That all the world will be in love with the Night

And pay no worship to the garish Sun77

Virtually the entire convention hall was crying, and millions at home as well. The film recounted JFK's achievements, but the personal glimpses-such as Kennedy teaching John Jr. to tickle his chin with a buttercup-were most affecting, and hard to watch. Meanwhile, RFK had left the stage, gone out to sit on a staircase, and inconsolable, he broke down in tears. No one knew better what that evening could have been.78 The general election was fiercely fought. Barry Goldwater detested Lyndon Johnson, thinking him corrupt and unfit for the Oval Office. Senator Gold-water told friends he had looked forward to a race with JFK, who apparently at one point had suggested to the Arizonan that the two might fly around the country on Air Force One, debating the issues at each stop.79 Kennedy may or may not have been serious, and if he were, it was because he knew Goldwater was simply too far right to pose a serious challenge to his second term. In any event, Johnson refused to debate Goldwater, while most campaign observers believed that Kennedy would have done so, given his success against Nixon in 1960. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no television president, and he was not about to give Goldwater a free audience of millions in debates similar to those of 1960.

An embittered Goldwater lashed out at LBJ at every turn, while Johnson commissioned some of the nastiest television spots ever aired. The "bombs away" commercials, including the infamous "Daisy Spot,"80 all but called Goldwater crazy, likely to use nuclear weapons and, in effect, end all life on earth. Surprisingly few positive advertisements were aired by Johnson, who missed an opportunity to build support for the sweeping programs he had planned for a full term. But Johnson was swept back into the White House with a popular vote majority that even exceeded that of his hero, FDR.y He lost only five Deep South states81 and, narrowly, Goldwater's Arizona. Best of all, Johnson's margin helped to produce an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that would bend to his will.82 The other aspect of the campaign worth noting was Johnson's reluctance to cite JFK more than he had to. He could not avoid it when Goldwater charged the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had been timed for maximum political effect in the following month's midterm elections,83 and occasionally LBJ would mention how he got to the Oval Office.84 But Johnson wanted to create his own mandate, not slip back into office on Kennedy's ghostly one-though public grief and guilt about the assassination were a big part of the Democratic landslide, whether LBJ acknowledged it or not. At last, Johnson was looking forward to his own term with his own team. However, he underestimated the Kennedy faction in this sense: They viewed his new term as John Kennedy's second, the triumphant term snatched away on the streets of Dallas. In their eyes, Lyndon Johnson would never really be his own man. He would forever be a president who owed everything to John Kennedy-and a well-placed bullet.

No sooner was LBJ elected than he had to face the haunting first anniversary of the assassination.85 It would be a highly public reminder of how his presidency began, and he had to proceed cautiously. Johnson and his staff agreed on several steps. A presidential proclamation was issued, calling for a day of prayer on November 22 (which conveniently fell on a Sunday in 1964). Johnson visited the Kennedy grave site "quiet[ly], without fanfare" five days before the anniversary to pay respects. A sculpture of JFK was received by LBJ on November 19 and placed in the cabinet room of the White House. And Johnson, after returning to the LBJ Ranch in Texas for Thanksgiving week, attended an interdenominational service at Austin's University Methodist Church on the anniversary itself.86 Aide Jack Valenti also counseled the president, "It would be ill-advised to be out hunting on Sunday the 22. I know you have visitors that day-but I submit the backlash from this could be severe."87 Much as Americans' eyes had been riveted on Arlington in November 1963, and then again on John Kennedy's May 1964 birthday, the eternal flame at JFK's grave site drew television cameras and forty thousand mourners on November 22, 1964. Bobby Kennedy led other family members to kneel in prayer "on the first anniversary of that day of national horror, shame and grief." Among the earliest visitors had been the two daughters of President and Mrs. Johnson, who left yellow roses.88 Three million people had made the pilgrimage to Arlington just between JFK's funeral and the end of May; tens of millions would follow over the decades.89 On December 15, 1964, President Johnson wrote to Jackie Kennedy about matters pertaining to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He added a poignant thought: "Time goes by swiftly, my dear Jackie. But the day never goes by without some tremor of a memory or some edge of a feeling that reminds me of all that you and I went through together."90 xJohnson won the Keystone State with 65 percent of the vote in November.

yIn 1936, FDR's best election, Roosevelt received 60.8 percent; LBJ in 1964 garnered 61.1 percent.

14.

Crossed Swords: Camelot vs. the Great Society

On January 20, 1965, political observers were almost united in their belief that LBJ was the new FDR, a big-picture, big-government, big-action president who would be in office until the Constitution said he had to go in January 1973. Johnson was at the peak of his powers on the highest mountaintop, and his vista included a robust economy, compliant congressional supermajorities, and unambiguous dominance of the Western world. John F. Kennedy's time was past. Lyndon Johnson's independence day had dawned.

Perhaps because LBJ had already been in office for fourteen months, inauguration day lacked the drama that had accompanied many other swearing-ins in American history. Whatever the level of excitement, Johnson was determined that the day would be free of Kennedy dominance. He had always seen himself as far more experienced and better qualified to be chief executive than his young predecessor. In his short time in office he had already compiled a legislative record more impressive than JFK's. He had won the 1964 election in grand style, a massive landslide compared with Kennedy's squeaker. Therefore, in the reality that Johnson saw, this was entirely his own term. John F. Kennedy was not mentioned in Johnson's inaugural address, and that was part of a larger plan.1 LBJ's close aide Horace Busby had sent him a memo in December, reminding the president that he had already designated the year as the 175th anniversary of the presidency. Busby recommended this also be the inauguration's premise: "Adoption of the 175-year theme would, as no small benefit, eliminate adverse comments or unwelcome pressures for associating the late President Kennedy with your Inauguration ... All former presidents would be, in this context, subject to equal treatment, rather than any [that is, JFK] being singled out for special treatment."2 Of course, the Johnson White House could not control the media coverage, which naturally mentioned the events of four years prior, nor could it stanch the flow of emotions among the citizenry, which inevitably understood that John Kennedy would probably have been beginning his second term save for November 22. The reminders were everywhere. While Mrs. Kennedy understandably did not attend the inaugural ceremonies, two Senators Kennedy were now on the inaugural platform, Ted representing Massachusetts and Bobby newly elected from New York.3 Moreover, nine of JFK's cabinet officers (out of eleven slots) continued serving Johnson as he began his elective term.4 The principals included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.5 The Kennedys were not the only interesting omission in LBJ's inaugural speech. The growing American involvement in Vietnam was also ignored. For all of Johnson's achievements in the four years to come, no other matters would so dominate his presidency as the Kennedy name and the Vietnam War. The combination would prove lethal to LBJ's hopes for a lengthier White House stay.

These were faraway drums in January of 1965. Johnson set to work pushing the massively Democratic Congress for a laundry list of new programs and policies. He still had his magic touch on Capitol Hill, with an intimate understanding of the legislative process, and the strengths and weaknesses of virtually every legislator. CBS's Bob Schieffer, who watched his fellow Texan closely, tells a story that illustrates the effectiveness of the fabled "Johnson treatment." When Schieffer's friend Bill Stuckey (heir to the Stuckey's restaurant empire) won election to the House in Georgia's eighth district, LBJ called Stuckey at home and insisted that he come to the White House right away. "They sent a government airplane down there," Schieffer recalls. "Bill got on the airplane. He flew to Andrews Air Force Base. The White House helicopter was waiting, which took him directly to the South Lawn of the White House. He landed on the South Lawn. An aide met him at the helicopter door and took him directly into the Oval Office and there stood the President of the United States who put his arm around him and said, 'Son, I'm really going to need your help.' Bill told me he never once voted against Lyndon Johnson."6 The Kennedy legacy also helped LBJ muscle his grand schemes through the House and Senate. The new Congress was responding less to the wave of public sympathy for the party's goals that followed the assassination and had driven the prior year's legislation. Rather, the 1965 legislature was akin to FDR's first, swollen with party adherents who wanted to rubber-stamp just about anything the president sent down from the White House. Both the 1964 and 1965 sessions were part of JFK's bequest-the first a visceral reaction and a direct consequence of November 22, the second an aftershock. Never in American history has grief over a presidential death so shaped the statute books. There was no such precedent after Lincoln's murder, nor following the deaths of Harrison, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, and even Franklin Roosevelt. (There was considerable congressional action post-Lincoln, but Congress wrested control of the agenda from a weak presidential successor and enacted stringent Reconstruction laws that Lincoln likely would have avoided.)7 Lyndon Johnson probably thought little about the tunnel of history or John Kennedy's role in his success as he signed a torrent of legislation in 1965, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, providing the first substantial federal assistance to schools across the nation, and the Higher Education Act;8 the groundbreaking Medicare bill, sought first by President Truman and brought to life in his presence in Independence, Missouri;9 the Voting Rights Act, which empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration in states and localities with a history of racial discrimination as well as outlawing literacy tests used to limit the franchise;10 the founding of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the appointment of its secretary, the first African American in any cabinet, Robert Weaver;11 and major pieces of environmental legislation, the Water Quality Act and the Highway Beautification Act (the latter, Lady Bird Johnson's pet project).12 In later years, LBJ added to his breathtaking record of legislative triumphs with the Public Broadcasting Act that led to the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio;13 the establishment of the Product Safety Commission;14 the Air Quality Act;15 the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act;16 and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Trails Systems Act.17 Many of these advances in education, senior citizen health care, and protection of the environment are taken for granted today as part of the national fabric, but they were revolutionary in their time.

Perhaps the Johnson presidency should be more closely associated in the public mind with these achievements than it is, but for those who lived through LBJ's five years in the White House, one subject dominates all others: Vietnam. And it is not to Johnson's benefit.

