then dropped by the Constitutional Convention’s five-man committee on style, which made constitutional interpretation the art of the impossible. It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
But the Madison papers appeared too late. The second possible antecedent for “the Same”—“the said Office”—had become hallowed by precedent. In 1841 William Henry Harrison caught cold during his inauguration and became the first American Chief Executive to die in office. His Vice President, John Tyler, learned the news while playing marbles with his children in Williamsburg, Virginia. Tyler, who didn’t know about Madison’s notes, never doubted that he was entitled to occupy “the said Office.” Several eminent American statesmen dissented, notably Henry Clay and former President John Quincy Adams, who, on April 16, 1841, seven days after Tyler’s inaugural address, made acid reference in his diary to “Mr. Tyler, who styles himself President… and not Vice-President acting as President.” Tyler, however, had powerful allies, chiefly Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and he had already moved into the White House. Time and custom were working for him. By the end of June even Adams was calling him “Mr. President.”
During the next century death elevated six more Vice Presidents—Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman—and the claims of each to “the said Office” were uncontested. The Tyler precedent held, despite grumblings that few running mates to emerge from conventions were big enough to lead the ticket. Roosevelt and Truman excepted, the six were an uninspiring and undistinguished group. In the words of one scholar, the Vice Presidency was “a comfortable sinecure with which to honor some of the country’s more able politicians.” The qualifications of the second office in the land bore little relationship to the demands of the first. Nevertheless the silent engine of succession was still there, waiting to be used. Tyler had led the way. Succession had, in effect, become automatic.
Or almost automatic. Tyler did something else which acquired a special significance in Dallas. His action arose from the realization that men like Adams were certain to contest his right to occupy the White House. When he picked up his marbles in Williamsburg, convinced in his own mind that he was already the tenth President of the United States, he was aware that Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, of the Constitution stipulated that a Chief Executive, “before he enter on the Execution of his Office,” must swear or affirm his support of that Constitution. Although he had already done that as Vice President, he resolved to make assurance doubly sure. Leading the Cabinet to the Indian Queen Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, he repeated the pledge on April 6, 1841. It was administered by Chief Justice William Cranch of the District of Columbia Circuit Court, who immediately afterward signed an affidavit setting forth the legal situation. The document declared that Harrison’s successor deemed himself qualified to take over “without any other oath than that which he has taken as Vice President,” but that he had asked to be sworn in again “as doubts may arise, and for greater caution.”
John Tyler has much to answer for. Apart from annexing Texas and taming the Seminoles he did little for his country during the next four years, and in tightening his grip on the Presidency at the Indian Queen Hotel he had left an exasperating constitutional trap for Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Truman, all of whom fell into it. No one remembered Cranch’s affidavit. The document was filed away in the National Archives and forgotten. But everyone recalled the dramatic oath, and each of the six men who were to stand in Tyler’s shoes felt obliged to repeat it. An act undertaken “for greater caution” was magnified out of all proportion. The ceremonies, conducted while the grieving republic mourned its fallen leaders, became folklore, and the very Bibles on which the new Chief Executives rested their hands were integrated into the myth. The Constitution, of course, mentions the Bible nowhere.
In time of crisis the pull of myth increases tenfold. On November 22, 1963, the typical American, like the typical correspondent in 101–102, was under the impression that the oath was mandatory. He still is. His leaders (though lamentably few of them have thought the matter through) are divided. Speaker John McCormack, who with Kennedy’s death became next in line of succession, echoes the popular misconception. He thinks Johnson had to be sworn in as soon as possible “because the country had to have a President.” Chief Justice Warren agrees. The oath is needed in such circumstances, he argues, to put the new leader’s dedication to the Constitution on record. Reminded that Johnson had taken that vow at the Kennedy inaugural, he replies, “But he hadn’t taken it as President.”2
The weight of informed opinion lies on the other side. Barefoot Sanders, who was the U.S. Attorney on the spot, thinks Johnson became President the moment Kennedy died. So does Robert Kennedy; so does Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, who followed Kennedy as the sixty-ninth Attorney General. Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson chose as his own Vice President, declares emphatically, “A Vice President becomes President when there is no President. Later, when he takes the oath, he puts on the cloak of office. But that act is purely symbolic.” Former President Eisenhower takes the strongest position of all. In the view of Eisenhower—who scorns the second oath—Johnson became Chief Executive the moment it was obvious that Kennedy was dying; that is, before Kemp Clark pronounced him dead. The former President believes that Johnson was entitled to sign legislation at any time after 12:30 Central Standard Time. Had a national emergency arisen between then and 2:38 P.M., when he took that second oath, and had Johnson failed to act, Eisenhower holds that he would have been derelict in his duty and subject to impeachment.
The cadre of professionals who serve the Presidency is similarly split, though they, too, are inclined to dismiss the oath as inconsequential. Because the Secret Service White House Detail lacked forceful leadership on November 22, individual agents are vague. Former Chief Wilson is a more vigorous witness than any of them. When Franklin Roosevelt died, Wilson left one man with Mrs. Roosevelt and immediately reassigned all others, including those who had been guarding the President’s grandchildren, to Truman. “As far as the Service is concerned,” Wilson declares, “when a President dies the Vice President becomes President at once, and all protection goes to him and his family.” Colonel McNally of the White House Communications Agency concurs: “It sounds coldblooded, but the instant President Kennedy died, communications-wise he disappeared off the face of the earth. Oath of office or not, Lyndon Johnson was President in our eyes and head of the government.”
It is improbable that Johnson had considered these complex issues before a blaze of gunfire confronted him with them. Over a year and a half afterward he informed this writer that it was his opinion that “the Vice President becomes President immediately upon the death of the President. He is obligated thereafter to take the oath of office, but there is no lapse in the powers of the Presidency.” Having taken the second oath, he perhaps felt an obligation to defend it. Otherwise the statement conforms with judicial opinion. However, it was made after the full ramifications of the question had been laid before him. In Dallas, he conceded, he had felt differently. Although “immediately aware” of his new responsibilities, the “full realization,” the “subjective identification” of himself as Chief Executive, “came gradually.”
Perhaps anticipation of the consequences of a President’s death should be obligatory for Vice Presidents, but it wouldn’t come easily. There is little evidence that Johnson’s seven predecessors had given the matter much thought. The attitude of national politicians toward the White House is highly ambivalent; they simultaneously crave it and recoil from it. Vice Presidents, like Presidents, are loath to dwell upon the fact that they are a heartbeat away from the executive mansion, and when the beat suddenly stops they are dumfounded. “I don’t know if any of you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on him,” Truman told reporters on April 14, 1945, “but last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me.”
Truman’s reaction should be mulled over if the Dallas transition is to be put in perspective. When the news arrived from Warm Springs, with which he had no connection, he was in Washington. His predecessor had died peacefully. There had been no violence. Johnson’s plight, on the other hand, was ghastly. The President had been visiting the Vice President’s home grounds, and in twenty-four hours the Connally-Yarborough feud had transformed the trip into a Johnsonian disaster. At 12:29 P.M. his career was at a low ebb. He sat sluggishly in the back seat of his convertible, insensitive to the cheers around him, seeking refuge in the blare of a dashboard radio. His prestige had come apart, and for the moment he had apparently abandoned hope of reassembling it. Then, sixty seconds later, the elected President and his lady lay in a welter of blood, and Lyndon Johnson was the leader of the nation.
