THE FLOW OF TIME is intractable. Although the living continued to mourn the dead, the Kennedy men had to respond to the events, the need for decision, which were swiftly engulfing them. Johnson was now in command, his intentions still a mystery, failure to consider the future would be unnatural; perhaps even fatal to ambitions which must now move into obscurely perceived, unmapped paths. For me the possibilities were simple and, thus, easily decided. Or so I thought.
I hardly knew Johnson, my contact limited to occasional pleasantries over the past three years. He was unlikely to confirm my appointment as adviser on the arts. So I convoked my Peace Corps staff, assured them that the secretariat would continue its work, and, privately, began to give serious thought about my departure from government.
In the weeks that followed the assassination small groups of Kennedy liberals — Galbraith, Schlesinger, Secretary of Labor Bill Wirtz, White House staff members — grieving, disoriented, old suspicions rearoused, met in small informal groups to discuss whether Johnson could be denied the party’s nomination at the convention, now little more than half a year away. Some may have been motivated, in part, by a foreseeable loss of personal influence or position. But not many, and not much. The gatherings were suffused by a sense of disbelief, an unwillingness to accept what they thought to be true — that the hardly won Kennedy renaissance, the liberal renewal, had been so abruptly, arbitrarily cut short; the fruits of progressive victory transferred to this “conservative” Texan, this master political manipulator, peerless “boss of the Senate,” personal protégé of Georgia’s Richard Russell, whose values and convictions (if he had any) were remote from their own.
Not only had Camelot dissolved, but Mordred was in command — or at least so it seemed, and was often expressed in those early weeks of incoherent grief and shock. “What does he know about people who’ve got no jobs,” Robert Kennedy told me, “or are undereducated? He’s got no feeling for people who are hungry. It’s up to us.”
Bobby, and others no less vehement, were mistaken; had misjudged the gargantuan figure who would emerge from the humiliating shadows of the vice-presidency to dominate American public life for almost half a decade; who would make himself — personality, actions, ambitions — a national focus for admiration, anger, fear, and derision to an extent unrivaled by any president since Roosevelt. The mistakes, the furious misjudgments, were understandable, amid what seemed the shattered castle of dreams and intentions. Bobby and others would revise their judgments, but, for the moment, were inwardly compelled toward resentment at the alien usurper. “The king is dead, long live the king” is a slogan for subjects, not for princes.
Although my own partial expulsion from the inner circle had not — judging by the intensity of my sorrow — lessened my feelings for Kennedy, it restrained me from making instinctive judgments about a man whose capacities and thoughts were unknown. I did not know Johnson and would not judge him. Not until later. Not until I had come to understand him more profoundly, in more intimate detail than I would know any person in public life. Except, perhaps, for Bobby.
Before I would have that opportunity, within weeks of Kennedy’s death, I experienced another blow, less personal, but directed at the heart of my own involvement in public policy.
In late November 1963, at Johnson’s request, I had sent a memorandum to the White House on the Alliance for Progress. After detailing the myriad difficulties that beset the still-sluggish Alianza, I concluded that “We have only eleven months [before the election] to demonstrate that the Alliance is going ahead full steam.… The Alliance had an enormous asset in the person of President Kennedy. Latins felt that they could count on him to cut through the morass of the bureaucracy.… You need someone in over-all charge who will be a symbol of your personal concern and determination.…” Rather naïvely I suggested Sarge Shriver or Robert Kennedy for the job.
In about two weeks I had my answer. On Saturday, December 14, press secretary Pierre Salinger announced the return of Thomas Mann to the job of assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs to which he had first been appointed by Eisenhower and later removed by Kennedy. Arthur Schlesinger sent me a copy of the briefing transcript, to which he had affixed a note on which was scrawled “R.I.P.”