Johnson was not the first president to make bad decisions about Vietnam-Eisenhower and Kennedy deserve some blame-nor was he the last, as Nixon would show.18 But Johnson was unquestionably the chief executive who took Vietnam from back-burner involvement and made it the whole stove. When LBJ succeeded Kennedy, there were 16,300 troops and advisers in Vietnam; when he left, there were more than 535,000.19 Early in Johnson's administration there was close to a consensus that America needed to continue the fight against Communism by helping South Vietnam, although people differed about the precise means. Some members of the press corps were among the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of decisive action in Southeast Asia. Before Lyndon Johnson even took the oath for a full presidential term, he found the influential columnist Joseph Alsop all but questioning his manhood. Alsop compared LBJ unfavorably to JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis: "If Mr. Johnson ducks the challenge [in Vietnam] we shall learn by experience about what it would have been like if Kennedy had ducked the challenge in October 1962."20 White House staffers reported that Johnson was furious. Within weeks he had decided to pursue a tough policy against the Communist North Vietnamese, and he gradually committed Marines to the protection of an air base in Danang. First, they were allowed only defensive operations, then offensive, then more divisions were sent, then two Army brigades. In July 1965 came the next major escalation, with the number of GIs in Vietnam increased from 75,000 to 125,000. The die was cast. So, too, was the reaction, which escalated along with the troops. Twenty college campuses and a hundred other communities across America witnessed their first major anti-Vietnam protests in October 1965.21 By 1967 President Johnson had sent an astounding number of American troops to Vietnam-close to a half million-and the bombing in Indochina had already been so massive that the United States had dropped more tonnage of explosives there than on all of Europe and Asia during World War II.22 By the spring of 1967, antiwar demonstrations were widespread-not just at colleges but in cities large and small throughout the nation. In October more than fifty thousand marched on the Pentagon to insist on an end to the Vietnam conflict. Everywhere LBJ went, he was met by increasingly vociferous protestors, who often chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" At the end of 1967, American casualties numbered 19,560 dead and many thousands more wounded.23 Television evening news reported the fighting daily, and at week's end contained the grim and growing body count (as well as fantastical U.S.government-supplied estimates of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops supposedly killed, which viewers increasingly disbelieved).24 In May 1967, aide Harry McPherson sent a somber memo to Johnson, quoting his wife as saying, "The President never goes anywhere anymore-in America. I feel as if he's a prisoner in the White House."25 Indeed, LBJ was serving a kind of incarceration, no doubt preferred by the Secret Service given Johnson's low ratings and the intense animus directed at him from the antiwar left. The right wing had also never forgiven Johnson for his civil rights legislation. LBJ achieved the rare status of being hated about equally by both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Partly because of the emergence of Bobby Kennedy as Johnson's premier rival, LBJ and his staff began an unsubtle effort to blame President Kennedy for their Vietnam travails. Johnson was urged to remind the press and public that he was following Kennedy's Vietnam policy, and that JFK had supported the "domino theory"-the belief that if South Vietnam fell, the Communists would succeed in conquering (or at least be emboldened to attempt revolution in) other Southeast Asia countries, not to mention Central and South America. Columnist Joseph Alsop recalled that Johnson "was not very gracefully telling everyone at that time that his was, so to say, a world he'd never made; that he'd inherited this mess from President Kennedy; that it was all President Kennedy's fault, not his fault; and that if we encountered disaster there it would be President Kennedy's disaster, not his disaster."26 As former president Johnson explained it to the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, it was his determination to carry out JFK's pledge to save Vietnam-and fear of what Bobby Kennedy and other Kennedy backers might say if he didn't-that produced the whole morass: [I]f we lost Vietnam ... there would be Robert Kennedy out in front leading the fight against me, telling everyone that I had betrayed John Kennedy's commitment to South Vietnam. That I had let a democracy fall into the hands of the Communists. That I was a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine. Oh, I could see it coming all right.27 Johnson's very personal interpretation that his "manhood" was at stake requires a psychologist rather than a political scientist to interpret. But LBJ's other deep insecurities and resentments toward the Kennedy clan and their Ivy League supporters are easy to fathom: [T]here were all those liberals on the Hill squawking at me about Vietnam. Why? Because I never went to Harvard. That's why. Because I wasn't John F. Kennedy. Because I wasn't friends with all their friends. Because I was keeping the throne from Bobby Kennedy. Because the Great Society was accomplishing more than the New Frontier. You see, they had to find some issue on which to turn against me and they found it in Vietnam. Even though they were the very people who developed the concept of limited war in the first place.28 No one will ever know how John F. Kennedy would have handled the Vietnam challenge had he lived, though that has not stopped a battalion of historians, JFK aides, and others from trying to divine it.29 President Johnson was correct to say that his predecessor had set the course in Southeast Asia, and those who claim that all would have been sweetness and light on Vietnam in a second Kennedy administration are blind to reality. Yet JFK and LBJ could not have been more different as people or presidents. Kennedy's strength was foreign affairs, given his family upbringing, life in Great Britain, intellectual interests, and World War II service; Johnson's expertise was mainly domestic. In the crucible of the Oval Office, Kennedy had learned from the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis not to rely overly on the advice of the military; Johnson was far more deferential. And perhaps most of all, the Ivy League Kennedy's premier base was among the academics at universities; Johnson, always a bit suspicious and perhaps envious of intellectuals, was more at home among hardscrabble Democrats and Capitol Hill politicians.

Given the existence of the military draft and the left-leaning views of most faculty, the first and most vociferous opposition to the Vietnam War naturally emerged from the campuses, locus of JFK's ardent supporters. It is difficult to believe that John Kennedy would have risked his political foundation by pursuing a years-long, highly unpopular war in Vietnam, or ever escalated it to the top of his agenda as LBJ did, and without the Vietnam War, the country would have gone down a very different path in the 1960s and beyond. At the very least, it is difficult to imagine Richard Nixon as Kennedy's successor in 1969-another profound reason why November 22, 1963, had such a wide-ranging effect on modern American history.

JFK's counselor Theodore Sorensen could be expected to defend his president, yet it is difficult to deny the essence of his argument: Some historians make too much of the fact that [Johnson's] advisers on that war had been Kennedy's. JFK had more judgment and international experience than LBJ, better positioning him to evaluate and reject some of that advice. [Kennedy] had in fact rejected the repeated advice that he send combat troop divisions to South Vietnam and bomb North Vietnam, the very actions that LBJ took, stimulated by a fake crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin ... I refuse to agree with LBJ's whine ... that it was all Kennedy's fault. Johnson's major failure to win the confidence of black and student rioters cannot be traced back to JFK; he had their confidence. [And] JFK was already beginning the withdrawal of the military advisers he had increased in order to reinforce Eisenhower's original commitment.30 Vietnam, more than any other single factor, reignited the smoldering hatred between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy. There had never been reconciliation between the two, although in the months immediately after Johnson's ascension to the presidency-when grief was at its peak and RFK entertained some hope of being picked for the 1964 Democratic ticket-the feud had been submerged. Kennedy's nomination to the Senate created a temporary marriage of convenience between the two political heavyweights. But by 1965 the old angers and grievances were surfacing anew. Harry McPherson sent a scathing memo to the president in mid-1965 that called RFK "a man of narrow sensibilities and totalitarian instincts." McPherson saw that the "intellectuals" who were "as easy a lay as can be found" were gravitating to RFK because of his " 'pure' voting and adventurous speeches." The problem, he said, was one of divided loyalties within the administration itself. Would they "go to the wall" for LBJ or be mainly faithful to the Kennedys?31 Realizing a "polygraph-loyalty test" would be controversial, McPherson stoked Johnson's long-simmering resentment against the Kennedys, reminding LBJ that, "While you were of the Senate [in the 1950s], and took responsibility for getting the hard bills through ... [John] Kennedy was merely in the Senate [and] had to lean on you to get his labor bills through ..."32 By the way, none of the resentment toward the Kennedys has waned in almost a half century. McPherson told me in 2011 that LBJ is a far more significant historical figure than RFK, whatever popular tastes may suggest: "One of them [LBJ] is a whale and the other one is a minnow. [RFK] was a tuna at best."33 Another aide, press secretary Bill Moyers, took pleasure in sending the president an "anti-Kennedy piece done by one of the most distinguished writers in Britain." The right-wing British commentator, Peregrine Worsthorne, scalded RFK: "The crucial decision [on American involvement in Vietnam] was President Kennedy's. For [Bobby] to exploit its consequences to destroy his brother's successor might have struck Machiavelli as the epitome of princely conduct ..."34 For Lyndon Johnson, the true test of loyalty became Vietnam, and Bobby Kennedy was to receive a failing grade. This infuriated LBJ because he truly believed he was carrying out John Kennedy's policy; indeed, he saw Vietnam as a continuation of all post-World War II presidential actions. As he asserted in his State of the Union address in January 1966, "We have defended against Communist aggression-in Korea under President Truman-in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower-in Cuba under President Kennedy-and again in Vietnam." In a fatal error that jumps out at anyone reading Johnson's words, the president insisted, "This nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home."35 This combination of "guns and butter" would sink Johnson and his party over the next three years, and it would have far-reaching consequences in the age-old battle about the proper size of the federal government.

Bobby Kennedy came slowly to full-throated opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1966 he could still be found writing an encouraging note to President Johnson: Reading the newspapers and their columnists and listening to my colleagues in Congress (including myself) on what to do and what not to do in Viet Nam must become somewhat discouraging at times.

I was thinking of you and your responsibilities while I was reading Bruce Catton's book "Never Call Retreat."

I thought it might give you some comfort to look again at another President, Abraham Lincoln, and some of the identical problems and situations that he faced that you are now meeting ...

In closing let me say how impressed I have been [with] the most recent efforts to find a peaceful solution to Viet Nam ... 36 Johnson replied genially to "Dear Bob": Your warm letter arrived at an appropriate time. It was one of those hours when I felt alone, prayerfully alone.

I remembered so well how President Kennedy had to face, by himself, the agony of the Cuban missile crisis. I read the paragraph in Catton's book that you had marked, and then I went to a meeting in the Cabinet Room with the Congressional leaders of both parties ...

You know better than most the gloom that crowds in on a President, for you lived close to your brother. Thus, your letter meant a great deal to me and I tell you how grateful I am for your thoughtfulness ...37 The friendly chain of LBJ-RFK correspondence didn't last. Much of Johnson's last two calendar years as president was marked by mounting tensions and recriminations between the two, which both sides tried to keep private at first. But Johnson's staff monitored RFK and comments about him closely, sending gossipy, negative notes to LBJ or one another. When TV talk show host David Susskind all but endorsed RFK for president in a March 1967 chat with a British parliamentarian, presidential aide Mike Manatos made sure that LBJ knew "no one in the audience clapped, creating an embarrassing moment for Susskind."38 Presidential press secretary George Christian received a note from a former Johnson White House staffer about a conversation with a reporter, who allegedly said, "I used to be a very close friend of Bobby's, but I don't like him worth a damn now. He is standing on Jack Kennedy's casket and running for the presidency on that coffin."39 Long-held suspicions that Bobby might challenge Johnson for renomination deepened throughout 1967, culminating with RFK's appearance on CBS's Face the Nation on November 26. During that show, Kennedy went well beyond the public intimations he had made about Johnson's prosecution of the Vietnam War. For the first time, RFK openly insisted that Johnson had "turned [and] switched" the policy of his brother: "We're killing South Vietnamese, we're killing women, we're killing innocent people ..." LBJ was incensed, demanding to see all of John Kennedy's remarks about Vietnam while being assured by Secretary of State Dean Rusk that President Kennedy had been headed in the same direction in Southeast Asia.40 When Johnson was reminded of some rare pro-Johnson statements Bobby had made in an earlier speech, he ordered it surreptitiously distributed to the Democratic National Committee and every state party chairman.41 Other Kennedy strands wove themselves in and out of Johnson's White House tenure, among them race riots in major cities, the relationship with Jackie Kennedy, and the growing dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission report.

Even LBJ's worst critics would concede that he did more for the civil rights of African Americans than any president since Lincoln and, indisputably, far more than John Kennedy had achieved. JFK's tentative steps were replaced by historic legislation and many African American firsts (not least Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall). Yet legal equality had not yielded de facto or economic parity with whites for the black community, and these frustrations exploded in four successive "long hot summers" across America. Beginning with the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles on August 11, 1965, racial riots caused immense destruction, deaths, injuries, and looting in hundreds of urban areas from 1965 to 1968.42 The insurrection in Detroit in July 1967 was so massive that LBJ had to send forty-seven hundred federal troops to restore order. Johnson's role as the "civil rights president" did not prevent him from being reviled in many black communities as the enforcer of law and order, and the defender of economic inequality. At the same time, John Kennedy, with his meager record in civil rights, was regarded as a hero and a martyr-something that Johnson found hard to take. His abandonment by many blacks, Johnson told Doris Kearns Goodwin, was an act of rank ingratitude: How is it possible that all these people could be so ungrateful to me after I had given them so much? Take the Negroes. I fought for them from the first day I came into office. I spilled my guts out in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. I put everything I had into that speech before the joint session in 1965. I tried to make it possible for every child of every color to grow up in a nice house, to eat a solid breakfast, to attend a decent school ... But look at what I got instead. Riots in 175 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting. It ruined everything.43 Of far lesser importance but still often on the radar screen was Jacqueline Kennedy. "Managing Jackie" was a subtext for both Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. The new First Lady named a White House garden44 after her predecessor in April 1965, but Mrs. Kennedy begged off attending the ceremony, writing, "It is my hope that you can understand my feelings at this time-that it would be quite painful to return to Washington and so many associations with the past. Perhaps some day I shall return but right now it would be too difficult to relive so many memories."45 When LBJ offered to let Jackie and JFK's two brothers use a presidential jet to attend the dedication of the Runnymede battlefield46 in May 1965, Jackie thanked him but pleaded, "Do not let it be Air Force One, and please let it be the 707 that looks the least like Air Force One inside."47 Mrs. Kennedy understandably wanted no reminders of her last flight aboard Air Force One, and she was instead given a regular jet for the trip.