In the moment it takes to drive over a crack of gray Texas asphalt his life and his country’s history had been transformed. He had no way of knowing why it had happened, but he had been a political creature since youth. The instant his antennae began to sweep the scene he had to deal with the stupendous fact that in the eyes of the United States and the world beyond, a Texas murder had put a Texan in power. The catastrophe had struck him harder than any other man in Dallas. If he was mesmerized, if some of his actions were incomprehensible, the nature of that unprecedented shock has to be borne in mind constantly, and to recapture its impact on him the reel of events must be wound back to 12:36 P.M., when Lady Bird, after a frightened glance at the pink blur at SS 100 X, darted into the hospital behind the wedge of agents surrounding her husband.
I don’t remember where I read it, but it has been written that the Kennedys were frightened about what might happen if LBJ ever became President. And I find this little tidbit from the quote I posted above quite interesting:
It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
So, my question is: Why do you think that Robert Kennedy would be interested in this subject at that particular time? :-\
I don’t remember where I read it, but it has been written that the Kennedys were frightened about what might happen if LBJ ever became President. And I find this little tidbit from the quote I posted above quite interesting:
It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
So, my question is: Why do you think that Robert Kennedy would be interested in this subject at that particular time? :-\
Why do you think that Robert Kennedy would be interested in this subject at that particular time? :-\
Because LBJ ( who was conniving) had asked him for clarification about the accession to the office of the President.
I believe the most readable "general" history of the assassination by a best-selling literary author is Jim Bishop's "The Day Kennedy Was Shot", published in 1968. Mrs. Kennedy seems to have thought "The Death of a President" published the year before was to be the final word or "official" history. Jackie was even offended by Bishop's choice of book title with the word "shot" in it. Yep, the same Mrs. Kennedy who in 1968 married this for money:
(https://mensflair.com/media//onassis-jack.jpg)
It appears that both JFK and Onassis liked cigars. I read in Manchester’s book that JFK was smoking a Cuban cigar on Air Force One on the way from Washington DC to Texas. Yep, even though Cuban cigars were banned for most folks in the USA, JFK reportedly had a stash of them from before the ban…
You are suggesting that LBJ was planning the assassination of JFK in order to become president and he went to RFK (i.e. President's own brother) for legal advice on how to pull this off? And when he was told something different, he did it anyway. LOL. My only recollection of LBJ asking RFK's advice on the topic came AFTER the assassination about taking the oath of office.
You've demonstrated many times that your "recollection" of events is very poor.
You are suggesting that LBJ was planning the assassination of JFK in order to become president and he went to RFK (i.e. President's own brother) for legal advice on how to pull this off?
The wily conniving, and ruthless LBJ was merely attempting to get RFK to rule that The VP becomes the President in the event the President dies while in office..... (And yes LBJ was conniving to get into the drivers seat, months before the coup d etat) Harry Truman became president when FDR died. And in reality Truman should not have become the President.
Can you provide us with the source of your claim instead of just repeating it? And why would LBJ need a "ruling" from RFK to become president? You seem to be saying that he asked for such a ruling but then got a contrary opinion but then carried on anyway. None of that makes sense. Even before the assassination, there was consideration in the early 1960s for clarifying any ambiguity in the Constitution regarding succession of the VP to the presidency. The JFK assassination prompted the 25th Amendment to make that clarification. That is more likely the basis for RFK's opinion.
Can you provide us with the source of your claim instead of just repeating it?
Instead of asking dumb questions why don't you read "The Death of a President"
I believe chapter 4 has the information you don't want to accept.....
It's a "dumb question" to ask you what the basis of your claim is? I don't have the book. Are you saying that it indicates that LBJ approached RFK and asked him for his opinion on succession prior to the assassination?
Surprisingly, I am just now getting around to reading William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President”. It is a fascinating book to read. I am only part way through it but the accounts of the mass confusion that occurred on 11/22/63 are amazing. Anyway, here is a snip from the book about succession of the Vice President to the office of President. I was surprised to learn that the way that has evolved wasn’t the intent of the founding fathers. And learning why LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it) solved one of the mysteries of that day that I have wondered about for almost sixty years. I was taught that the VP automatically became the President. Now, I feel like Paul Harvey has told “the rest of the story”.
Had Vice President Johnson assumed the Office of President at 1 P.M. in Parkland, there would have been no void. The transition would have been immediate. The fact that he failed to do so may be traced to the riddle of Presidential succession, which had confounded constitutional scholars for 122 years. The American Constitution, that imperfect classic, specifies in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, that “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President”—a solecism which should have made the Founding Fathers blush. What is meant by “the Same”? If the phrase to which it refers is “Powers and Duties,” then the Vice President remains Vice President, exercising those powers and performing those duties until the people can choose a new President. We know now that this was the desire of the men who framed the Constitution. The notes of James Madison, published long after his death, provide a cogent record of the secret deliberations of 1787. The founders never intended that any man should become Chief Executive unless he had been elected to that office. The wording they approved stated that in the event of the death of an incumbent the Vice President should serve as acting President “until another President be chosen.” This unequivocal provision was then dropped by the Constitutional Convention’s five-man committee on style, which made constitutional interpretation the art of the impossible. It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
But the Madison papers appeared too late. The second possible antecedent for “the Same”—“the said Office”—had become hallowed by precedent. In 1841 William Henry Harrison caught cold during his inauguration and became the first American Chief Executive to die in office. His Vice President, John Tyler, learned the news while playing marbles with his children in Williamsburg, Virginia. Tyler, who didn’t know about Madison’s notes, never doubted that he was entitled to occupy “the said Office.” Several eminent American statesmen dissented, notably Henry Clay and former President John Quincy Adams, who, on April 16, 1841, seven days after Tyler’s inaugural address, made acid reference in his diary to “Mr. Tyler, who styles himself President… and not Vice-President acting as President.” Tyler, however, had powerful allies, chiefly Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and he had already moved into the White House. Time and custom were working for him. By the end of June even Adams was calling him “Mr. President.”
During the next century death elevated six more Vice Presidents—Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman—and the claims of each to “the said Office” were uncontested. The Tyler precedent held, despite grumblings that few running mates to emerge from conventions were big enough to lead the ticket. Roosevelt and Truman excepted, the six were an uninspiring and undistinguished group. In the words of one scholar, the Vice Presidency was “a comfortable sinecure with which to honor some of the country’s more able politicians.” The qualifications of the second office in the land bore little relationship to the demands of the first. Nevertheless the silent engine of succession was still there, waiting to be used. Tyler had led the way. Succession had, in effect, become automatic.
Or almost automatic. Tyler did something else which acquired a special significance in Dallas. His action arose from the realization that men like Adams were certain to contest his right to occupy the White House. When he picked up his marbles in Williamsburg, convinced in his own mind that he was already the tenth President of the United States, he was aware that Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, of the Constitution stipulated that a Chief Executive, “before he enter on the Execution of his Office,” must swear or affirm his support of that Constitution. Although he had already done that as Vice President, he resolved to make assurance doubly sure. Leading the Cabinet to the Indian Queen Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, he repeated the pledge on April 6, 1841. It was administered by Chief Justice William Cranch of the District of Columbia Circuit Court, who immediately afterward signed an affidavit setting forth the legal situation. The document declared that Harrison’s successor deemed himself qualified to take over “without any other oath than that which he has taken as Vice President,” but that he had asked to be sworn in again “as doubts may arise, and for greater caution.”