The next morning, I received a call from Pedro San Juan, who had served Kennedy as interpreter and adviser on trips to Latin America. “I am going to write an obituary,” Pedro said; “the Alliance for Progress, born October 1960, died, December 14, 1963.” My diary entry that Sunday reads: “San Juan’s call reflects the general mood of the Kennedy crowd over the appointment of Tom Mann.… There is real gloom among the advocates of the Alliance for Progress. Mann is a colonialist by mentality who believes that the ‘natives’ — the Latin Americans — need to be shown who is boss. He is a tough-line man — a man who feels the principal job of the United States in Latin America is to make the world safe for W. R. Grace and Company. He is not much of an administrator but is tough, arrogant, and opinionated. In other words, he has all the worst qualities coupled with a basic lack of belief in the Alliance for Progress. Unless a miracle occurs we can expect a process of deterioration of the U.S. position to begin. It may not be visible for quite a while, but it will come. Well, it was a good try. At least that is my today’s mood.”
But it was more than a mood — the transient merger of grief with frustration. Obedient to an atavistic disposition — action stripped of vision — we returned to the policies which, only a few years before, had been so clearly perceived as the source of certain decay. We would, with certain honorable exceptions, support the status quo — any status quo — outwardly allied to our Cold War aims and respectful of American business. The consequence was, over a quarter century, to validate the prophecies of the Latin American task force and the premises of the Alliance for Progress. Economic aid continued, but, stripped of the insistence on social justice — techo, trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela (homes, work, land, health, schools) for the masses — it could not halt, indeed would accelerate, the polarization between the authoritarian right and the anti-American left. It would also, more importantly, destroy the alliance between the United States and the desire of the Latin multitudes for their “inalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights, we seemed to say, in contradiction to Jefferson, had been reserved by God to Americans. As Kennedy predicted, the failure of peaceful revolution has now awakened the forces of violence — by the state and against it. The precise consequences are unforeseeable. But they will not benefit — materially or morally — the objectives or the spiritual well-being of the United States.
On Monday, December 16, 1963, Arthur Schlesinger and I entered the spacious office of the attorney general — its walls decorated by the multicolored, scribbled drawings of small children — ostensibly to discuss plans for the Kennedy Library, but, more urgently, in search of a fellow spirit to share our futile laments over Tom Mann’s appointment.
Bobby Kennedy motioned us to sit, poured some bourbon; idly we discussed politics, the projected Kennedy Library, the value of recording reminiscent anecdotes while they were still fresh. The ringing of a phone on his desk brought the attorney general to his feet. He listened in silence then responded: “He’s dead. Let him be dead.… Come and see me next week.”
He turned toward us, the forced geniality drained from his face as Arthur continued to express our distress; staring intently at us, past us:
“The Alianza isn’t just important to Dick Goodwin or Arthur Schlesinger. It’s important to me and Ed Henry and a lot of people. Averell Harriman said to me last night, ‘I didn’t come down here to work for George Ball or Dean Rusk; I came to work for John Kennedy.’ Well, I don’t want to see Averell Harriman get screwed, or anybody else. Harriman’s got his faults. I’ve got my faults. We’ve all got faults. But I don’t want to see him get screwed.… There are hundreds of guys around here in positions of influence. We’re important to Johnson. I’m the most important because my name happens to be Kennedy. But we’re all important, if we act together. I haven’t thought it through yet. But we are.”
Then standing rigidly by the phone, hands clenched, facial muscles tensed against an unseemly show of grief: “I’ve lost a brother. Other people lose wives.” His voice trailed off into an instant of silence. “I’ve lost a brother, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is what we were trying to do for this country. We got a good start; we had a committee working on poverty, a juvenile delinquency study. You can’t do a lot in three years, but we’d gotten started. We could have done a lot in five or more years. There’s a lot of people in this town. They didn’t come here just to work for John Kennedy — an individual. But for ideas, things we wanted to do. I don’t want people running off.… A lot of people could scramble around now, get themselves positions of power and influence. But that’s not important. What’s important is what we can get done.… Remember after November fifth [the presidential election] we’re all done. We won’t be wanted or needed. We’re not going to do what the ADA says or anyone else, but what’s good for America.”