Then there was the strange incident involving the "Resolute desk," a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.48 White House social secretary Bess Abell wrote a distressed note to Lady Bird Johnson in July 1965: In the spring of 1964 the Kennedy family requested the [Resolute desk] which President Kennedy had used during his years in office as a loan to the Kennedy family exhibit in New York.

Since this time the exhibit has toured the world and apparently the Kennedy family has no intention of returning the desk.

Because it has been used by 16 Presidents it is probably the single most valuable piece in the White House collection.

I bother you with this because there is a possibility you or the President-or both-may receive a call from Mrs. Kennedy or some member of the family asking for the desk.

Legally, it would take an act of Congress to give it to them.49 There is no record of any request by Mrs. Kennedy or any other Kennedy to keep the desk permanently. Theoretically, it was a possibility to be guarded against, yet even today, Bess Abell's alarm puzzles Stephen Plotkin of the John F. Kennedy Library: Ms. Abell's letter seems to me sensationalistic at best. I have a difficult time believing that Mrs. Kennedy, who had spent so much time on the White House renovation, and therefore would have had a working knowledge of the legalities involved, could have contemplated something so egregious as removing the Resolute desk into private ownership.

The exhibit in question was not a "Kennedy family" exhibit, but rather a publicity exhibit for the building of the proposed Kennedy Library, and therefore at least as much a government project as it was a private project. At the conclusion of the tour, the desk was turned over to the Smithsonian. To the best of my knowledge it was never requested by President Johnson; that does not surprise me, given the degree to which the public identified the desk with John F. Kennedy. The desk stayed in the Smithsonian until the election of President Carter, who requested it back.50 Secret Service protection for Mrs. Kennedy and her children led to another subterranean controversy. At the time of JFK's assassination it was unprecedented for a former First Lady and family to have government-paid security. But the wrenching, instantaneous nature of Mrs. Kennedy's White House departure and, apparently, some menacing communications had caused President Johnson and Congress to extend Secret Service protection for two years.51 In the summer of 1965 Senator Robert Kennedy requested a further two-year extension. LBJ aide Marvin Watson, in a memo to the president, argued that since "it has been six months since Mrs. Kennedy has received a threatening letter or phone call," just a one-year extension should be approved.52 Johnson signaled his agreement. However, at about the same time, Congress passed a bill providing for extensive security coverage for the spouses and children of former presidents.

Thanks to recollections Mrs. Kennedy shared with the historian and JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in April 1964 that were published in 2011, we now know the depth of the tension that existed between Jackie and the Johnsons.53 Mrs. Kennedy was merely petty concerning Lady Bird.54 But on President Johnson himself, she was scathing, claiming that on several occasions, JFK had said to her or Bobby, "Oh God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?"55 According to Jackie's recollections, Johnson had been drunk when asked to be on the ticket in 1960 and JFK regarded him as a nonentity as vice president, of little help when needed and vague in his opinions when asked.56 Some of this is probably bitterness that the Johnsons, not Kennedys, were at the center of the nation's attentions. Nonetheless, the words sting even after a half century, and hint at a relationship that was less than ideal.57 Yet former Johnson aides vehemently dispute the portrait painted by Mrs. Kennedy. Harry McPherson, LBJ's chief speechwriter, rejects Jackie's version of events. "When you listen to the tapes that the Johnson Library has put out, it's clear that Johnson is doing everything he can to ingratiate Mrs. Kennedy and she is responding with, 'I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've done,' 'you've been so wonderful,' and so on. Anyway, that's the Jackie Kennedy you hear on the [tapes], and then to think that that same Lyndon Johnson would be referred to [in the manner] she apparently did with Arthur is just appalling and to me, it's not the case. It's not what happened." McPherson insists that JFK and LBJ had a cordial working relationship. "[It] was by no means a warm, untroubled, loving, admiring relationship on both sides, but [it] did reflect an accepting, good spirited understanding ... They understood who they were and Jack Kennedy understood that Lyndon Johnson was an enormously significant person for him."58 Still, comparing "the kind of president Jack was and the kind Lyndon is," Mrs. Kennedy made an observation some would find prescient: "When something really crisis [sic] happens, that's when they're going to miss Jack. And I just want them to know it's because they don't have that kind of president [JFK was] and not because it was inevitable."59 The Kennedy-Johnson dispute broke out into the open during the "Manchester affair" in 1966 and 1967. William Manchester had penned a book entitled The Death of a President,60 and prepublication press accounts were filled with sensational details, including an introductory passage that portrayed Johnson as vulgarly goading a reluctant JFK into killing a deer on the LBJ ranch-a contrast between New England refinement and Texan boorishness.61 President Johnson was convinced that the purpose of the book, which had Mrs. Kennedy's initial cooperation, was to defame him and position Robert Kennedy for a 1968 run for president.62 However, Mrs. Kennedy was no happier about the book than LBJ was.63 Jackie had instructed JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger to contact Manchester in February 1964 to write what she intended to be a dignified, comprehensive account of the assassination.64 Apparently, she expected Manchester to be as discreet with her intimate recollections as Arthur Schlesinger would prove to be, but Manchester did not have the same close ties to the Kennedy family. He was also determined to make a great deal of money on the project. The world serialization rights with Look magazine alone amounted to $665,000, a fantastic sum in the 1960s. Much of the sensational material came from ten hours of interviews Manchester conducted with Mrs. Kennedy, and she believed the money should go to the Kennedy Library. So Jackie sued in December 1966, filing for a court injunction to stop publication of the book. It was a disaster all around.65 Most leading journalists sided with Manchester, as did much of the public, which wanted to learn the truth about JFK's assassination. Mrs. Kennedy settled out of court, the book was published, and Jackie had given it such publicity that it likely sold tens of thousands more copies than it would have otherwise.66 A Lou Harris poll found that a third of the public thought less of Mrs. Kennedy because of her attempt at what some saw as censorship.67 LBJ wrote Jackie when her suit was filed, trying to soothe her: Lady Bird and I have been distressed to read the accounts of your unhappiness about the Manchester book. Some of these accounts attribute your concern to passages in the book which are critical or defamatory of us. If this is so, I want you to know while we deeply appreciate your characteristic kindness and sensitivity, we hope you will not subject yourself to any discomfort or distress on our account. One never becomes inured to slander but we have learned to live with it. In any event, your own tranquility is important to both of us, and we would not want you to endure any unpleasantness on our account.68 Jackie responded in kind: I was so deeply touched by your letter-I am sick at the unhappiness this whole terrible thing has caused everyone- Whatever I did could only bring pain. Not to sue would have been to let them print everything and take such cruel and unfair advantage. Every day since I returned from Hawaii I have been pleading by letter, phone or in person with one or more of their side.

The author and publishers always broke their word, and I finally understood that was what they intended to keep on doing-play cat and mouse [with] me until I was exhausted and they had gone to press.

Now I suppose I am "winning"-but it seems a hollow victory-with everything I objected to printed all over the newspapers anyway. At least I made it known that I object ...

I am so dazed now I feel I will never be able to feel anything again.69 Perhaps partly because of the Manchester book, interest in JFK's assassination was renewed and skeptics of the Warren Commission's official version of the events of November 22 were becoming outspoken and publishing widely-years after the report was issued.70 The first congressional resolution to establish a joint committee of the House and Senate to reinvestigate the Kennedy assassination was filed on September 28, 1966, by the New York Republican representative Theodore Kupferman.71 Newspaper and television reports carried a drumbeat of disbelieving voices, especially around the time of the large, widespread, continuing commemorations held twice a year for President Kennedy's May 29 birthday and the November anniversary of his death.72 Among observers who were astounded at the unceasing questioning of the Warren Commission was Chief Justice Earl Warren himself, who wrote to one correspondent, "It is really amazing how many people choose to doubt [the commission] without reference to facts."73 As for a Washington, D.C., television station's invitation to Warren to attend a November 1966 program on a "Reexamination of the Warren Commission Findings," the chief justice sent word he would not be in attendance.74 The dam of skepticism and doubt about the Warren Commission burst on February 18, 1967, when Jim Garrison, the district attorney of Orleans Parish in Louisiana, told the press that he had proof President Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy hatched in New Orleans. On March 2, Garrison arrested a prominent city businessman, Clay Shaw, and charged him with plotting to kill JFK. Younger Americans are mainly familiar with this seminal event because of Oliver Stone's movie JFK, which was based in large part on Garrison's investigation.75 It took two full years for the case to reach trial, and in that time Garrison became famous, appearing on many domestic and foreign television broadcasts, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and granting interviews not just to the traditional press but to Playboy magazine. Unfortunately for Garrison, his evidence against Shaw was so weak that the jury took less than one hour to acquit the defendant in March 1969.76 Garrison did not get a conviction, but he had an unmistakable effect on public opinion. Between February and May 1967, the proportion of Americans believing in a JFK assassination conspiracy jumped from 44 to 66 percent, according to a Louis Harris survey.77 President Johnson was given several days' advance notice of the poll results, which were released on what would have been JFK's fiftieth birthday. Johnson made no public comment and consistently refused entreaties to reopen the investigation into his predecessor's murder.78 LBJ may have later felt justified in this decision by the results of a widely seen series by CBS and the Associated Press in the summer of 1967. Over four days the network and the AP reported on their own reinvestigation of the Warren Commission's findings, concluding that "Despite critical flaws, the [report] stands up as the most intelligent, most reliable view of what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963."79 The CBS anchor of the series, Walter Cronkite, told me in 1991 that he had been suspicious of the Warren findings, and set out to prove them wrong. He secured the support of the top CBS brass, which approved a million-dollar budget. To Cronkite's surprise, the pieces of the reinvestigation kept coming in affirming the Warren Commission. "I accepted it. I reported it the way it was," reprising a version of his longtime sign-off for the CBS Evening News-his trademark phrase, "And that's the way it is." Critics have since found errors in CBS's reenactment of the Dallas gunshots-so it may not have been quite "the way it was."80 Assisted by mounting controversy over Vietnam and increasing unpopularity of the Johnson administration at home and abroad, the myth of Camelot flourished as LBJ's time in office wore on. A 1966 film on JFK by the United States Information Agency had a considerable impact. Designed mainly for international viewers, the hagiographic movie, entitled John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning / Day of Drums and narrated by the actor Gregory Peck, was in such demand that it was distributed to regular theaters throughout the United States. The distributor fees were waived and the profits sent to the Kennedy Center by special congressional legislation.81 The emotive script shifts back and forth between November 1963 and the key events of the Kennedy presidency, and Peck concludes: "The day of drums is over, but the years of lightning glow in everyone he touched and in everyone he continues to touch ... John F. Kennedy is now silent and invisible, but so is peace and freedom and so is love and faith and so are memories and dreams."