John Tyler has much to answer for. Apart from annexing Texas and taming the Seminoles he did little for his country during the next four years, and in tightening his grip on the Presidency at the Indian Queen Hotel he had left an exasperating constitutional trap for Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Truman, all of whom fell into it. No one remembered Cranch’s affidavit. The document was filed away in the National Archives and forgotten. But everyone recalled the dramatic oath, and each of the six men who were to stand in Tyler’s shoes felt obliged to repeat it. An act undertaken “for greater caution” was magnified out of all proportion. The ceremonies, conducted while the grieving republic mourned its fallen leaders, became folklore, and the very Bibles on which the new Chief Executives rested their hands were integrated into the myth. The Constitution, of course, mentions the Bible nowhere.
In time of crisis the pull of myth increases tenfold. On November 22, 1963, the typical American, like the typical correspondent in 101–102, was under the impression that the oath was mandatory. He still is. His leaders (though lamentably few of them have thought the matter through) are divided. Speaker John McCormack, who with Kennedy’s death became next in line of succession, echoes the popular misconception. He thinks Johnson had to be sworn in as soon as possible “because the country had to have a President.” Chief Justice Warren agrees. The oath is needed in such circumstances, he argues, to put the new leader’s dedication to the Constitution on record. Reminded that Johnson had taken that vow at the Kennedy inaugural, he replies, “But he hadn’t taken it as President.”2
The weight of informed opinion lies on the other side. Barefoot Sanders, who was the U.S. Attorney on the spot, thinks Johnson became President the moment Kennedy died. So does Robert Kennedy; so does Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, who followed Kennedy as the sixty-ninth Attorney General. Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson chose as his own Vice President, declares emphatically, “A Vice President becomes President when there is no President. Later, when he takes the oath, he puts on the cloak of office. But that act is purely symbolic.” Former President Eisenhower takes the strongest position of all. In the view of Eisenhower—who scorns the second oath—Johnson became Chief Executive the moment it was obvious that Kennedy was dying; that is, before Kemp Clark pronounced him dead. The former President believes that Johnson was entitled to sign legislation at any time after 12:30 Central Standard Time. Had a national emergency arisen between then and 2:38 P.M., when he took that second oath, and had Johnson failed to act, Eisenhower holds that he would have been derelict in his duty and subject to impeachment.
The cadre of professionals who serve the Presidency is similarly split, though they, too, are inclined to dismiss the oath as inconsequential. Because the Secret Service White House Detail lacked forceful leadership on November 22, individual agents are vague. Former Chief Wilson is a more vigorous witness than any of them. When Franklin Roosevelt died, Wilson left one man with Mrs. Roosevelt and immediately reassigned all others, including those who had been guarding the President’s grandchildren, to Truman. “As far as the Service is concerned,” Wilson declares, “when a President dies the Vice President becomes President at once, and all protection goes to him and his family.” Colonel McNally of the White House Communications Agency concurs: “It sounds coldblooded, but the instant President Kennedy died, communications-wise he disappeared off the face of the earth. Oath of office or not, Lyndon Johnson was President in our eyes and head of the government.”
It is improbable that Johnson had considered these complex issues before a blaze of gunfire confronted him with them. Over a year and a half afterward he informed this writer that it was his opinion that “the Vice President becomes President immediately upon the death of the President. He is obligated thereafter to take the oath of office, but there is no lapse in the powers of the Presidency.” Having taken the second oath, he perhaps felt an obligation to defend it. Otherwise the statement conforms with judicial opinion. However, it was made after the full ramifications of the question had been laid before him. In Dallas, he conceded, he had felt differently. Although “immediately aware” of his new responsibilities, the “full realization,” the “subjective identification” of himself as Chief Executive, “came gradually.”
Perhaps anticipation of the consequences of a President’s death should be obligatory for Vice Presidents, but it wouldn’t come easily. There is little evidence that Johnson’s seven predecessors had given the matter much thought. The attitude of national politicians toward the White House is highly ambivalent; they simultaneously crave it and recoil from it. Vice Presidents, like Presidents, are loath to dwell upon the fact that they are a heartbeat away from the executive mansion, and when the beat suddenly stops they are dumfounded. “I don’t know if any of you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on him,” Truman told reporters on April 14, 1945, “but last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me.”
Truman’s reaction should be mulled over if the Dallas transition is to be put in perspective. When the news arrived from Warm Springs, with which he had no connection, he was in Washington. His predecessor had died peacefully. There had been no violence. Johnson’s plight, on the other hand, was ghastly. The President had been visiting the Vice President’s home grounds, and in twenty-four hours the Connally-Yarborough feud had transformed the trip into a Johnsonian disaster. At 12:29 P.M. his career was at a low ebb. He sat sluggishly in the back seat of his convertible, insensitive to the cheers around him, seeking refuge in the blare of a dashboard radio. His prestige had come apart, and for the moment he had apparently abandoned hope of reassembling it. Then, sixty seconds later, the elected President and his lady lay in a welter of blood, and Lyndon Johnson was the leader of the nation.
In the moment it takes to drive over a crack of gray Texas asphalt his life and his country’s history had been transformed. He had no way of knowing why it had happened, but he had been a political creature since youth. The instant his antennae began to sweep the scene he had to deal with the stupendous fact that in the eyes of the United States and the world beyond, a Texas murder had put a Texan in power. The catastrophe had struck him harder than any other man in Dallas. If he was mesmerized, if some of his actions were incomprehensible, the nature of that unprecedented shock has to be borne in mind constantly, and to recapture its impact on him the reel of events must be wound back to 12:36 P.M., when Lady Bird, after a frightened glance at the pink blur at SS 100 X, darted into the hospital behind the wedge of agents surrounding her husband.
It's a "dumb question" to ask you what the basis of your claim is? I don't have the book. Are you saying that it indicates that LBJ approached RFK and asked him for his opinion on succession prior to the assassination?
Surprisingly, I am just now getting around to reading William Manchester’s book, “The Death of a President”. It is a fascinating book to read. I am only part way through it but the accounts of the mass confusion that occurred on 11/22/63 are amazing. Anyway, here is a snip from the book about succession of the Vice President to the office of President. I was surprised to learn that the way that has evolved wasn’t the intent of the founding fathers. And learning why LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it) solved one of the mysteries of that day that I have wondered about for almost sixty years. I was taught that the VP automatically became the President. Now, I feel like Paul Harvey has told “the rest of the story”.
Had Vice President Johnson assumed the Office of President at 1 P.M. in Parkland, there would have been no void. The transition would have been immediate. The fact that he failed to do so may be traced to the riddle of Presidential succession, which had confounded constitutional scholars for 122 years. The American Constitution, that imperfect classic, specifies in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, that “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President”—a solecism which should have made the Founding Fathers blush. What is meant by “the Same”? If the phrase to which it refers is “Powers and Duties,” then the Vice President remains Vice President, exercising those powers and performing those duties until the people can choose a new President. We know now that this was the desire of the men who framed the Constitution. The notes of James Madison, published long after his death, provide a cogent record of the secret deliberations of 1787. The founders never intended that any man should become Chief Executive unless he had been elected to that office. The wording they approved stated that in the event of the death of an incumbent the Vice President should serve as acting President “until another President be chosen.” This unequivocal provision was then dropped by the Constitutional Convention’s five-man committee on style, which made constitutional interpretation the art of the impossible. It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
But the Madison papers appeared too late. The second possible antecedent for “the Same”—“the said Office”—had become hallowed by precedent. In 1841 William Henry Harrison caught cold during his inauguration and became the first American Chief Executive to die in office. His Vice President, John Tyler, learned the news while playing marbles with his children in Williamsburg, Virginia. Tyler, who didn’t know about Madison’s notes, never doubted that he was entitled to occupy “the said Office.” Several eminent American statesmen dissented, notably Henry Clay and former President John Quincy Adams, who, on April 16, 1841, seven days after Tyler’s inaugural address, made acid reference in his diary to “Mr. Tyler, who styles himself President… and not Vice-President acting as President.” Tyler, however, had powerful allies, chiefly Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and he had already moved into the White House. Time and custom were working for him. By the end of June even Adams was calling him “Mr. President.”