As we left, I glimpsed a column by Samuel Lubell in the morning paper, reporting that southerners were opposed to Robert Kennedy for vice-president, and Negroes were for it (the term “blacks” not yet born). I showed it to Bobby, who studied it intently, then, musing, with analytical detachment, “Well, he’s [LBJ] already got the Negroes.… He’s already got the Negroes.”
“Thanks, Dick,” he said, as we left.
Bobby Kennedy’s monologue that day in December was a cry of pain: judgment and desire distorted by disconsolate deprivation, a vain desire to recreate — in some undecipherable fashion — that which had been extinguished by a malign fate. Those who had come to labor for the New Frontier were not linked by common, crusading ideals (although there were idealists and crusaders among them), but by John Kennedy — personality, will, and the magnetic radiance of power that drew men toward it for a variety of motives — ambition, rank, prestige, or the mere pleasure of nearness to the source. That bond was now gone, the companions of the past could not be rallied to influence or coerce the new president, to accept Robert Kennedy as some kind of a surrogate leader, if that’s what he had in mind. They retained life, energy, ambition and would — must — pursue their own values and career within the framework of a new reality. As Bobby himself would do, after time had muted his grief.
In early January, Johnson sent Robert Kennedy on a goodwill visit to the Far East. Glad to get out of the country, away from that Washington where every sight and encounter abraded his destitute spirit, accompanied by his family, he visited six countries in thirteen days. On his return in late January, he reentered the now-alien Oval Office to report. After a brief discussion on the trip, Johnson abruptly told him, “I want you to get rid of that Paul Corbin” (one of Kennedy’s political staff whose loyalties Johnson distrusted). “I don’t think I should,” Bobby replied; “he was appointed by President Kennedy, who thought he was good.”
“Do it. President Kennedy isn’t president anymore. I am.”
“I know you’re president, and don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”
“I did you a favor sending you to the Far East.”
“A favor! I don’t want you to do any more favors for me. Ever.” And with that, Robert Kennedy rose, and without looking back, stalked angrily out of the Oval Office.
Brutal? Not really. An inevitable encounter between two strong-willed men, one still unable to accept the irretrievable, the other feeling compelled to assert his rightful authority over this living reminder of the now almost mythical predecessor whose memory seemed likely to overshadow and depreciate his own authority and achievements. (In 1965, Johnson, to dramatize his War on Poverty, went to visit an impoverished household in Appalachia. “They had seven children, all sick and skinny,” he recounted. “They seemed real happy to talk with me and I felt real good about that. Then as I walked out, I noticed two pictures on the wall. One was Jesus Christ on the cross. The other was John Kennedy. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.”)
Although Johnson might have been more gentle with Bobby (and vice-versa), he was right. The order was his to give. He was the president. Within the year, Robert Kennedy, practical rationality having resumed control, would ask Lyndon Johnson for a favor: support and endorsement in his campaign for the Senate in New York. And Johnson responded — made television commercials, accompanied Bobby on a campaign tour. It was just good politics, of course, but it must have given Johnson a special satisfaction to grant needed help to this man who had so disdained him. It must have felt even better when, in the fall elections, Johnson carried New York by a landslide, while Bobby barely made it.
Although I had been moved and impressed by Robert Kennedy’s plea to stay on and “continue the fight,” I was under no illusion that it might somehow be possible to mount a guerrilla insurgency against the Johnson White House, or, if it was, that I could play an important role. And thus I began, metaphorically, to pack my bags. Outside the government men and women of my generation were working to change the country; the constructive social movements of the sixties had begun to spread from living-room meetings and libraries, to campuses, underground journals, and the struggles for black freedom. If I had lost connection with the New Frontier in Washington, perhaps I would find it out there.
Then, in January, an obscure incident in Panama began a train of events that ended with my appointment to President Johnson’s White House staff. While I was still deliberating my departure, fierce anti-American rioting in Panama, directed at United States control of the Canal Zone, virtually compelled the president of that country, then approaching a national election, to sever diplomatic relations with the United States and demand a complete revision of the Panama Canal Treaty.