Other tributes to John F. Kennedy continued at a pace somewhat astonishing, considering the assassination was years removed. A permanent JFK gravesite was consecrated in Arlington on March 15, 1967, with President Johnson and the Kennedys present.82 Kennedy's birthplace in Brookline, Massachusetts, was designated a national historic site. A new 13-cent stamp was issued with Kennedy's visage.83 And in one of the largest ceremonies of the year, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy was launched at Newport News, Virginia, on May 27, 1967. Mrs. Kennedy and her two children headed a large delegation of Kennedys that witnessed Caroline christening the ship with the traditional bottle of champagne before a forest of TV cameras and a crowd of ten thousand people.84 The main speaker was the incumbent president-and his staff saw the dilemma. As aide Ben Wattenberg advised LBJ, the event "may well be the most dramatic single appearance you will make all year ... an occasion that is, at once, a great opportunity and a great hazard."85 With Senator Robert Kennedy looking on, the elephant in the room was once again Vietnam. Even calling JFK "a man of peace" or someone who "brought a new style of politics to America" were considered dangerous phrases, since an increasingly skeptical press corps might flip the terms to suggest that Johnson was, by contrast, a warmonger and an old-style politician. The speech LBJ actually delivered was gracious to his predecessor, but it also contained some veiled messages about Vietnam for RFK as well as the nation and world. "John Kennedy understood that strength is essential to sustain freedom ... In times past, it has often been our strength and our resolve which have tipped the scales of conflict against aggressors, or would-be aggressors. That role has never been an easy one. It has always required not only strength, but patience-the incredible courage to wait where waiting is appropriate, to avoid disastrous results to shortcut history. And sacrifice-the tragic price we pay for our commitment to our ideals."86 The launch of an aircraft carrier is hard to miss-an obvious legacy-but the heritage of the Kennedy years is also found in America's basic document of state. A few months before Johnson spoke in Newport News, Americans ratified the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a direct result of the Kennedy assassination and worry over possible scenarios affecting future presidential successions. For the first time, clear procedures for the temporary or permanent replacement of a living but incapacitated president were delineated. And presidents were given a notable new power-the selection of a replacement vice president, subject to the approval of both houses of Congress, whenever the vice presidency became vacant through death, resignation, or succession to the Oval Office. A mere six years after its ratification, the amendment produced a vice president, Gerald R. Ford, following the 1973 resignation in disgrace of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Also, without the Twenty-fifth Amendment, American history would have recorded the name of the thirty-eighth president of the United States, succeeding upon the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, as Carl Albert, not Gerald Ford. Albert was the Democratic Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, next in line to be president under the old pre-Twenty-fifth Amendment order.87 Except for the Civil War period, it is difficult to identify a sadder year in U.S. history than 1968-twelve long-suffering months clouded by tragedies, disasters, disappointments, and broken dreams. Nothing underlined the transformation that the nation had undergone from JFK to LBJ better, or worse, than that year. The prelude to the presidential campaign was the Tet Offensive in January, a broad-based attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops on U.S. installations and thirty-eight provincial capitals throughout South Vietnam, including assaults on the U.S. embassy and the presidential palace in the capital city of Saigon. While some military historians have insisted that Tet was actually a major setback for Communist forces,88 the American public saw it quite differently. Instead of winning the war, the United States appeared to be sinking ever deeper into the jungle quicksand of an endless conflict. One of the most trusted newsmen of his time, Walter Cronkite, reported, "To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion." Lyndon Johnson supposedly remarked, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."89 The Tet Offensive's aftermath effectively ended any real chance of reelection for President Johnson. On March 12, LBJ narrowly won the New Hampshire primary over antiwar candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, then shocked the nation on March 31 by announcing that he would "not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."90 A presidency that had begun in blood and tragedy unraveled in much the same way. Johnson bowed out by quoting John Kennedy's inaugural address in almost a plaintive way, reminding Americans that they would have to continue to "pay any price ... to insure the survival and the success of liberty." To the last, LBJ seemed to want his fellow citizens to understand that, at least in his mind, he was fulfilling JFK's pledge to support freedom, at an admittedly high cost, in Southeast Asia.

Only two weeks before, the long-simmering feud between LBJ and RFK had broken out into total warfare, as Bobby Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on March 16. Wearing a gold PT 109 tie clasp and speaking in the same room JFK had used in 1960 for his White House announcement, Kennedy declared, "I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man ... but to propose new policies." This move enraged not only Johnson but also Gene McCarthy, who had decided to challenge Johnson after Kennedy had hesitated. The McCarthy backers viewed Kennedy as an interloper, a Bobby-come-lately who ran only because McCarthy had just demonstrated Johnson's electoral weakness in New Hampshire. Vietnam, said Kennedy, and not the Granite State results, was the proximate cause of his fateful choice.91 Two days before his announcement, on March 14, an uncertain Kennedy and Ted Sorensen met with LBJ's defense secretary, Clark Clifford, at the Pentagon. According to a revealing memo by Clifford: [Kennedy] said that he had talked to [Mayor] Dick Daley in Chicago and had also talked to [JFK counselor] Ted Sorensen and his brother [Edward], and they thought that consideration should be given to a plan that he had evolved. He suggested that Sorensen present the plan. Sorensen said that if President Johnson would agree to make a public statement that his policy in Vietnam had proved to be in error, and that he was appointing a group of persons to conduct a study in depth of the issues and come up with a recommended course of action, then Senator Robert Kennedy would agree not to get into the race.

I said I thought there were three major points he should consider. 1. It was my opinion that the possibility of his being able to defeat President Johnson for the nomination was zero ... 2. That I thought Senator Kennedy would be making a grave mistake if he assumed that the situation in Vietnam would be the same in August of this year as it is now ... 3. That if by chance he were able to gain the Democratic nomination, I thought it would be valueless because his efforts in displacing President Johnson would so split the Democratic Party that the Republican nominee would win easily.92 Clifford, who had been advising Democratic presidents since Truman, was probably correct about Kennedy's slim chances of defeating President Johnson for the nomination and winning the general election if he somehow dethroned Johnson. Of course, as it happened, RFK would instead be running against Johnson's heir, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was less politically sure to win than LBJ but, at a time when bosses ruled the party, was still the favorite for the Democratic nomination. Clifford was dead wrong about his second point. Vietnam was still a jungle quagmire come August, and if anything, domestic discontent had escalated to a fever pitch. Alas, Bobby Kennedy would not live to know that, or to joust with Humphrey and McCarthy in Chicago at the convention.

Lyndon Johnson had many sides to his complex persona, and one can see the good and bad within the prism of his relationship with RFK. Initially, as he told Doris Goodwin, the imperial Johnson was apoplectic, and feeling rather sorry for himself: And then the final straw. The thing I feared from the first day of my Presidency was actually coming true. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in memory of his brother. And the American people, swayed by the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets. The whole situation was unbearable for me. After thirty-seven years of public service, I deserved something more than being left alone in the middle of the plain, chased by stampedes on every side.93 Once Johnson had withdrawn from the race, Bobby Kennedy quickly sought out LBJ, and a conciliatory president was on view. When LBJ hosted RFK in the White House on April 3, Johnson's loyal aide Walt Rostow took notes, mainly from LBJ's perspective, and they are worth citing at length: The President went on to say that in fact he had not wanted to be Vice President and had not wanted to be President. Two men had persuaded him to run in 1960: [House Speaker] Sam Rayburn and [Washington Post publisher] Phil Graham. They had said that unless Johnson were on the ticket, John Kennedy could not carry the South. Without the South, Nixon would win. He would have greatly preferred to have continued to be the leader of the Senate.

The Vice Presidency ... is inherently demeaning: although no one ever treated a Vice President better than President Kennedy had treated him.

The President said, "I found myself in this place and did the best I could." He had the feeling that perhaps Senator Kennedy did not understand his feeling about President Kennedy. When he accepted the Vice Presidency, he felt he went into a partnership with President Kennedy. They disagreed seldom, but ... a few times President Kennedy was a little irritated with him and showed it; but no one ever knew ...

As President he had continued to look on his task as a partnership with President Kennedy. He felt he had a duty to look after the family and the members of the firm which they had formed together. He had never asked a Kennedy appointee to resign. He had never accepted the resignation of a Kennedy appointee without asking him to stay. As President, he had felt President Kennedy was looking down on what he had done and would approve.

The President said he felt the press had greatly exaggerated the difficulties between Senator Kennedy and himself.

The President said that if there were any way in which he could have avoided being a Presidential candidate in 1964, he would have not run then. He wants Senator Kennedy to know that he doesn't hate him, he doesn't dislike him, and that he still regards himself as carrying out the Kennedy/Johnson partnership.94 LBJ's remarks are not entirely credible. Johnson wanted the vice presidency in order to position himself to run for the White House eventually. No one who knew Johnson would ever have believed that, once president, he would not have run to continue in office in 1964. Most of all, Johnson disliked, even hated, Bobby Kennedy, and the mutual loathing and distrust were self-evident. When LBJ tried to secretly tape their April 3 meeting, Kennedy (or one of his aides) apparently smuggled in a scrambling device that prevented the magnetic tape from recording. This may or may not be true, but LBJ apparently believed it to be so, and was furious that he had been outsmarted.95 But at that late date, Johnson's goal was rapprochement with Kennedy, to the degree possible, since he had less than ten months left to mend his tattered presidential reputation. He planned to focus on achieving peace both in Vietnam and in America's racially torn cities.

The following day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed in Memphis, and Johnson's hopes for a statesmanlike exit became impossible. Riots raged across the country, and Johnson did not possess the stature in the African American community to calm the waters. His attempts to wind down the Vietnam War went nowhere, too, despite the beginning of peace talks in Paris in 1968. The country and the world, including the Communists, were waiting for a new president.

Bobby Kennedy would not be that president. On June 5, 1968, just after he declared victory over Gene McCarthy in the crucial California primary, Kennedy was gunned down in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, purportedly by a lone assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan. Despite a gunshot wound in the head, he lingered for a little more than twenty-four hours before dying.96 The nation was in complete disbelief; the nightmare of Dallas had returned. People relived the horror and grief of November 1963, as the awful yet familiar rituals of political assassination and Kennedy family mourning played out.