During the next century death elevated six more Vice Presidents—Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman—and the claims of each to “the said Office” were uncontested. The Tyler precedent held, despite grumblings that few running mates to emerge from conventions were big enough to lead the ticket. Roosevelt and Truman excepted, the six were an uninspiring and undistinguished group. In the words of one scholar, the Vice Presidency was “a comfortable sinecure with which to honor some of the country’s more able politicians.” The qualifications of the second office in the land bore little relationship to the demands of the first. Nevertheless the silent engine of succession was still there, waiting to be used. Tyler had led the way. Succession had, in effect, become automatic.
Or almost automatic. Tyler did something else which acquired a special significance in Dallas. His action arose from the realization that men like Adams were certain to contest his right to occupy the White House. When he picked up his marbles in Williamsburg, convinced in his own mind that he was already the tenth President of the United States, he was aware that Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, of the Constitution stipulated that a Chief Executive, “before he enter on the Execution of his Office,” must swear or affirm his support of that Constitution. Although he had already done that as Vice President, he resolved to make assurance doubly sure. Leading the Cabinet to the Indian Queen Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, he repeated the pledge on April 6, 1841. It was administered by Chief Justice William Cranch of the District of Columbia Circuit Court, who immediately afterward signed an affidavit setting forth the legal situation. The document declared that Harrison’s successor deemed himself qualified to take over “without any other oath than that which he has taken as Vice President,” but that he had asked to be sworn in again “as doubts may arise, and for greater caution.”
John Tyler has much to answer for. Apart from annexing Texas and taming the Seminoles he did little for his country during the next four years, and in tightening his grip on the Presidency at the Indian Queen Hotel he had left an exasperating constitutional trap for Fillmore, Johnson, Arthur, Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Truman, all of whom fell into it. No one remembered Cranch’s affidavit. The document was filed away in the National Archives and forgotten. But everyone recalled the dramatic oath, and each of the six men who were to stand in Tyler’s shoes felt obliged to repeat it. An act undertaken “for greater caution” was magnified out of all proportion. The ceremonies, conducted while the grieving republic mourned its fallen leaders, became folklore, and the very Bibles on which the new Chief Executives rested their hands were integrated into the myth. The Constitution, of course, mentions the Bible nowhere.
In time of crisis the pull of myth increases tenfold. On November 22, 1963, the typical American, like the typical correspondent in 101–102, was under the impression that the oath was mandatory. He still is. His leaders (though lamentably few of them have thought the matter through) are divided. Speaker John McCormack, who with Kennedy’s death became next in line of succession, echoes the popular misconception. He thinks Johnson had to be sworn in as soon as possible “because the country had to have a President.” Chief Justice Warren agrees. The oath is needed in such circumstances, he argues, to put the new leader’s dedication to the Constitution on record. Reminded that Johnson had taken that vow at the Kennedy inaugural, he replies, “But he hadn’t taken it as President.”2
The weight of informed opinion lies on the other side. Barefoot Sanders, who was the U.S. Attorney on the spot, thinks Johnson became President the moment Kennedy died. So does Robert Kennedy; so does Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, who followed Kennedy as the sixty-ninth Attorney General. Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Johnson chose as his own Vice President, declares emphatically, “A Vice President becomes President when there is no President. Later, when he takes the oath, he puts on the cloak of office. But that act is purely symbolic.” Former President Eisenhower takes the strongest position of all. In the view of Eisenhower—who scorns the second oath—Johnson became Chief Executive the moment it was obvious that Kennedy was dying; that is, before Kemp Clark pronounced him dead. The former President believes that Johnson was entitled to sign legislation at any time after 12:30 Central Standard Time. Had a national emergency arisen between then and 2:38 P.M., when he took that second oath, and had Johnson failed to act, Eisenhower holds that he would have been derelict in his duty and subject to impeachment.
The cadre of professionals who serve the Presidency is similarly split, though they, too, are inclined to dismiss the oath as inconsequential. Because the Secret Service White House Detail lacked forceful leadership on November 22, individual agents are vague. Former Chief Wilson is a more vigorous witness than any of them. When Franklin Roosevelt died, Wilson left one man with Mrs. Roosevelt and immediately reassigned all others, including those who had been guarding the President’s grandchildren, to Truman. “As far as the Service is concerned,” Wilson declares, “when a President dies the Vice President becomes President at once, and all protection goes to him and his family.” Colonel McNally of the White House Communications Agency concurs: “It sounds coldblooded, but the instant President Kennedy died, communications-wise he disappeared off the face of the earth. Oath of office or not, Lyndon Johnson was President in our eyes and head of the government.”
It is improbable that Johnson had considered these complex issues before a blaze of gunfire confronted him with them. Over a year and a half afterward he informed this writer that it was his opinion that “the Vice President becomes President immediately upon the death of the President. He is obligated thereafter to take the oath of office, but there is no lapse in the powers of the Presidency.” Having taken the second oath, he perhaps felt an obligation to defend it. Otherwise the statement conforms with judicial opinion. However, it was made after the full ramifications of the question had been laid before him. In Dallas, he conceded, he had felt differently. Although “immediately aware” of his new responsibilities, the “full realization,” the “subjective identification” of himself as Chief Executive, “came gradually.”
Perhaps anticipation of the consequences of a President’s death should be obligatory for Vice Presidents, but it wouldn’t come easily. There is little evidence that Johnson’s seven predecessors had given the matter much thought. The attitude of national politicians toward the White House is highly ambivalent; they simultaneously crave it and recoil from it. Vice Presidents, like Presidents, are loath to dwell upon the fact that they are a heartbeat away from the executive mansion, and when the beat suddenly stops they are dumfounded. “I don’t know if any of you fellows ever had a load of hay or a bull fall on him,” Truman told reporters on April 14, 1945, “but last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me.”
Truman’s reaction should be mulled over if the Dallas transition is to be put in perspective. When the news arrived from Warm Springs, with which he had no connection, he was in Washington. His predecessor had died peacefully. There had been no violence. Johnson’s plight, on the other hand, was ghastly. The President had been visiting the Vice President’s home grounds, and in twenty-four hours the Connally-Yarborough feud had transformed the trip into a Johnsonian disaster. At 12:29 P.M. his career was at a low ebb. He sat sluggishly in the back seat of his convertible, insensitive to the cheers around him, seeking refuge in the blare of a dashboard radio. His prestige had come apart, and for the moment he had apparently abandoned hope of reassembling it. Then, sixty seconds later, the elected President and his lady lay in a welter of blood, and Lyndon Johnson was the leader of the nation.