We reacted as predictably as a bear stung by a bee: We roared. “I’m not going to be pushed around by a country no bigger than St. Louis,” Johnson told intimates. Faced with his first foreign-policy “crisis,” only nine months away from his own election campaign, the president refused to negotiate while the violence continued, and announced that even if peace was restored he had no intention of negotiating a new treaty, although he would be willing to “discuss” the “possibility” of a new treaty. Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, sensing a political issue in the making, offered the statesmanlike counsel that “To give an inch would be equivalent to telling every small country that all they had to do was break off relations, attack our embassy, and demand whatever they wanted.” He did not explain what other small countries he had in mind or what they might demand. But surely there were others, and they all must want something. Didn’t everybody?
The intermittent exchange of rhetoric continued until the middle of March, when a team of OAS negotiators announced that President Chiari of Panama and the United States (acting via Tom Mann) had agreed to name ambassadors to begin discussions and/or negotiations. Radio Panama proclaimed a victory, whereupon an irritated Johnson disowned both his own assistant secretary and the Organization of American States. The agreement, he said, was a figment of many imaginations. And on March 16, speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the third anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, Johnson departed from his prepared text to say that there had been absolutely no meeting of the minds, that we hadn’t given an inch.
Now everyone was mad. The Latin diplomats told reporters that Johnson was transforming the Alliance for Progress into a weapon of old-fashioned imperialism. The European press was almost uniformly critical of the new president’s ineptitude in the first test of his foreign-policy skills. Leading members of the Democratic party — men whom Johnson had carefully cultivated as protection against any challenge to his nomination — openly censured American actions.
Until the “Panama affair” Johnson had received nothing but warm and virtually unqualified praise for his skillful transition to the presidential office. Now the “honeymoon” was threatened, and all because he had escalated a trivial dispute over words into a clash of high principle. The Panamanians had withdrawn from their insistence on “negotiating” a new treaty, and agreed with us and the OAS simply to “discuss” the possibility of a negotiation. But our breach of this agreement had made even “discussion” seem like a coerced concession. In other words, we had painted ourselves into a corner. We could go to war, which was out of the question. We could do nothing, which meant the continuation of riots and a mounting rhetorical battle. Or we could talk, which, it seemed, we had refused to do. As a result, a trivial dispute, easily soluble by the appropriate manipulation of verbal formulas, had become a confrontation, a “mini-crisis” for the new president.
Around March 17, I accompanied Sarge Shriver to a meeting in the “fish room” of the White House, where he had gathered the heads of various government departments to discuss the use of Peace Corps volunteers in a variety of overseas programs. After about one hour of politely obtuse discussion, it was becoming clear that the chieftains of professional bureaucracy had faint enthusiasm for introducing a bunch of young, enthusiastic amateurs into their carefully crafted and scheduled projects. We could, Sarge explained, help them accomplish more and faster, not realizing that his mounting eagerness only increased the apprehensions of those for whom ordered planning and totally controlled execution — at least on paper — were far more important than results, were their protection against future scrutiny by superiors or, God forbid, by the Congress. Seeking momentary relief from the litanies of evasion, the interminable non sequiturs, the tedious, fearful rejection masked in the language of appreciative rationality (Sarge, after all, was being mentioned as a candidate for vice-president), I stepped outside the room into the West Wing corridor. As I stood there, surveying the scene of past glories, the door to the Oval Office — about thirty feet down the hall — opened and Lyndon Johnson stepped out.
Seeing me, he motioned. “Dick, can you come here for a minute?” I walked toward him, exactly as I had approached a similar summons from John Kennedy on that January day three years before. “Come on in,” he said, following me into the Oval Office and carefully closing the door. I turned to find the gargantuan figure (Had he actually grown since becoming president — or was it my imagination?) standing less than a foot away. Leaning toward me, his eyes locked into mine, his physical closeness designed to put me on the defensive (a characteristic maneuver; not a trick, but derived from an intuitive understanding of human discomfort, vulnerability, a violation of the insulating space that separated each individual from others). “Tell me, Dick,” he demanded softly, “what do you think we should do about this Panama thing?”