Within hours, the Johnson White House was preparing talking points for a televised presidential address to the nation. Press Secretary George Reedy advised LBJ that he should stress two points above all. "The greatest immediate danger arising out of the attempted assassination of Senator Kennedy is the rapidly developing sense of national guilt and the feeling that there is a 'sickness in our society.'... The danger of the 'sickness in our society' thesis is that it can breed further violence and acts of desperation. It can lead to widespread acts of violence committed from a sense of outrage and a warped determination to 'avenge' Senator Kennedy ... It has nothing to do with 'sickness in our society' but with sickness in individuals ..." Second, in an echo of the Johnson White House's immediate impulse following JFK's assassination, Reedy was already arguing-before all the facts could possibly be known-that Kennedy's shooting was "a formless act committed by a psychopath [Sirhan] who found as his victim the most prominent man in sight ... The truth is that no man in this, or in any country, can be prominent without risking his life."97 (In fact, Sirhan expressed a clear motive in his own private writing. The assassin shot RFK on the first anniversary of Israel's Six-Day War, and he fulminated over Kennedy's positions that favored the Jewish state over the Palestinians.) Johnson's address on the evening of June 5 followed Reedy's prescription for the most part. Kennedy was still clinging to life as LBJ intoned, "We pray to God that He will spare Robert Kennedy and will restore him to full health and vigor. We pray this for the nation's sake, for the sake of his wife and his children, his father and his mother, and in memory of his brother, our beloved late President. The Kennedy family has endured sorrow enough, and we pray that this family may be spared more anguish."98 Johnson continued: It would be wrong, it would be self-deceptive, to ignore the connection between ... lawlessness and hatred and this act of violence. It would be just as wrong, and just as self-deceptive, to conclude from this act that our country itself is sick, that it has lost its balance, that it has lost its sense of direction, even its common decency.

Two hundred million Americans did not strike down Robert Kennedy last night any more than they struck down President John F. Kennedy in 1963 or Dr. Martin Luther King in April of this year.99 Throughout the one day that RFK lived after the shooting, people gathered before their televisions and in churches, hoping for a miracle. At my Catholic high school in Norfolk, Virginia, we said the rosary for RFK in between final exams, much as we had grasped our rosaries for a briefer time on a Friday afternoon in November 1963. Kennedy never regained consciousness and died at 1:44 A.M. on June 6, the twenty-fourth anniversary of D-Day. His body was flown to New York for a funeral Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on June 8, where a stirring eulogy was delivered by the lone surviving Kennedy brother. Paraphrasing the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, Senator Ted Kennedy said of Bobby, as his voice broke from the strain, "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it ... As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him, 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.' "100 Many Americans, like my father, watched and remarked, "Ted's going to be president one day." The family torch, and the burden of expectations, had been passed to the youngest member of his Kennedy generation, the sole surviving son.

An extraordinary funeral train ride from New York to Washington then took place. RFK's coffin, accompanied by his pregnant widow, Ethel, his ten children, and dozens of family, friends, and working press, made its way as average Americans, many holding flags, wearing military and Scout uniforms, and saluting, gathered in train depots and simply alongside the tracks for hundreds of miles. An uncomprehending sadness was etched onto all their faces. Upon arrival in D.C., the casket was borne by thirteen pallbearers, mostly family but also former astronaut John Glenn and former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, among others. The procession stopped at the Lincoln Memorial where the Marine Corps Band played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The motorcade arrived at Arlington National Cemetery at 10:30 P.M. and made its way to the hallowed ground occupied by John F. Kennedy. Bobby was interred nearby. Sunday, June 9, was an official national day of mourning, as a depressed nation tried to recover from a tragic spring.101 President Johnson appointed yet another commission, this one headed by Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to investigate the causes and prevention of violence.102 In 1969 and 1970, the commission released a series of reports that called for tough new gun control laws, additional curbs on television violence, and other reforms aimed at controlling what appeared to be a national epidemic of bloodshed.103 Many similar ideas are still circulating in twenty-first-century America, where mass shootings are far more common than in the 1960s.

The parallels between the Kennedy assassinations are many, not least the persistent belief in conspiracy.104 The convicted assassin Sirhan was sentenced to death in the gas chamber, though his life was spared by a California Supreme Court ban on capital punishment.105 As with Oswald, though, many people do not believe that Sirhan acted alone.

Just as a Dictabelt was long thought to have recorded the gunshots in Dealey Plaza (though we have now disproven it), a reporter's tape machine is believed to have caught the volley of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel pantry. An audio analysis of free-lance newsman Stanislaw Puszynski's recording may indicate as many as thirteen gunshots, while Sirhan's gun contained only eight bullets. Given what we learned about the JFK Dictabelt by means of sophisticated testing, however, it might be best to consider the RFK recording's finding as an initial possibility rather than a hard conclusion. Sirhan has regularly applied for parole in California, claiming he was in a trancelike state and does not recall shooting Kennedy. His most recent attorney insisted at a 2011 parole hearing that another gunman shot RFK.106 Conspiracy theories have also abounded about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.107 Only recently, a Western Union telegram surfaced on the antiques market. Dated 1968, it reads simply, "Please accept my sincerest and deepest sympathy." The recipient was Sirhan's mother, Mary. The sender was Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, Marguerite.108 When the Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in late August to nominate Vice President Hubert Humphrey, fury about Vietnam turned downtown Chicago into a domestic war zone, as youthful demonstrators clashed with Mayor Daley's police. Inside the hall, where tear gas occasionally could be smelled and reporters were fair game for pummeling by Daley's angry allies, there was little peace. But calm prevailed for the showing of yet another film about yet another lost Kennedy, An Impossible Dream, narrated by Richard Burton-the same actor who had narrated John Kennedy's celluloid memorial at the 1964 Democratic Convention.109 Politics continued for the living, and the last Kennedy brother was the focus of intrigue. Mayor Daley tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Ted Kennedy to permit a draft from the floor so that he could carry the party's banner instead of Humphrey.110 By contrast, no one tried to draft Lyndon Johnson for another term. Johnson had hoped to give a valedictory speech as the retiring chief executive. The conclave had been timed originally to coincide with his birthday. But he chose to stay away lest his presence result in embarrassing anti-LBJ displays by many delegates on the convention floor. Also, Johnson probably would have turned the anger on Chicago's streets into complete anarchy.

No comparable good comes from great evil, but the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King enabled President Johnson to notch his last major legislative achievement. On October 22, Johnson signed the Gun Control Act, which outlawed mail order gun sales and made it illegal to sell guns to anyone indicted or convicted of serious crimes, the mentally ill, drug addicts, and illegal immigrants.111 In the main, these restrictions are still in effect today-and gun control has not been greatly expanded since.112 In addition, Secret Service protection was extended to major party candidates for president and vice president.113 The tragic decade of the Kennedys was coming to a close. The queen of Camelot stunned the world on October 20, 1968 by marrying the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. "Ari" Onassis was the antithesis of John Kennedy in youth, looks, and charm, but in his vast fortune and isolated foreign retreats, the divorced, often unscrupulous wheeler-dealer offered Jackie Kennedy security and escape for herself and her children.114 Public reaction was not kind; as one New York Times report put it, Americans showed "a combination of anger, shock, and dismay."115 And in Europe, the feedback was summed up in a much-cited headline, JACKIE-HOW CAN YOU?116 Camelot was in retreat, if not receivership. The presidential heir was leaving office deeply unpopular and reviled. The family's crown prince had been assassinated. The living symbol of that one brief shining moment had fled to the Mediterranean. John F. Kennedy's vanquished opponent, Richard Nixon, was elected the new president in November, which seemed to many a repudiation of the Kennedy-Johnson years and the tumult they had brought. Pundits prematurely wrote an end to John Kennedy's era, as the second term he might have had came to a close.

But there were enduring signs that Americans were not willing to let go of their fallen leader. On the fifth anniversary of JFK's assassination, thousands again showed up spontaneously at the Arlington gravesite to pay tribute. Memorial services were held in many places, not least Dallas, where the mayor placed flowers in Dealey Plaza and the nurses at Parkland Hospital left a wreath on the door of Trauma Room One.117 And when Apollo 8 circled the moon on Christmas Eve, at last providing a soaring achievement to conclude America's annus horribilis, John Kennedy's pledge of manned space exploration was prominently cited by the news media. Despite all that had happened since November 1963, the nation's memory of the Kennedy years was fresh and mainly favorable, its admiration for a martyred president undimmed.

As he prepared to leave office, Lyndon Johnson must have reflected upon his own star-crossed presidency. In 1964 he had won an electoral mandate as large as any president had ever enjoyed. Yet despite that, or perhaps because of it, Johnson had overreached and now his departure was mourned by few. His fall from power was tied to his own shortcomings, but in the background, and occasionally the foreground, was the unresolved conflict with the Kennedys. Whose presidency was it anyway? The tug-of-war continued until the day Johnson left office. During his entire White House tenure, Johnson was haunted by the question: What would John Kennedy have done? History still asks it, unanswerable though it is.

15.

"Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming": JFK's Repudiation and Revival

The resurrection of Richard Nixon has no clear parallel in American politics. Defeated for the presidency by a whisker in 1960 and then beaten decisively for governor of California in 1962, Nixon was so washed up that ABC television ran a program in mid-November 1962 entitled "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon."1 Astonishingly, he became president in 1968, put in office by a "silent majority" (actually, a 43 percent plurality) fed up with the Democrats' handling of the Vietnam War and urban riots. The 1960s had zigged left, and far wrong in the eyes of many, so the electorate responded by zagging right to secure Nixon's promised "law and order" and "peace with honor."

Having been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the same postwar year of 1946, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon became friends.2 The two young, ambitious politicians were both World War II veterans, of different parties but a similar frame of mind. While they could not have imagined their lives would be so intertwined, and that both would reach the White House, Kennedy and Nixon recognized each other's talents. As with any political pair in Washington, affable acquaintanceship was mixed with competition and, inevitably, jealousy.

Probably to Kennedy's surprise, given his advantages of education and family finances, Nixon was the one who got fast-tracked. As a freshman congressman, the Republican became a central figure in the 1948 investigation of the former State Department official Alger Hiss, who was accused of being a Communist and later convicted of perjury.3 As chairman of a special subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Nixon thrust the hearings into the spotlight with allegations of espionage and skulduggery. This propelled Nixon from the House to the U.S. Senate from California in 1950, and then-at the remarkably young age of thirty-nine-to the vice presidency under President Eisenhower.4 While never especially close to Ike, Nixon served dutifully and could possibly have become president during Eisenhower's serious illnesses, such as a heart attack and a stroke, suffered during his White House years. Much more vigorous than Eisenhower, Nixon was sent abroad on a number of high-visibility missions, including the Soviet Union in 1959, where he famously argued with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev about the relative merits of capitalism and Communism in the so-called kitchen debate. (It occurred in a mock American kitchen at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.) Nixon was still deeply controversial because of the Hiss case and a "secret fund" scandal during the 1952 presidential campaign,5 but he was a universally recognized national and international force by 1960. Meanwhile, John Kennedy waited until 1952 to win election to the Senate from Massachusetts, and he lost his bid to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1956. Worse, JFK spent much of the 1950s in pain and on occasion, near death from war-related back injuries. He was never a major force in the Senate.

Nixon was the inevitable 1960 Republican presidential nominee, but Kennedy's path to the Democratic nod was not carefree. Nonetheless, through a combination of pluck, luck, and just enough "time for a change" sentiment-and the help of Chicago's Mayor Daley and LBJ's Texas allies-JFK defeated the more experienced Nixon.6 It was a bitter pill for the vice president, who believed that he was much better prepared to assume the highest office-and on that score, he was certainly correct. However, Nixon was realistic enough to know after a very close election and at the still-young age of forty-seven, he could stage a comeback. Even after his crushing and somewhat unexpected defeat for the Golden State governorship in 1962, Nixon saw a path to eventual victory, though not in 1964.