In the moment it takes to drive over a crack of gray Texas asphalt his life and his country’s history had been transformed. He had no way of knowing why it had happened, but he had been a political creature since youth. The instant his antennae began to sweep the scene he had to deal with the stupendous fact that in the eyes of the United States and the world beyond, a Texas murder had put a Texan in power. The catastrophe had struck him harder than any other man in Dallas. If he was mesmerized, if some of his actions were incomprehensible, the nature of that unprecedented shock has to be borne in mind constantly, and to recapture its impact on him the reel of events must be wound back to 12:36 P.M., when Lady Bird, after a frightened glance at the pink blur at SS 100 X, darted into the hospital behind the wedge of agents surrounding her husband.
I am in the process of reading chapter four for the first time. So far, the only time that LBJ asked for information about the oath of office was on Air Force One, immediately after the assassination. There were a lot of people involved in this, not just LBJ and RFK.
The catastrophe had struck him harder than any other man in Dallas. If he was mesmerized, if some of his actions were incomprehensible, the nature of that unprecedented shock has to be borne in mind constantly, and to recapture its impact on him the reel of events must be wound back to 12:36 P.M.,
William Manchester apparently didn't see photos of LBJ on board AF1 at about 1:30 ..... LBJ was most certainly not upset by the murder of JFK .... he was photographed winking at Congressman Thomas and smiling at his
loyal band of folowers.
Clearly you aren't smart enough to understand what Charles Collins wrote in the opening post of the thread....
LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it)
Keep reading and you'll find that John Mc Cormac was hurrying back from lunch after learning of the death of JFK and Mc Cormac assumed that he had become the acting President and needed to return to the House to be sworn in. LBJ heard that Mc Cormac was about to be sworn in and he nearly soiled his skivvies.. THAT"S why he insisted that a Federal Judge be brought to AF1 immediately to swear him in.
I believe you'll find that William Manchester was a brilliant and clever author..... He often presents the truth about the assassination, but then he cleverly conceals the truth in a proposing a counter theory. ( He would never have gotten the book published if he hadn't )
I have already read this account and you (as usual) have it all wrong. I am assuming this is the passage you are referring to:
For Walton, Moynihan, Horsky, and Duke, mourning thus began early; for John W. McCormack the confirmation was a private anticlimax. The Speaker had still been in the House restaurant when two reporters came to his table and said that Kennedy had been shot. Other reporters and Congressmen then began to dart up with bits and pieces of information. The appearance of priests convinced McCormack that the President had succumbed. Then, in the next minute, he was told that the Vice President had been shot and, in the minute after that, that Secret Service agents were on their way to the Hill to protect him. Although the first report was inaccurate, the second was true; under the succession act of July 18, 1947, inspired by Harry Truman’s affection for Sam Rayburn, the Speaker (rather than the Secretary of State, as in the past) was second in line of succession, and if both Kennedy and Johnson had been murdered, Rayburn’s aged successor was now President of the United States. At 2:18 P.M. in Washington the possibility seemed very real. It struck McCormack, he later recalled, with “a terrific impact.” He rose unsteadily from his chair and immediately suffered a severe attack of vertigo. Linen, waiters, tableware swam before his eyes; he thought he was going to lose consciousness and tumble to the floor. Passing a palsied hand over his eyes, he sank back to his seat, and he was still there, trembling, when a Congressman called over that Johnson was unharmed.
McCormack had been told that LBJ had also been shot (see the part that I underlined). So your idea has no merit.
Perhaps I read. in another book that LBJ thought that Mc Cormack was planning to be sworn in, and that had him soiling his skivvies..... But I thought it was in The Death Of A President....
Enlighten me by quoting your source instead of playing a thousand questions. I didn't see anything in the OP to support what you have suggested
::)
Oswald saw them first. Duh.
And there weren't twelve people eye-locked on the backstairs, with all that was still happening outside (sirens, people ducking).
I think they went to the Micheal Griffith School of Histrionics.
12:36 P.M. is when LBJ entered Parkland Hospital. Manchester is mainly referring to LBJ’s actions (and lack of actions) while at the hospital. The so called “wink” was supposedly at LBJ, not by LBJ.
I was referring to LBJs action's after he commandeered the President's airplane (AF-1).... And incidentally it makes no difference what John Mc Cormack was actually doing..... LBJ THOUGHT that Mc Cormack was preparing to be sworn in as the acting President, and he was desperate. I believe that LBJ placed a call to RFK to inform Bobby that his brother had been murdered and tell him that he was going to be sworn in as the new President. You may recall that RFK had previously told LBJ that The Speaker of the House John Mc Cormack was to assume the duties of the office of the President until a new man could be elected to don the cloak of the President.
I disagree with:
1. LBJ thought McCormack was preparing to be sworn in as president.
How the heck would LBJ know anything of the sort? I do remember that the AP (I believe it was) reported that LBJ had also been shot. If LBJ happened to see that on the TV in Air Force One (I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe that he did though…) he would know it wasn’t true. And LBJ would also know that any swearing in of McCormack would have no legal consequences because the constitution spells out the order of succession.
2. I believe that LBJ placed a call to RFK to inform Bobby that his brother had been murdered and tell him that he was going to be sworn in as the new President.
RFK was already aware of the death of JFK by the time he talked to LBJ. Here’s another snip from “The Death of a President” by William Manchester:
…he accordingly placed a call to Robert Kennedy in Virginia, and moments later the white phone at the shallow end of Hickory Hill’s swimming pool rang.
Johnson was not J. Edgar Hoover. He was a man of tact and sensitivity. He began by expressing his condolences. But he had just become the busiest man in the world, and after a few compassionate sentences he plunged into business. The murder, he said, “might be part of a world-wide plot.” In Johnson’s statement to the Warren Commission seven and a half months later he suggested that the Attorney General had agreed with this interpretation and had “discussed the practical problems at hand—problems of special urgency because we did not at that time have any information as to the motivation of the assassination or its possible implications.” In fact, Kennedy was unresponsive. He was not among those who suspected a grand conspiracy, and he didn’t understand what Johnson was talking about.
“A lot of people down here think I should be sworn in right away,” said the new President, moving closer to the point. “Do you have any objection to that?”
Kennedy was taken aback. It was scarcely an hour and a quarter since he had first heard of the shooting, less than an hour since he had learned that the wound had been fatal. As Attorney General he couldn’t understand the need for a rush, and on a personal level he preferred that any investiture be deferred until his brother’s body had been brought home.
“Congressman Albert Thomas thinks I should take the oath here,” said Johnson, citing support. There was no answer, and he pressed on. “A lot of other people feel the same way.” The phone by the pool remained silent. Kennedy did not dissent; he said nothing. Changing to another tack, Johnson again referred to the plot, and then he requested information. According to Youngblood he asked “questions about who, when, and how he should take the Presidential oath.” Kennedy heard, “Who could swear me in?”
“I’ll be glad to find out and call you back,” he answered.
He depressed his receiver and asked the operator for Nick Katzenbach. It was 3 P.M. in Washington, according to Katzenbach’s secretary’s log, when, for the first time since the assassination, Robert Kennedy talked to his Deputy Attorney General. According to Katzenbach, Kennedy’s voice was “matter-of-fact, flat.” He told Nick, “Lyndon wants to be sworn in in Texas and wants to know who can administer the oath.”