“I haven’t been involved, Mr. President,” I replied, maneuvering for time to frame my answer to the unexpected question. “And I’m not sure I know all the issues involved.” The president stood silent, intense, gaze unwavering. “But from what I know, it doesn’t seem too difficult.” Then, more forcefully, old passion returning: “We’re a great big, powerful, rich country. Panama is tiny, weak, poor. They know we could just come in and take what we want, and they’d be helpless. All they’ve got is their pride, and if we make threats and demands, they can’t give in. They’d lose their dignity.”
“So what would you suggest? That we give them whatever they want?” Though harshly phrased, it was not a question, but an invitation to continue.
“Tell them they’re a great country, our allies in the fight for freedom, that they’ve fought beside us in war and been our friends in peace, that we’re grateful, glad to have them as friends, anxious to keep a small misunderstanding from damaging such a valuable relationship.”
The president’s expression did not change. “Can you write me a statement?”
“Of course.”
“Send it over to Jack Valenti. He’ll make sure it gets right to me.” The intensity drained from his posture. Smiling, he placed his huge arm over my shoulder, silently walked me back into the corridor, turned, and disappeared into his office.
Much later I realized that, inadvertently, without calculation, I had communicated with the heart of Johnson’s genius — that capacity for manipulation and seduction bred by his extraordinary intuition of other men — their ambitions, needs, weaknesses, pride — which was the foundation, the inward core of his political mastery in the Senate and, for a while, in the White House. Panama and Congress, President Chiari and Everett Dirksen; an equation he perceived instantly, naturally, and which he could use without any sacrifice of dignity. He had been doing it all his life, and knew that in exchange for words — only words — many men would make concessions, yield their will to his, enhance his power.
I returned to my Peace Corps office, completed a statement by early evening, and called Valenti, who sent a messenger for my ill-typed draft. (No secretary could be allowed to see it.) For four days there was no response, not even an acknowledgment. Then, on March 21, Johnson, without notice, walked into the office where his new press secretary, George Reedy, was conducting the morning press briefing. “Is it all right with you folks,” he asked, “if I monitor your press conference?” And without waiting for acquiescence began to read a marginally amended version of my statement, which, he said, would be sent to the president of the OAS that afternoon.
“The present inability to resolve our differences with Panama is a source of deep regret … we have long been allies in the struggle to enhance democracy … Panama has unhesitatingly come to our side … when we were threatened by aggression … we have also had a special relationship with Panama (in maintaining the canal).… All free nations are grateful for the effort they have given to that task … the claims of … Panama … do not spring from malice or hatred of America. They are based on a deeply felt sense of the honest and fair needs of Panama. It is, therefore, our obligation as allies and partners to review these claims and to meet them, when just and possible. We are prepared to review every issue … at any time and at any place.… As soon as he is invited … our ambassador will be on his way … his instructions will not prohibit any solution which is fair.… For despite today’s disagreements, the common values and interests which unite us are far stronger than the differences which now divide us.”
On March 24, President Chiari of Panama welcomed Johnson’s “constructive evaluation.” “During the two great world wars,” Chiari declared, “Panama and the United States united their efforts, and each in proportion contributed to the victory of the democratic cause.… Rightly does President Johnson recognize … that there is no malice or hate in the demands of Panama because they are just and sincere.… [O]ne can see his purpose that relations be reestablished and that special representatives be designated to solve these matters.… I am willing to act in this way.”
The “Panama problem” was over. (A formal agreement was signed on April 3.) The Panamanians got their discussions (now called a “review”). Johnson got an end to the rioting without a new Canal treaty. And I got a job in the White House. My beloved Latins had, inadvertently, restored me to the center of power where, over the next two years, I would share more substantially in presidential authority and policy than ever before.
Within a day or two of the president’s statement, and the favorable press reaction that followed, Valenti asked me if I would prepare a speech for a Democratic party gathering.