It is a supreme, coincidental irony that Richard Nixon was in Dallas on November 2022, flying out on the morning of the assassination. Nixon had never stopped crisscrossing the country, campaigning for GOP candidates and causes, though he was in Dallas to attend the board meeting of the Pepsi Cola Bottlers Association. (The soft drink company had a financial association with the former vice president.) One can only imagine Nixon's inner thoughts as he heard about President Kennedy's assassination, but the next day, he wrote a note to Jackie that suggests he had been genuinely saddened: In this tragic hour, Pat and I want you to know that our thoughts and prayers are with you. While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents I always cherished the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to the Congress together in 1947. That friendship evidenced itself in many ways including the invitation we received to attend your wedding. Nothing I could say now could add to the splendid tributes which have come from throughout the world. But I want you to know that the nation will also be forever grateful for your service as First Lady. You brought to the White House charm, beauty and elegance as the official hostess of America, and the mystique of the young in art which was uniquely yours made an indelible impression on the American consciousness. If in the days ahead we could be helpful in any way we shall be honored to be at your command.7 At the same time, Nixon's keen political mind no doubt analyzed the aftermath quickly: President Johnson would be a heavy favorite for election in 1964, but the natural cycles of politics might make 1968 a very different situation. Few establishment Republicans, and certainly not Nixon, thought Barry Goldwater would have a chance to win; his decisive defeat would strengthen Nixon's opportunity for 1968. After all, Nixon had nearly won the presidency and he was already the party's senior statesman.

History played out precisely that way. Nixon became the GOP's workhorse in 1966, as he campaigned for 105 candidates in thirty-five states and picked up invaluable chits everywhere.8 The strong Republican showing in 1966-the GOP won an additional forty-seven U.S. House seats as voters expressed disaffection with LBJ's war policy-gave Nixon a real boost. By 1967 he was the Republican presidential frontrunner, and despite challenges from three governors-New York's Nelson Rockefeller, California's Ronald Reagan, and Michigan's George Romney-Nixon won his second White House nomination on the first ballot in August 1968.z Despite all of Nixon's advantages, not least the deep unpopularity of Johnson and his Vietnam policy, the general election turned out to be exceptionally close. The Republican had held a sizable edge in the Gallup poll in early September over Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but the anti-Democratic vote was split because of former Alabama governor George Wallace, who ran a racist, populist campaign that took 13.5 percent of the vote and 46 electoral votes.9 Nixon would have won a solid majority except for Wallace; instead, he squeaked to victory over Humphrey by a margin of 43.4 to 42.7 percent.10 Almost 57 percent of Americans had voted for someone other than Nixon, making his task ahead much more difficult.

The America Richard Nixon inherited from Lyndon Johnson-deeply divided over Vietnam and polarized about race-was a far cry from the generally tranquil one John Kennedy received from Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon had little margin for error and less of a honeymoon than any modern president. The conditions were ripe for a contentious administration, not least because Democrats retained large majorities of both houses of Congress and some of Nixon's most fervent detractors, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, resided there.

Nixon had long nursed grievances, many of them justified, about his treatment by the news media and Democratic elites in 1960 and 1962. JFK had been a press favorite throughout his presidential campaign and White House years, and it was an article of faith for Nixon that he had not gotten a fair break in 1960 from many, maybe most, reporters. This carried over to Nixon's presidency. References abound in Nixon's notes and his staff's memos to JFK's media coverage and public relations successes. Just weeks into his presidency, Nixon prodded his chief domestic adviser John Ehrlichman to set up a Kennedy-like network as pushback on press coverage of his actions: I still have not had any progress report on what procedure has been set up to continue ... the letters to the editor project and the calls to TV stations. Two primary purposes would be served by establishing such a procedure. First, it gives a lot of people who were very active in the campaign a continuing responsibility which they would enjoy having. Second, it gives us what Kennedy had in abundance-a constant representation in letters to the editor columns and a very proper influence on the television commentators ... I do not want a blunderbuss memorandum to go out to hundreds of people on this project, but a discrete and nevertheless effective Nixon Network set up. Give me a report.11 Displeased by a mild joke on the television comedy show The Smothers Brothers, Nixon again urged Ehrlichman, "I think it is not too late ... to have a few letters go to the producers of the program objecting to this kind of comment particularly in view of the great public approval of RN's handling of foreign policy, etc. etc. As I have pointed out ad infinitum this was [the] automatic reaction on the part of the Kennedy adherents and it should be an automatic reaction wherever we are concerned, both when we find something we want to approve and when we find something we want to disapprove."12 President Nixon also repeatedly stressed to his chief of staff, H. R. "Bob" Haldeman, that he should brief the press about Nixon's extemporaneous responses at press conferences. "I never memorize an answer," wrote Nixon, also noting that his press confabs had "no planted questions." "This was the Kennedy way. It is not our way."13 When Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien, a Kennedy man, accused Nixon of generating "the worst recession since the 1950s," Nixon wrote that Senator Bob Dole, the Republican National Committee chairman, should "hit fast that Kennedy had high unemployment for [19]61-62-63 ..."14 An editorial in the Richmond News Leader as Nixon's first year as president came to a close, entitled "Nixon v. JFK," delighted Nixon. It read in part, "Mr. Kennedy comes off as the acolyte, Mr. Nixon as the more effective minister ... Mr. Kennedy had solid Democratic majorities in Congress ... Yet in his first year as President, Mr. Kennedy was rebuffed by Congress on practically all his major programs ... In the Republican Nixon's first year, he wrenched far more out of a Democratic Congress ..." Nixon wrote to Haldeman, "I hope you are following through with unprecedented letters to columnists and commentators ..."15 Similarly, Nixon ordered aide Charles Colson to "circulate broadly" a third-year retrospective on Nixon's presidency by liberal pundit Mike Royko that was even tougher in its assessment of JFK and more generous in its evaluation of Nixon.16 Royko's no-holds-barred opinion piece blasted Kennedy as a "lazy, girl-watching senator" who "used his old man's dough to blitz one state primary after another." In contrast, he portrayed Nixon as a skilled statesman who knew what was best for the country.17 When the liberal reporter Mary McGrory praised Kennedy to Nixon's detriment, Nixon told Haldeman, "Here is where our people should be talking about our bold foreign policy initiatives never undertaken by JFK et al."18 When a newspaper reporter wrote of a Gallup poll that showed Kennedy leading Nixon in all categories of leadership except for foreign affairs, Nixon fumed. The president wrote to Haldeman, "This shows the effectiveness of the J.F.K. P.R."19 When Nixon saw a quotation from a young business executive that Nixon had "provided courage and leadership-not Kennedy-style brinksmanship," the president brought it to the attention of his team, calling it "an excellent line for our speakers to quote."20 The competition even extended to First Ladies. Aide Harry Dent made sure President Nixon saw a Gallup poll that showed the public approved of Pat Nixon's job as First Lady by a 9-to-1 margin. The ratio for Jackie Kennedy, noted Dent, was only 6 to 1. Nixon forwarded this information to Haldeman and Ehrlichman with an unusual notation about his own wife: "An asset we should use more."21 Any fair analysis of the substantive accomplishments of the two White House administrations would give Nixon bragging rights over Kennedy in several key areas, including international affairs. But Nixon and his aides understood that in the public's affections, Nixon could not compete. Speech-writer Patrick J. Buchanan told Nixon bluntly, "I have never been convinced that Richard Nixon, Good Guy, is our long suit; to me we are simply not going to charm the American people; we are not going to win it on 'style' and we ought to forget playing ball in the Kennedys' Court."22 A campaign strategy memo from Colson to Haldeman claimed JFK's appeal was pure "charisma": Despite a mediocre Administration, an undistinguished record in foreign affairs and a poor legislative tally, [Kennedy] might well have been reelected in 1964; if so it would probably have been largely due to the successful mystique he created (with the help of a friendly press). The fact that he was able to maintain a substantial base of political support a year before the election would suggest that even a relatively ineffectual President can support himself on personality alone.23 The observations about Nixon in this strategy memo were telling. "It would be foolish ... to try to build a Kennedy-type mystique-there isn't time [and] the press would never let us get away with it ..." The remarkable conclusion, perhaps borne out in the results of Nixon's landslide 1972 reelection, read, "A President doesn't have to be likeable, have a sense of humor, or even love children ..."24 While there are many JFK references in the documents comprising the Nixon administration, to suggest that John Kennedy was an obsession would be misleading. The late president was no longer a threat. But another Kennedy was. Almost from the first, President Nixon and his circle viewed JFK's brother Ted as their foremost adversary and obstacle to reelection. They plotted and planned about how to deter him, and kept close watch on the heir to Camelot. John Ehrlichman told Nixon that he was "covering" Kennedy "personally," getting reports about what the senator did each night during a 1971 trip to Hawaii, for instance. Perhaps surprisingly, given Kennedy's womanizing proclivities, he was well behaved on this tropical vacation, prompting Nixon to comment, "He's being careful now ... The thing to do is, just watch him, because what happens to fellows like that, who have that kind of problem, is that they go quite a while, and then ..." But Nixon wondered if they would find anything since Ted might be restrained while "trying for the big thing [the presidency] ... although [JFK] was damn careless."25 For a while after the Chappaquiddick Island incident on July 19, 1969, the White House breathed easier about Ted Kennedy, wondering how he could survive the enormous scandal following the drowning death of the young campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne.26 Kennedy had been the driver of the car when it careened off a bridge late at night. Despite knowing that his passenger had not escaped and was certainly injured, drowning, or dead, Kennedy did not even report the accident to police for ten hours, appearing far more concerned about contacting family friends and protecting his political career than assessing Kopechne's fate.aa Many had assumed that the 1972 election would feature the next Kennedy versus Nixon in the presidential matchup. Seeing a golden opportunity, and fearing that the Kennedy family would cover up the scandal, the president ordered Ehrlichman to do what he could to keep the Chappaquiddick tragedy a high-profile subject of discussion. Ehrlichman hired Jack Caulfield, a former New York detective, to follow up. "For two weeks, [Caulfield] dug through the available evidence, asked damaging questions at press conferences, anything to keep the dirt flying," noted Chris Matthews.27 Nixon operatives also placed a wiretap in the Georgetown house where Mary Jo Kopechne had lived with several other women.

Nixon had many sources about Chappaquiddick and was interested in the gossip. Just a couple of weeks after the accident, he sent a memo to Ehrlichman: "I would like for you to talk to Kissinger on a very confidential basis with regard to a talk he had with Galbraith as to what really happened in the Kennedy matter. It is a fascinating story. I'm sure Kissinger will tell you the story and then you of course will know how to check it out and get it properly exploited."28 Nixon also watched as Kennedy went through the court proceedings-the senator was given a very lenient two-month suspended jail sentence-and then began to rehabilitate his image.29 When Kennedy's friend Senator Birch Bayh noted that he had "a tremendous hold on young people-it amounts almost to worship-and young people are prone to forgive and forget," Nixon underlined Bayh's remarks and wrote in the margins to Ehrlichman, "The fix must be in."30 Kennedy's first post-Chappaquiddick trip out of Massachusetts and Washington was to a Democratic Party fund-raiser in Miami in February 1970. A White House observer sent to the event reported to Ehrlichman that Kennedy "did pretty well."31 At the same time, Nixon saw that some in the press were beginning to push Kennedy forward again, and he brought it to the attention of Haldeman and others: "The wish is probably father to the thought. But a major rebuilding job is going on-our people should do what they can to blunt it."32 When a British newspaper reported in November 1970 that Kennedy "danced until dawn with an Italian divorcee in a Paris night club the day of the funeral of [President Charles] deGaulle" and declared that "the French consider that he insulted the memory of deGaulle," Nixon wanted to know if the photo of Kennedy and the woman that accompanied the U.K. article was going to be published in the United States. White House counsel John W. Dean wrote in reply, "[Chuck] Colson has discussed with H[aldeman] and is following through."33 The Nixon White House had every reason to keep close tabs on Edward Kennedy. By mid-1971, in spite of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy led Nixon in Gallup's presidential trial heats by as much as ten percentage points.34 Until Nixon's brilliant opening to China and detente with the Soviet Union in the first half of 1972, the president appeared vulnerable in his reelection bid. Assuming that Kennedy would not launch a campaign due to Chappaquiddick, senior Democrats hoped that Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, who had polled strongly since his bid as the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1968, would be the party's nominee against Nixon. But Muskie's campaign flopped badly, and the strongly antiwar senator George McGovern gained traction over Muskie and former vice president Hubert Humphrey, who had rejoined the Senate from Minnesota in 1971. McGovern was a deeply flawed, left-wing candidate, and the Nixon guard could not help but think the Democrats would toss McGovern aside and draft Ted Kennedy for a presidential rescue mission late in the process.