Katzenbach said, “Bob, I’m absolutely stunned.” There was no reply. He said, “My recollection is that anyone can administer the oath who administers oaths under federal or state laws. Do you want to hold on while I check?”
Bob did, and using another Justice line Nick called Harold Reis in the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
“That’s right,” said Reis. He reminded Katzenbach that Coolidge had been sworn in by his own father, a justice of the peace, and he added, “Of course, the oath’s in the Constitution.”
He was the man Johnson should have been talking to. Telling the Deputy Attorney General was not necessary, but telling the new President was. What was required was someone with a gift for explaining the obvious. Actually, it wasn’t as obvious as it appeared to be; a great many eminent attorneys, Robert Kennedy among them, were so shaken that they had forgotten where they could lay their hands on the oath. Reis’s instincts were better than he knew. It may have been like pointing out to the Washington Redskins that they were entitled to four downs, but if the Redskin quarterback forgot, somebody would have to come to his rescue. No one had come to Johnson’s, and waiting for the Attorney General to phone back he was using other lines in an attempt to find out what was in any copy of The World Almanac.
3. You may recall that RFK had previously told LBJ that The Speaker of the House John Mc Cormack was to assume the duties of the office of the President until a new man could be elected to don the cloak of the President
Sorry, but I don’t recall anything of the sort. And I think that your idea is (as usual) not based in reality.
It is worth noting that the most perceptive analysis of the two versions of II, 1, 5 was written by the sixty-eighth Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1961.1 Robert Kennedy concluded that it was the sense of the Convention that should a President die in office “merely the powers and duties devolve on the Vice President, not the office itself.”
This mystery has to do with the succession. So, I will post it here. I just read this on pages 287-288 of “The Death of a President” by William Manchester, and I am flabbergasted. I didn’t know this, should I have known this?
Remarkably, almost none of the Kennedys’ objects had been mislaid. In spite of the two-hour anarchy virtually every article they had brought to Dallas was leaving with them; the President’s clothes, wallet, and watch, and Mrs. Kennedy’s gloves, hat and handbag were all safely stowed aboard. There was one exception. Tripping down the ramp steps toward Earle and Dearie Cabell, who were waiting on the field, Sarah Hughes was hailed by a self-assured man—she remembers him as “rather officious”—who pointed at the black binding in her hand and asked, “Do you want that?” She shook her head. “How about this?” he inquired, fingering the 3 × 5 card with the text of the oath. Neither belonged to her, and so she surrendered them, assuming that he was some sort of security man.
He wasn’t. His identity is a riddle. How a cipher could have penetrated Jesse Curry’s cordon is difficult to understand, but he did. The venture required enterprise and luck. The spoils, however, were priceless; he left the airport with a pair of unique souvenirs. The file card is the less valuable of the two. It is an archivist’s curiosity, of interest only to collectors and museums. The book, however, is something more. It was private property, and at this writing it remains untraced. President Kennedy’s family is entitled to it and would give a lot to have it back. By now, however, the anonymous cozener may have disposed of it. Either way, the fact remains that the last item of Kennedy memorabilia to be left in Dallas, his most cherished personal possession, was his Bible.
Here is a snip from pages 284-285 that explains where the Bible came from:
Then a voice from the semicircle of witnesses asked, “What about a Bible?” The Scriptures had always been part of the ritual. There was a pause in which everyone looked at everyone else, hoping that Lem Johns’s manifest included someone of exceptional piety. Then Joe Ayres reassured them. President Kennedy always carried his personal Bible under the lid of the table between the two beds in his private cabin, and Ayres went to fetch it.
It was an unusual copy, and very personal; even Larry O’Brien, to whom Ayres handed it, had never seen it before. The cover was of tooled leather, the edges were hand-sewn; on the front there was a gold cross and, on the inside cover, the tiny sewn black-on-black initials, “JFK.” On flights alone the President had read it evenings before snapping off the night light. Larry carried the white box in which the President had kept it down the corridor, and as he re-entered the stateroom and stepped behind Sarah Hughes she nervously began the oath. Her voice quavered, “I do solemnly swear that I will—”
“Just a minute, Judge,” Larry said, slipping the Bible from the box and handing it to her.
She regarded it dubiously. Kennedy, she remembered, had quoted the Bible a lot. This must be his—after all, this was his plane—and that meant it was probably Catholic. She hesitated and decided it would be all right.5
My question is: Does this still remain a mystery? Or, has this bible been located since Manchester wrote his book?
The book was NOT a Bible.....It was JFK's personal catholic missal .......
Another snip (from the Forward section) of “The Death of a President” by William Manchester:
On February 5, 1964, Mrs. John F. Kennedy suggested that I write an account of the tragic and historic events in Texas and Washington ten weeks earlier. That is the first breath. The second, which must quickly follow, is that neither Mrs. Kennedy nor anyone else is in any way answerable for my subsequent research or this narrative based upon it. My relationships with all the principal figures were entirely professional. I received no financial assistance from the Kennedy family. I was on no government payroll. No one tried to lead me, and I believe every reader, including those who were closest to the late President, will find much here that is new and some, perhaps, that is disturbing. That is my responsibility. Mrs. Kennedy asked me but one question. Before our first taping session she said, “Are you just going to put down all the facts, who ate what for breakfast and all that, or are you going to put yourself in the book, too?” I replied that I didn’t see how I could very well keep myself out of it. “Good,” she said emphatically. And so I am here, weighing evidence and forming judgments. At times you may find my presence exasperating. You may decide in the end that I have been a poor judge. But you may not conclude that I have served as anyone’s amanuensis. If you doubt me you may as well stop at the end of this paragraph.
Actually, I discovered, the Kennedy family had not been eager to have any book written about the President’s death. Understandably they needed time to heal. But shortly after the burial in Arlington various writers solicited their cooperation in such a project. It soon became apparent that volumes would appear in spite of their wishes. Under these circumstances Jacqueline Kennedy resolved that there should be one complete, accurate account. I had not been among those who had approached her. (I had been living in the Ruhr, and was writing German history.) At that time I had not even met her. However, her husband had told her about me, and she had read a magazine profile I published about him the year before his death. Robert Kennedy also remembered my acquaintance with his brother. After consultation other members of the family agreed with Mrs. Kennedy that, in light of the fact that apocryphal versions of those days were already in press, it would be wise to have a book written by an author whom the President had known. It was further decided that the work should be based upon material gathered while memories were still fresh. Hence the invitation to me.
Apparently Manchester believed it was a bible. Here is what is in footnote 5 regarding it:
5 The myth of “the Catholic Bible” endures in Protestant America. Although such editions do exist, neither the obsolete (Douay) version nor the current (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) rendition differs to any discernible extent from the one familiar to non-Catholics. Ecclesiastical scholars could distinguish between them, but Sarah Hughes couldn’t. Neither, in the opinion of Bishop Philip M. Hannan, could John Kennedy, and it is unlikely that the question had ever crossed the President’s mind.
Bugliosi in RH: "Author William Manchester wrote that JFK's Bible, 'his most cherished personal possession' was found on the plane, and LBJ rested his hand on it (Manchester, "Death of a President", pp. 324, 328). But Lady Bird took the "Bible" off the plane with her as a memento and later inquiry revealed it was not a Bible but a Catholic prayer book or missal which, to all appearances, had never been opened (Holland, "The Kennedy Assassination Tapes", p. 310)."