Before working on the speech, I read through a half-dozen of LBJ’s previous speeches and decided that the mistake so far had been the effort to make Johnson a rhetorician, a turner of ornate phrases. Believing that speechwriters cannot make a man something he is not — that it will not ring right, will always come out a little off-center — I decided to write the speech in simple, straightforward, unadorned language.
The next day I brought my draft to Valenti. He listened to the speech with enthusiasm, saying it was just the sort of thing he wanted for LBJ. “LBJ’s way of speaking,” he explained, “is a lot closer to Roosevelt than to Kennedy. Kennedy’s stuff might have been fine for him, but not for Johnson.” He then said he was going to recommend that the president bring me to the White House. He asked how I had worked with LBJ before. I told him I hadn’t. After asking a few questions about my background, he said, “I want to be honest with you; it’s the only sensible way to be. Some of the people in the Kennedy coterie were not your friends … some who are no longer here.” (I knew better. Some were still there, but Jack, prudently, did not want to jeopardize any potential future relationships.) “They didn’t want you to do anything for LBJ. I don’t try and keep useful people from the president like some do. I want him to know who can help.… I’m going to take the speech up as it is and see that he reads it in its pristine form, before others get their hands on it.”
I did not doubt Valenti’s sincerity. He wanted me in the White House. But his expression of intent was not, could not be, the product of solitary reflection. The matter must have been discussed — with Bill Moyers (a close personal friend of mine who had already moved from the Peace Corps to the top rank of Johnson aides) and, in all probability, with the president himself. Jack, after all, had only one loyalty and it is unlikely that he would disclose his recommendation to me unless he had first cleared it with Johnson, making sure that it would be approved. His job was to protect the president, not expose him.
That night, I talked to Robert Kennedy and asked him what he thought of the offer. Did he think I should take the job if it materialized? He thought for a while, then said, “Well, from the selfish point of view — you can think selfishly once in a while — I wish you wouldn’t. But I guess you have to. After all, if any one of us is in a position to keep him from blowing up Costa Rica, or something like that” (Costa Rica! Of all unlikely places!) “then we ought to do it. So I guess you should do it. If you do, you have to do the best job you can, and with complete loyalty. There’s no other way.” Of course. It had never crossed my mind that there was any other way; that one could work for a president of the United States without a complete commitment to serve his objectives, interests, and the office of which he was the personal embodiment.
The next morning I walked from my Peace Corps office to a small drugstore located a block from the White House in search of a cup of midmorning coffee. As I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, I encountered McGeorge Bundy. I had not talked with my once-intimate colleague for almost a year — no dinner invitations, not even a telephoned exchange of pleasantries — and thus was somewhat (not completely) surprised when he hailed me and, approaching, said in vigorous tones: “We really miss you at the White House, Dick.” (Had he just noticed my absence after almost two years?) “We could really use someone of your abilities.”
“Thanks, Mac,” I replied and continued toward the coffee counter. That’s it, I thought. It’s been decided. Johnson’s going to bring me back to the White House.
That same afternoon the offer was made and accepted.
During this, my second tour of duty in the White House, my responsibilities were to be limited almost exclusively to domestic affairs. It was fine with me. For that was now where the action was. Or so it seemed. (“Those fellows over at State really have something against you,” Johnson later delighted in telling me, “but I just let them know your president is with you all the way”; a classic example of the Johnsonian technique — divide and dominate — with which the president tried to maintain direct personal control over not only his own staff, but all the institutions of government. “Now that Fulbright tells me, George,” he once told Senator George Smathers, “that you just don’t bother to come to committee meetings; that you just can’t be counted on.” “That’s not true, Mr. President,” Smathers responded. “I’m always there when it’s important.” “I believe you, George, but that’s what he tells me.”)
After joining the Johnson staff, I moved first to a secluded office in the Executive Office Building and, within a month, was transferred to a second-floor office in the precious West Wing of the White House: the very same chamber I had claimed with such innocent exultation only three years before.
The next time I left, the choice would be mine.