President Nixon carefully followed Kennedy's press, underlining sections of newspaper and magazine articles about him and scribbling comments such as "a plug for Teddy."35 When Kennedy attacked the administration on Vietnam in April 1972, Nixon became enraged-and completely engaged. Kennedy declared himself "appalled" by the "moral and military bankruptcy" of Nixon's war policy. To Nixon's delight, Senator Bob Dole was dispatched to say that Kennedy's remarks deserved "the condemnation and contempt of every decent American." Referring directly to Kennedy's ties to JFK and LBJ's Vietnam involvement and perhaps indirectly to Chappaquiddick, Dole asserted that Kennedy "should never accuse anyone of having blood on his hands."36 Nixon's aides, including William Safire and Pat Buchanan, produced detailed analyses of Kennedy's strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Safire's memo from November 1971 was especially perceptive: SUBJECT: Kennedy Victory Scenario I notice some people around here actually looking forward to Kennedy as the Democratic nominee as "easiest to beat." To dispel that notion, here is a quick rundown of ways he can be expected to turn Chappaquiddick to his advantage.

Pre-Convention 1. Carrying the torch. "The torch has been passed" was a memorable quotation from JFK. Teddy will constantly harp on the brother's fallen torch theme. Not subtly, either-"we Kennedys can't make plans" is a sledgehammer, strictly emotional, playing on the guilt feelings of many Americans, and because it is bad taste does not make it bad politics.

2. The Sudden-Maturity rationale. How do they come to grips with the failure of courage at the [Chappaquiddick] bridge? Answer: Each of the brothers underwent a deep sea-change at some stage of their lives. The Bay of Pigs changed JFK, enabling him to rise to greatness at the Cuban Missile Crisis; Bobby, too, underwent an enormous change from the [Joseph] McCarthy counsel, ruthless and coldblooded, to the warm and compassionate friend of the underprivileged he came to appear to be in 1968 ... Kennedys traditionally overcome their pasts; the "record" has never been held against them, and to more people than we like to think, will not be this time either.

The Campaign: Making Chappaquiddick work for Kennedy.

3. The pressure to open up the sealed verdict will be allowed to grow; then, probably in Houston, scene of the Ministers Conference where JFK "faced up" to the Catholic issue, Teddy will break his silence on Chappaquiddick. The same people who deride a "Checkers speech" as cornball will see this as a human appeal for fairness and a brave exposition of a man's soul. The tape will then be played wherever it is most useful to Teddy.

4. The President can avoid television debates with any other candidate; but a public yearning for a Nixon-Kennedy rematch on television would be well-nigh irresistible. Ducking or delaying would only play up their "courage" pitch, which would directly answer that loss of courage at the bridge.

5. The polls will be far more volatile than usual, reflecting the emotional responses sure to be triggered in a campaign that plays on national guilt, past assassinations, pleas to rise above vicious innuendo, and the like ...

6. Great stress will be laid on the number of threats he receives, the impassioned pleas of the Secret Service to limit his campaigning to safe television appearances, and his courageous refusal to be kept away from crowds. He will motorcade Dallas. The "old" Teddy ran away from trouble; the "new" Kennedy will not run away. He will prove his courage once and for all in Dallas, on the final weekend of the campaign.

Why do I write this memo? I think we can beat Kennedy. But it is important that we recognize the wild and wooly nature of the campaign he could put on and stop thinking he would be the easiest candidate to beat.37 A bit earlier, Pat Buchanan-ever the hardball combatant-had also urged an aggressive posture to distinguish the liberal Ted from his much more centrist brother, JFK: No matter that EMK [Ted] is adored by the Party's Left, we have a serious problem only if he gets well with the Party's Center. The more he acts like Brother Bobby the better off we are; the less he acts like brother John, the better off we are.

Socially, Kennedy is out of touch with the political mood. The Jet Set, Swinger, See-Through Blouse cum Hot Pants crowd, the Chappaquiddick-Hoe down and Paris hijinks-the more publicity they all get, the better.

Since EMK will be trafficking on the JFK myth, it would be well to document JFK's tough line on defense, foreign policy, Vietnam, Europe, etc. over against EMK's positions-to provide conservative Democrats with some rationale for abandoning the little brother of their hero.38 Nixon and everyone else with political sense in the White House understood that a campaign against Kennedy would be fraught with peril, and best avoided. The goal was clear: Avoid goading Ted into the race while building up McGovern to the extent possible. As Buchanan put it in an April 1972 memo, "Though [Kennedy] would be unacceptable to the South, in a national election, he would bring to his candidacy all the McGovern support, plus the Kennedy charisma, plus the support of the Meanys [George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO] and Daleys. A Democratic Party deeply divided, thirsting for unity and victory, would welcome a Kennedy. For this reason, we do not believe our strategy should be to flush Kennedy out. As Kennedy is elevated, McGovern recedes-and We Want McGovern."39 And McGovern they got, on their way to a forty-nine-state landslide victory in November. McGovern had hoped that Kennedy would run as his vice presidential candidate, but Kennedy would have no part of it. If this third Senator Kennedy was going to endure unrelenting scrutiny because of Chappaquiddick and risk possible assassination on the campaign trail, he would run not for the second slot but for the top job, and in a year more promising for Democrats than 1972 was turning out to be. After the withdrawal of Mc-Govern's eventual pick for vice president, Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton (who was discovered to have had electric shock treatments for depression), McGovern tried to recover with a dose of Kennedy glamor, choosing JFK's brother-in-law Sargent Shriver as Eagleton's replacement. But the former head of the Peace Corps was no antidote for the Democratic ticket's long list of electoral handicaps.

The demise of the Ted Kennedy specter for Nixon's reelection did not make the president any less wary of the Massachusetts senator. By this time, Nixon's psychology was purely Kennedy-averse, and he was always wary. As John Dean suggested, "It always was apparent to me that Nixon had not forgotten how close the 1960 election with John Kennedy had been. After Watergate Ted Kennedy was one of the first to start investigating in the Senate ... Nixon didn't think Ted was going to run against him. At that point it was too late and McGovern was the nominee. But Nixon just sees this hand again, the fine hand that denied him [in 1960], and he wonders whether the Kennedy people might have the wherewithal to deny him a second term."

Kennedy campaigned extensively for McGovern in the fall of 1972, and after a direct appeal to Nixon by family matriarch Rose Kennedy, who worried about her last son's safety, Ted was provided with Secret Service protection until after election day. Nixon and Haldeman seized upon this opportunity to collect political intelligence, planting a Nixon loyalist, retired agent Robert Newbrand, in Kennedy's Secret Service detail, though all indications are that Newbrand turned up little actionable intelligence.40 Already looking to 1976 and the possibility that Kennedy could emerge as the consensus choice to reclaim the White House for the Democrats, the Irish American Nixon shared a few thoughts about the Irish American Kennedy during an Oval Office discussion. White House aide Ken Clawson recorded for posterity Nixon's unusual views about his own ethnic group in a September 1972 memo: The President ... discussed at length the disciplines required of the Nation's Chief Executive ... Referring to Senator Kennedy, the president wondered aloud whether the potential presidential candidate might not lack the stringent disciplines of a President. He said that the Irish, in particular, deteriorate rapidly without strong personal discipline. Such a deterioration might remove many of the appealing qualities that Senator Kennedy now appears to possess, the President said.41 While the Nixons and Kennedys kept their distance during the Nixon White House years, given the partisan history between them, one exception occurred the evening of February 3, 1971, when Jacqueline Kennedy responded to an invitation from the Nixons for a private visit and dinner at the White House.42 This event marked her and the children's first visit since they had moved out in early December 1963. By all accounts it was a pleasant, sentimental occasion, enjoyed by all the participants.43 But there are political considerations in everything for a White House occupant. Two aides had reports on Haldeman's desk the next morning. Mort Allin called it "truly an outstanding move here in having Jackie in and just the initial reports look very good. One thing we might avoid-too much description ... of what a warm evening it was ... Any more pushing of that theme could become overkill."44 Another assistant, Robert C. Odle, Jr., agreed but offered, "It might be pointed out quietly to friendly columnists that this is Mrs. Onassis's first visit since 1963 and that she refused LBJ's invitations."45ab During his presidency, Richard Nixon avoided other Kennedy gatherings, including all commemorations of November 22, 1963-sending only emissaries with wreaths to JFK's grave and mentioning the anniversary in an official proclamation just once, on the tenth anniversary in 1973, which coincided with Thanksgiving.46 When Haldeman suggested to Nixon very early in his first term that he might want to reopen the Warren Commission's investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Nixon wasn't at all interested; such a move, favored by Haldeman because he recognized the growing controversy about the commission, would have been astonishing and might have overshadowed the new administration's initiatives.47 Privately though, Nixon admitted that the Warren Commission's investigation had been deeply flawed. When presidential hopeful George Wallace was shot and seriously wounded during a campaign stop in Laurel, Maryland, the president called FBI senior official Mark Felt (later made famous for his role in bringing Nixon down as "Deep Throat" during the Watergate investigation) and said, "Be sure we don't go through the thing we went through-the Kennedy assassination, where we didn't really follow up adequately. You know?"48 Nixon also declined to attend the opening of the Kennedy Center on September 8, 1971, giving as the excuse his desire not to steal the spotlight from the famous family. The president was harshly criticized by some for skipping the event.49 In fact, Nixon may have been trying to avoid the left-wing politics of the featured entertainer, Leonard Bernstein.50 On the whole, Nixon seemed to prefer to avoid mentioning JFK at all-with the exception of two big subjects where Kennedy's actions helped Nixon's public case, Vietnam and Watergate. On one occasion Nixon's omission of JFK caused a controversy. Despite having a dozen or more opportunities in official and unofficial forums, Nixon never mentioned President Kennedy in connection with the July 1969 moon landing, which had been achieved because of Kennedy's bold commitment in 1961.51 Such a salute would not have detracted from Nixon's ceremonial role and might well have enhanced its public relations value with a sprinkling of bipartisan graciousness. Imagine if Nixon had included JFK's 1961 call for a moon landing on the plaque that now rests on the moon's surface-an act that would have forever linked his name and Kennedy's in a powerful symbol of national unity to denote a supreme human triumph. Yet Nixon could not bring himself to do it, and the obvious exclusion generated censure.52 Nixon finally acknowledged Kennedy's role in the moon program only when it ended, with the return of Apollo 17 in December 1972.53 It was also never consciously or explicitly acknowledged that Nixon's innovative, dramatic moves in foreign policy followed the postCuban Missile Crisis plans of a chastened President Kennedy. Having come so perilously close to war in 1962, JFK had begun to explore the pathways to peace, encouraged by the similar desires of Premier Khrushchev. JFK's American University speech in June 1963 and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty later that year were the antecedents of detente. Yet Nixon went far beyond Kennedy's tentative steps with the Soviet Union and reconstructed the nature of U.S.USSR relations. And there is no indication Kennedy ever conceived of constructive engagement with China, nor would it have been politically possible for a Democrat in the 1960s to have reached out to "Red China" in the way Nixon did in 1972. Nixon's fierce anticommunism protected him from soft-on-Communism attacks, while Democrats were already perceived in some quarters as too eager for accommodation with the Reds-plus, China had fallen behind the Iron Curtain under the Democratic Truman administration. In any event, Nixon's stellar foreign policy realignments were a source of justifiable pride for him and his party, far outstripping what even a reelected President Kennedy could have hoped to do.