And here is Holland in "The Kennedy Assassination Tapes": "Manchester has his facts wrong, at least in this instance. The 'very personal' Bible belonging to President Kennedy - ostensibly the 'most cherished personal possession' - was in fact a Catholic missal or prayer book. To all appearances it had never been opened and it is not missing. Mrs. Johnson carried it with her as a memento when she disembarked at Andrews AFB."
The Holland book has a number of details on the events - some of which like above Manchester got wrong. It seems a lot of people were willing to say things later that they didn't want to in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. You might want to check that out in addition to Manchester's account.
Here's a fuller account from Holland of the "Bible" controversy. LBJ was worried about the upcoming release of the Manchester book and "unflattering" accounts of his behavior. One of the first ones was about the missing "Bible." So when Ladybird heard about the story I imagine she was shocked and told LBJ? LBJ was, fairly or not (I think not entirely unfairly), clearly worried about the Kennedy "mafia" spreading dirt on him through Manchester.
Thanks, that does make sense to me. That Ladybird would want it as a memento. And like Manchester said, it seems unlikely that an unknown person was there at Air Force One at that particular time. If Holland is correct, I wonder if Ladybird read Manchester’s book and got a chuckle…
Here's a fuller account from Holland of the "Bible" controversy. LBJ was worried about the upcoming release of the Manchester book and "unflattering" accounts of his behavior. One of the first ones was about the missing "Bible." So when Ladybird heard about the story I imagine she was shocked and told LBJ? LBJ was, fairly or not (I think not entirely unfairly), clearly worried about the Kennedy "mafia" spreading dirt on him through Manchester.
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID9777892003/Keyv2trrx53oaka/holland.JPG)
The "bible" being a "missal" is in the 1968 book "The Day Kennedy Was Shot" by Jim Bishop.
In a 1986 interview, Lawrence O'Brien said Abe Fortes and Clark Clifford had the missal.
See pages 2 and 3 Link (https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/oh-obrienl-19860212-7-92-18) .
The LBJ Presidential Library has the swearing-in missal. Surely Donald Trump wasn't sworn in on a religious book.
| (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963_cover_crop.jpg/671px-Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963_cover_crop.jpg) | (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963.jpg/920px-Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963.jpg) |
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963_cover_crop.jpg/671px-Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963_cover_crop.jpg) (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963.jpg/920px-Missal_used_in_lbj_inauguration_1963.jpg)
These pictures are on Wikipedia, from their page "First inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson" ( Link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Lyndon_B._Johnson) ).
According to a search, the LBJ Presidential Library has the missal on display. I don't know if the missal was gifted to the Library.
(https://lbj-new-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/artifacts/images/2021-09/DIG13909_034.jpg?VersionId=rAjyzecYokaq68c9OyPuZ7iggEUBqxdj)
The JFK Library has some of Kennedy's whalebone scrimshaw collection, which might offend some. I suspect the Theodore Roosevelt Library has some now-dubious Native American artifacts and wildlife trophies. And so on. The Trump Library will be getting Fred Trump's KKK memorabilia.
From an 2013 account ( Link (https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/memories-tragedy) ) by Michael L. Gillette, who helped conduct oral history interviews for the LBJ Presidential Library:
"After the swearing-in, Lady Bird Johnson placed the missal and the typed oath in her handbag and carried them to Washington. There she entrusted the items to Dorothy Territo, the White House staff assistant who collected material for a future presidential library."
"More than a decade later, in the course of my work at the LBJ Library, I learned that the elusive missal was discreetly hidden among the Library's holdings. I raised the matter with Harry Middleton, the Library's director, expressing the view that we should offer the book to the Kennedy Library or the Kennedy family. Why keep it if we could never exhibit it or even acknowledge possessing it? Harry concurred and contacted the John F. Kennedy Library. Dan Fenn, the JFK Library director, presumably after checking with the Kennedy family, responded that the LBJ Library should keep the missal. Since neither President Kennedy nor his family had ever used it, the volume had no sentimental value to them. Besides, its only historical significance related to President Johnson. The missal is presently on display at the LBJ Presidential Library."
From another site:
"It is believed the missal was a gift to the president from Father Albert Pereira, who administered to the small parish of St. Stephen the Martyr in Millersburg, Virginia, population 1,000, where JFK and his family spent their weekends away from Washington." ( Link (https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-dealey-plaza-homely-spiritual.html) )
Manchester's terming the missal a "bible" and Kennedy's most-cherished possession that JFK read all the time ( ::) ) reflects a "Northeast Liberal" bias and post-assassination reevaluation. It's less obvious in the Jim Bishop book. Poor LBJ couldn't catch a break from the Northeast Liberals (in the 60s, it was a concentration of political power and media--TV networks, Time-Life, publishers--that was literally located in the US Northeast).
That was public consumption. In Washington, LBJ benefited from long-serving Texans who were powerful in committees, as House/Senate Leaders, and as White House advisors.
Thanks again Jerry! That appears to be a reasonable solution to the mystery. And it accounts for both Manchester not having a more accurate account and that the missal was apparently offered back to the JFK family but they essentially said “keep it”.
Ladybird was a smart lady. And I imagine that, under any other imaginable circumstance, she would have asked Jackie, or someone else, if she could have the missal. Wow, this is an interesting aspect of the succession. I learned a lot. Thumb1:
In all of the posts...the nagging question was never answered..... Was LBJ's swearing in legal....Since he didn't swear the oath while having his hand on a BIBLE.
No, there’s no requirement for a bible to be involved.
Isn't that odd..... When a witness is sworn in at a trial, they are required to place their hand on a bible ....
Yes, as I understand it, it's just a tradition not a requirement. As you point out, it would be a violation of a person's Constitutional rights to require the use of a Bible. Or any religious text/document. Several Muslim-American Representatives have been sworn in using the Quran, e.g. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. And I'm pretty sure jurors can refuse to swear on a Bible; they just have to give an affirmative oath.
United States
The phrase "So help me God" is prescribed in oaths as early as the Judiciary Act of 1789, for U.S. officers other than the President. The act makes the semantic distinction between an affirmation and an oath.[4] The oath, religious in essence, includes the phrase "so help me God" and " swear". The affirmation uses " affirm". Both serve the same purpose and are described as one (i.e. "... solemnly swear, or affirm, that ...") [5]
In the United States, the No Religious Test Clause states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Still, there are federal oaths which do include the phrase "So help me God", such as for justices and judges in 28 U.S.C. § 453.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_help_me_God (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_help_me_God)
The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is a clause within Article VI, Clause 3: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." It immediately follows a clause requiring all federal and state office holders to take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. This clause contains the only explicit reference to religion in the original seven articles of the U.S. Constitution.
The ban on religious tests contained in this clause protects federal officeholders and employees as well as the officeholders of "State Legislatures, and [...] the several states". This clause is cited by advocates of separation of church and state as an example of the "original intent" of the Framers of the Constitution to avoid any entanglement between church and state, or involving the government in any way as a determiner of religious beliefs or practices. This is significant because this clause represents the words of the original Framers, even prior to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Religious_Test_Clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Religious_Test_Clause)
Isn't that odd..... When a witness is sworn in at a trial, they are required to place their hand on a bible ....
Isn't that odd..... When a witness is sworn in at a trial, they are required to place their hand on a bible ....
They will probably start arresting people for that soon. Like in "Europe."
Another outright Fox news lie. Nobody was arrested in Europe for having a religion.
