July 5, 1960
Washington, D.C.
John Kennedy was still a senator for Massachusetts, but he let his legislative duties slide while he campaigned for president. Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Texas, zealously showed up for work each day in Washington, even as he calculated his own run for the White House.
Johnson took his time. He focused his strategy not on the primaries but on the Democratic convention. He set the gears turning in the spring and watched his support slowly take shape. While Kennedy battled it out with his rivals, Johnson played the statesman.
Newspaper columnists and editorial boards agreed that Johnson was Kennedy’s biggest threat. The old fox knew how to block an early Kennedy nomination.
In the beginning of June, the editorial page of the Orlando Evening Star said, “We find it significant that Kennedy’s strength has been shown in primaries in which he had little real opposition, or at least not the kind of opposition which could be given by a forceful conservative such as Lyndon B. Johnson.”
The paper declared that no Democrat could win the presidency without the support of the South.
The Orlando Evening Star was one of nineteen newspapers that backed Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1960, that was a significant boost to any candidate.
“The times call for a man who has demonstrated qualities of leadership, who has experience and judgment, a man of vitality and courage, and patriotism that rises above partisanship,” one editor wrote.
Another added that “Lyndon Johnson, in our opinion, has those qualities to a greater degree than any other potential nominee in his party.”
Johnson basked in the praise. It enticed him to announce a presidential run.
“He [Johnson] has hesitated to do this [announce], perhaps because he is not completely sure in his own mind, but more likely because there has been extremely urgent business in the U.S. Senate, and that he felt his duty to the country was to stay in Washington and work, rather than to devote his time to a personal campaign,” the Orlando Evening Star gushed in another editorial.
Kennedy’s strategy was to campaign and win the primaries, and it worked. By one estimate, Kennedy already had 698 delegates of the 761 needed to capture the nomination. Johnson had 449, though—when he wasn’t even an official candidate.
“Considering that Sen. Johnson has made no campaign, has not even announced, we think this is remarkable,” the Orlando Evening Star noted.
The newspaper said they believed the real contest wasn’t between Kennedy and Humphrey or Senator Stuart Symington or Adlai Stevenson. No, Johnson was the man to beat.
“We think Lyndon Johnson can win, therefore, if the South remains united, there are solid reasons why we should back Senator Johnson,” the newspaper said. “He is a Southerner. He is a leader, a conservative, a man interested in preserving the rights of states. He is capable and experienced, a man with executive and legislative abilities.”
Johnson’s friends pushed him to enter the race.
Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, another Texan, worked behind the scenes for Johnson. Rayburn’s influence reached into almost every congressional district represented by a Democrat. Johnson was the only politician who could stop Kennedy, Rayburn said.
A strange thing started to happen. Despite all of Jack Kennedy’s campaigning and Bobby’s direction, with all of Joe’s money, power, and influence, a powerful coalition began forming around Johnson.
Maybe it was the fact that some in party leadership didn’t think Kennedy could win in the general election. Or maybe it was the long-term relationships that Johnson had developed over the years. But something was happening.
Columnist David Lawrence said a battle was brewing behind the scenes over who would land the Democratic presidential nomination.
“The public generally isn’t aware of the struggle,” he wrote. “The results of the inside fighting, moreover, are not always visible to the naked eye. But the tacticians working vigorously on behalf of Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson are playing their respective trump cards with all the resourcefulness known to politicians.”
And Lawrence discovered that “more and more state leaders, especially members of Congress on the Democratic side, are saying privately that they believe the country will be much more likely to elect a man with the maturity and legislative experience of Sen. Lyndon Johnson than to take a chance on the youth and relative inexperience of the Massachusetts senator.”
With the wind at his back—and little time before the convention—Johnson in late June visited six states to gauge his strength. The reality was he had been making these kinds of campaign-style stops over the last two months. At every stop, he didn’t lay out his vision for America. No, Kennedy was his target.
New York Times political columnist James Reston noted that Johnson was “doing what he rarely if ever does: he is attacking his Democratic opponents personally.”
Johnson brought up Kennedy’s response to the U-2 affair—Kennedy had said the president should apologize to the Soviet Union for the debacle. Johnson had jumped on that gaffe at the Washington State Democratic Convention in late May.
“I am not prepared to apologize to Mr. Khrushchev, are you? I am not prepared to send regrets to Mr. Khrushchev, are you?” Johnson shouted to the cheering crowd.
For Johnson, this could be his last chance to run for president. He was a fifty-one-year-old man who had a heart attack in 1955. He did the math. If Kennedy served two terms, Johnson would be sixty when JFK left office. Hell, Johnson didn’t know if he’d still be alive at sixty.
Maybe that’s why Johnson had embraced the “stop Kennedy” movement. Some political leaders had anointed Kennedy after the West Virginia primary. That rubbed some Democrats the wrong way—especially the ones who believed Nixon would crush Kennedy.
Besides, delegates were the name of the game. And with the reach of political leaders in key states, Johnson had been adding more delegates every day. Rayburn predicted he’d have five hundred by the time he arrived in Los Angeles for the convention. In that scenario, he’d be short by 269 votes.
And as the convention neared, Johnson continued gathering support from more newspapers.
“In his role as majority leader, Lyndon Johnson has displayed a caliber of statesmanship sorely needed in Washington these days,” the editorial board of West Virginia’s Wheeling News-Register wrote. “Senator Johnson has resisted the temptation to resort to political sniping, to practice obstructionist opportunism for the purpose of partisan advantage.”
Ads even ran in the liberal New York Herald Tribune: “Senator Johnson is unquestionably a man of stature, a master of political statecraft and of compromise, a wizard at the maintenance of unity among warring and divergent forces.”
Such praise could go to a man’s head, but Johnson kept his feet on the ground. He knew a presidential bid would be a hard battle. Had Kennedy already gained too much momentum? Was Johnson too late to the game?
Slowly, the answer became obvious. His old friend Representative Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts was already pledged to Kennedy on the first ballot. But when Johnson asked O’Neill if he’d consider supporting him on the second ballot, O’Neill’s response felt like a gut punch. Forget about a second ballot, he told Johnson. Kennedy had already locked up the magic number.
Johnson was stunned. While he was back in the Capitol doing the country’s business, JFK had been collecting delegates.
But if he was going out, it would be in a blaze of glory. Johnson announced his candidacy on July 5. The convention would officially start on July 11.
Not much time to do anything except cause chaos. And that’s what Johnson’s team did. Back in Washington, John Kennedy ignored the Johnson announcement. He knew it was too little, too late. Johnson was about to discover his old smoke-filled room had been aired out and filled up with Kennedy delegates.