Nixon's fundamental relationship with JFK was competitive, but not always. Few realize that Nixon saved one of JFK's best-known programs, the Peace Corps. Early in his presidency, Nixon had been inclined to phase out the Corps, as well as other activist divisions of the New Frontier and Great Society, but he thought better of it in time. When Southern conservatives in Congress linked the Peace Corps to the widely despised spending category of foreign aid and slashed the Peace Corps budget, Nixon found funds in other areas to transfer to the Corps, enabling it to continue operating at full strength.54 Had Nixon wanted to damage JFK's legacy in a prized area, and do so without fingerprints, this would have been the perfect opportunity.

Presidencies are personal in the moment, but in history, they are judged by substantive achievements and epic failures. In many ways, Nixon had the better of Kennedy in both historic categories. Nixon's painfully slow but successful winding down of Vietnam, his shrewd playing off of China and Russia to produce spectacular diplomatic breakthroughs, and some creative domestic policies (such as the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and a reorganization of the federal government) may eventually restore some luster to a presidential reputation destroyed by extensive Watergate abuses.55 That was Nixon's hope in retirement.

That Richard Nixon resented John Kennedy is obvious, and his antipathy was not irrational. For reasons ranging from personal charm to Democratic tilt within the news media, JFK was loved and touted by the press throughout his national career in a way that Nixon could never match or even approach. Press adulation probably made at least 119,000 votes' worth of difference in 1960, and Nixon lived with this bitter reality for years. Where JFK triumphed, as in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was assured of glowing, long-lasting coverage; when he fell short (the Bay of Pigs), the press moved on. His private vices, such as reckless womanizing, were ignored. In cases where Kennedy policy led to disaster (Vietnam), there was an automatic might-have-been excuse to the discussion. Because of his assassination, John Kennedy was untouchable, and this must have galled the flesh-and-blood, here-and-now Nixon from time to time. Nixon's feats seemed to fade more quickly, his fiascoes were sometimes exaggerated, and like Lyndon Johnson, Nixon could never compete with a saintly ghost.

It is hard to fault Nixon for insisting that the Vietnam record prominently display its Kennedy-Johnson lineage. Johnson's role was far greater, but JFK initiated the era of major involvement. Nixon was determined to remind the public of this fact, and he quoted JFK at length in his much ballyhooed November 1969 televised address on Vietnam: "In 1963, President Kennedy, with his characteristic eloquence and clarity, said: 'We want to see a stable government there, carrying on a struggle to maintain its national independence. We believe strongly in that. We are not going to withdraw from that effort. In my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there.'"56 Even more important in Nixon's assessment, Kennedy played a central role in the overthrow and murder of Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. Nixon had long believed the Diem assassination was a crucial turning point in forcing more U.S. involvement, and he frequently referred to it in public and private.57 Nixon tried to resolve the Indochina catastrophe he had been handed as best he could, given his determination not to let the Communists win and to achieve "peace with honor." Along the way, Nixon and his staff never hesitated to let the two prior administrations take the political hit. Of the two, Nixon preferred to target Kennedy's. Johnson had been bedeviled by the same band of Kennedy loyalists and "Eastern establishment, Ivy League elites" that targeted Nixon, even though many of them had supported Kennedy's original Vietnam involvement.58 When the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, giving the public access to the secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Nixon aide Charles Colson wrote to chief of staff Haldeman, "The [Democrats] are very well aware that the major thrust of this controversy will eventually become the Kennedy-Johnson mishandling of the war ... We should encourage [Capitol] Hill to carry on well publicized hearings [on] the Kennedy-Johnson papers and over how we got into Vietnam [and] the skill with which the President is managing to get us out." The dirty-tricks side of Colson also surfaced here: "We could of course plant and try to prove the thesis that Bobby Kennedy was behind the preparation of these papers because he planned to use them to overthrow Lyndon Johnson. (I suspect that there may be more truth than fantasy to this.)"59 A legitimate Nixon inquiry into the Diem assassination morphed into another dirty trick. During the Pentagon Papers controversy, Nixon ordered his senior staff, including Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and national security adviser Henry Kissinger, to comb through everything they could find on Diem's murder and the Kennedy role in it.60 At the same time, Nixon asked Richard Helms, the director of the CIA, to share his agency's classified internal documents with White House staffers. Nixon promised to keep the documents secret. "Listen, I've done more than my share of lying to protect [the CIA and] it was totally right to do it," he said. Nixon wanted unrestricted access to Langley's JFK files. "Who shot John?" he asked Helms. "Is Eisenhower to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Nixon to blame?"61 Helms never turned over the JFK files, but he cooperated with the Diem investigation.

The Diem assignment worked its way down the chain of command into the hands of White House aide E. Howard Hunt.62 As he investigated, he found that certain critical, timely diplomatic cable traffic was conveniently missing or possibly tampered with. Years later, it was learned that JFK had indeed engineered a cover-up and ordered incriminating cables at the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department destroyed.63 Instead of pursuing this legitimate angle, Hunt-claiming orders from Colson-forged documents incriminating Kennedy and his administration in the Diem debacle.64 As ex-Nixon counsel John Dean told me, "Hunt had a rather simple solution as a former CIA operative. He got his scissors and craft knives out and started phonying up cables by using other cables and patching them together and then Xeroxing them ... [Colson] convinced a journalist to publish this story which would've indeed hung the murder of Diem on John Kennedy. The story fell apart, however, when the editors asked to see the original copy and the cut-and-pasted version didn't look as good as the Xeroxed version." When the forgery was eventually revealed in the spring of 1973, it became a larger scandal than the killing of Diem.65 In this and so many other episodes, one is drawn to a lesson learned too late by President Nixon. In the conclusion to his final speech in the White House on August 9, 1974, Nixon told his assembled staff, "never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."66 That became the central lesson of the multilayered scandal that demolished any chance Nixon had of being as well remembered as John Kennedy.

As he began to sink under the weight of Watergate, Nixon and his associates often insisted that dirty tricks and eavesdropping had been the techniques of a series of presidents, certainly including JFK, and again they were correct. For example, Kennedy had left 125 tapes and 68 Dictabelt recordings of conversations, and Lyndon Johnson had made extensive tapings, too, without the knowledge or permission of the other participants.67 In March 1973, Nixon urged John Ehrlichman to "make the subtle point that the highest number of [FBI wire]taps was when Bobby Kennedy was Attorney General and, incidentally, that was before the war in Vietnam had heated up ... [G]et across the fact that it was during the Kennedy Administration and the Johnson Administration that the FBI was used for surveillance on newsmen and everybody else ... Bobby Kennedy had FBI agents rout newspapermen out of bed in the middle of the night and put them under grilling as to what they knew about a possible price rise by steel companies. This kind of thing, of course, goes far beyond anything we have attempted in the national security area."68 Later, in July, Nixon urged his new chief of staff, General Alexander Haig, to pursue similar themes: "This Administration has never used the FBI for purely political purposes-both Kennedy and Johnson did ... In other words, rather than being the most repressive Administration in these areas it is perhaps the least repressive Administration despite the fact that we had a massive problem to deal with in terms of domestic violence and, therefore, had much more justification than either Johnson or Kennedy had for enlisting all agencies of the government to deal with that violence."69 After his resignation, in his memoirs, Nixon stressed the excuse that "everybody did it": My reaction to the Watergate break-in was completely pragmatic. If it was also cynical, it was a cynicism born of experience ... [DNC chairman] Larry O'Brien might affect astonishment and horror, but he knew as well as I did that political bugging had been around nearly since the invention of the wiretap. As recently as 1970 a former member of Adlai Stevenson's campaign staff had publicly stated that he had tapped the Kennedy organization's phone lines at the 1960 Democratic convention. Lyndon Johnson felt that the Kennedys had had him tapped; Barry Goldwater said that his 1964 campaign had been bugged; and Edgar Hoover told me that in 1968 Johnson had ordered my campaign plane bugged ... 70 ... I decided that I wanted all the wiretaps of previous administrations revealed. It was Bobby Kennedy who had authorized the first wiretaps on Martin Luther King. Ultimately King was subjected to five different phone taps and fifteen microphone bugs in his hotel rooms. The Kennedys had tapped newsmen. They had tapped a number of people instrumental in the passage of a sugar import bill they considered important.71 Nixon's memory was selective, though. His administration extensively used the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, and the CIA to serve its political needs just as his predecessors had. The age of the imperial presidency had enabled Kennedy and Johnson to get away with their deeds. Nixon was caught, and his web of lies, deceits, and unconstitutional pretensions during Watergate brought down his presidency in an unprecedented way, through resignation in the face of near-certain House impeachment and Senate conviction. Had John Kennedy lived and if his extramarital entanglements had been exposed, he would probably have been forced to resign. Had Lyndon Johnson won a second full term and continued the Vietnam War as Nixon did, he might have triggered abuse-of-power revelations, too, and been forced to leave office early. But JFK by assassination and LBJ through early retirement avoided that fate.

Nixon believed that his political enemies were behind the Watergate revelations. He pointed to Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post who had been a close JFK confidant, and to Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had worked for JFK in 1960 and been recommended for the prosecutor's role by Ted Kennedy.72 Nixon might have added that his many foes in a heavily Democratic Congress were eager to do their part in his collapse. (JFK and LBJ were fortunate to have had their party firmly in charge of Capitol Hill throughout the 1960s.) Yet for all the assistance and cheerleading that President Nixon's adversaries gave to his demise, Nixon caused his own downfall, and he was also the man occupying the White House when the hefty bill came due for long-term presidential abuse of power. That bill would have arrived eventually in any event, but Nixon hastened it with his attitudes as well as deeds. "The more successful Nixon became, the more vengeful he became," noted John W. Dean. "It's really quite remarkable. Nixon didn't mellow with his success, he became embittered by it."

For a short period, mainly in 1972, JFK's legacy had dimmed because of Nixon's spectacular foreign policy successes, just as Kennedy's domestic record was almost completely eclipsed during the 1965 heyday of the Great Society. But Richard Nixon discovered what Lyndon Johnson already knew: In the broad sweep of history, their presidencies were judged inadequate. Nixon and Johnson had much longer lists of achievements, but fundamental personal faults led to policy disasters and, ultimately, their undoing. More than a decade after Kennedy's death, compared to both his successors, JFK retained the lion's share of the American people's affections.