A religious fanatic was arrested in Birmingham for violating a Public Space Protection Order (intended to keep an area safe) four times.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/isabel-vaughan-spruce-45-charged-25794626
This has just been discussed in the off topic section and Richard's lie was exposed. I guess he thought to give the same lie another try here!
Anyone can watch the video and judge for themselves. A woman standing quietly by herself on a public street is approached by the police. They asked her "Are you praying?" Again "Are you praying?" When she said that she was praying in her head, they arrested her. In fact, as a condition of her bail, she is precluded from praying in public. She has apparently committed this "crime" on prior occasions. That doesn't make her arrest right as Martin stupidly claims. Instead it makes her a hero for standing up to authoritarian oppression of speech and religious liberties.
Yes, as I understand it, it's just a tradition not a requirement. As you point out, it would be a violation of a person's Constitutional rights to require the use of a Bible. Or any religious text/document. Several Muslim-American Representatives have been sworn in using the Quran, e.g. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. And I'm pretty sure jurors can refuse to swear on a Bible; they just have to give an affirmative oath.
Of course, I could be completely full of it. Not for the first time <g>. Merry Christmas.
LBJ wanted to take the oath of office in Dallas (even delaying their flight back to Washington DC for it)
Keep reading and you'll find that John Mc Cormac was hurrying back from lunch after learning of the death of JFK and Mc Cormac assumed that he had become the acting President and needed to return to the House to be sworn in. LBJ heard that Mc Cormac was about to be sworn in and he nearly soiled his skivvies.. THAT"S why he insisted that a Federal Judge be brought to AF1 immediately to swear him in.
Merry Christmas. Santa is over England now.
NORAD is tracking and are standing down.
May Santa deliver loads of common sense to certain JFK researchers.
A woman standing quietly by herself on a public street is approached by the police.
She wasn't allowed to be there, because of the Protection order
When she said that she was praying in her head, they arrested her.
Lie. The video clearly shows that police wanted to talk to here about events on other days and the complaints that resulted in a Public Spaces Protection Order. That's what she was arrested for. She most likely created a nuisance on other occassions and was told not to return to the area. As soon as she refused to go to the police station voluntary she was arrested regardless of what she was doing.
She has apparently committed this "crime" on prior occasions.
Another lie... she violated the Public Spaces Protection Order four times. That's why they arrested her and that's what she is charged with. When somebody trespasses on your property and despite being told not to come back, he nevertheless returns four times, wouldn't you want the police to arrest him?
That doesn't make her arrest right as Martin stupidly claims.
If she was arrested for simply praying, that would not be right, but she wasn't. She was arrested for violating a lawful order to stay away four times.
Richard, rather pathetically, introduces the praying BS to misrepresent what really happened.
Instead it makes her a hero for standing up to authoritarian oppression of speech and religious liberties.
The words of a true fanatic zealot. That woman didn't even live in Birmingham, where she was arrested. If she only wanted to pray she could have gone anywhere else, but instead she decided to violate a lawful order (yet again) and upset the people in the area. She was there for one purpose only; to intimidate women who were legally visiting an abortion clinic. She was the one breaking the law and it had nothing to do with religious liberties!
It's pretty pathetic that Richard thinks he can be judgmental about something that happened in England, where he most likely has never been. I'm sure there are members on this board from England or perhaps even Birmingham to set him straight about what really happened.
It's pretty pathetic that Richard thinks he can be judgmental about something that happened in England, where he most likely has never been. I'm sure there are members on this board from England or perhaps even Birmingham to set him straight about what really happened.
This one is particularly noteworthy for its hypocrisy. Martin claims to live in "Europe" but has bombarded this forum with critical comments about the US and US politics. But I'm being "judgmental" for commenting on one event that happened in England. That is verboten to him. Members of this "board" should set me straight. Martin speaks for these people as well because he allegedly lives on the same continent? Bizarre.
This little tidbit is also from “The Death of a President” by William Manchester. This book enlightens by providing a lot of behind the scenes details that seem to only be possible because of Manchester’s relationships with the Kennedys and JFK’s close associates. Anyway, this snip is from the morning of 11/23/63 as Schlesinger drove McNamara home from the White House. And, I suppose, it should be related to the succession (as one of the results).Caro, Dallek and other historians I've read say that LBJ only vaguely mentioned his "Great Society" programs during the campaign against Goldwater. And certainly nothing in detail about that enormous number of racial and poverty programs that were passed. In their accounts he essentially ran as a moderate and portrayed Goldwater as an extremist. I'll suggest that the very liberal and partisan Schlesinger would have recommended a liberal program for LBJ no matter what the situation was <g>.
McNamara was a registered Republican. Schlesinger was a zealous Democrat, and despite his silence on this point his convictions about the campaign were far more partisan than the Secretary’s. He wondered whether Lyndon Johnson should be his party’s candidate in the coming election. Already he was looking ahead to the convention in Atlantic City. After leaving Dupont Circle he conferred with Chairman John Bailey, asking him whether it would be possible to deny the new President the nomination. John, according to his account, replied that “it might be technically feasible, but the result would be to lose the election for the Democrats.” Schlesinger suggested that the party was likely to lose anyway, that either Rockefeller or Nixon would win by carrying “the big industrial states.” He then added perceptively, “But I suppose that Johnson is astute enough to recognize this too, which means that he may be driven to an aggressive liberal program.” This judgment was reached on the thirty-sixth President’s first full day in office, before he had made a single move in any direction, and it came from a Democrat who was pondering the wisdom of forfeiting the election, “regardless of merits,” to beat him. Yet it would be hard to find a shrewder appraisal of the Johnsonian domestic program that would later emerge.
It is somewhat surprising to me that Schlesinger had that conversation with John Bailey. I think that the world would have been a much different place if JFK had not been assassinated on 11/22/63.
Caro, Dallek and other historians I've read say that LBJ only vaguely mentioned his "Great Society" programs during the campaign against Goldwater. And certainly nothing in detail about that enormous number of racial and poverty programs that were passed. In their accounts he essentially ran as a moderate and portrayed Goldwater as an extremist. I'll suggest that the very liberal and partisan Schlesinger would have recommended a liberal program for LBJ no matter what the situation was <g>.
Here's Dallek: "Democrats watching the rise of Goldwater's candidacy were gleeful. "It begins to look as though the Republicans are really going on a Kamikaze mission in November," ADA president John Roche wrote [LBJ press secretary] Billy Moyers in June."
"But taking nothing for granted, Johnson insisted on a tough, hard driving campaign. He saw "Goldwaterism" as the 'outgrowth of long public unrest with Big Government, Big Spending..and feeling that Washington doesn't understand our problems." He wanted to broaden the Democratic Party base by reaching out to independents and Republicans."
Ironic that he considered the public's "unrest" about Big Government and then, after being elected, passed the largest series of government programs since the New Deal if not ever.
As to Manchester: I think LBJ was right to be worried about the book, about how it would portray him. Manchester had to curry favor with the Kennedys, especially Jackie, in order to get access; without their contribution he has no book. So he's going to go easy on JFK at the possible expense of LBJ. And we all know about the conflicts between LBJ and RFK and the "Kennedy mafia". It apparently got much worse later but it was bad at the time of the assassination.
Here are LBJ's approval ratings (Gallup). He's up around 55-60% approval through 1965 and then mostly fades until the very end.
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID9792985067/Keyh9qlb5axmb39/approval.JPG)