LBJ Time Machine
April 11, 1967. President Johnson awakens aboard Air Force One en route to Montevideo, Uruguay where he will attend the Punta del Este Summit meeting between nations involved in the Alliance for Progress. While there, Johnson hopes to strengthen the Alliance for Progress as well as focus on the development of a common market in Latin America.
LBJ Presidential Library photo A3986-23a, 5046-15, A3978-28, A3980-04a, A3975-05, A3975-15, A3983-18, A3980-19a, C5024-21a, C5025-36a; public domain.
April 10, 1967. Sen. Mike Mansfield (Democratic Majority Leader) and Sen. Everett Dirksen (Republican Minority Leader) attend LBJ’s bipartisan Congressional leadership meeting in the Cabinet Room.
“When told that Cong. Gonzales had been unhappy because so many Republicans had been invited to the barbecue, the President said that he was President of all the people—Republicans and Democrats—rather than just the Democrats.”
He [LBJ] also read an editorial in the Sunday Star-Bulletin & Advertiser (of Honolulu, Hawaii) by William F. Buckley, Jr—“Anti-American Theme”— He told mary s and mf to be sure and read the article to see what “your young friends on the left” are doing. He was upset by the references to his own inadequacies in contrast to the glories of the JFK myth and explained that in JFK’s three years little had been done, and went on to enumerate his own successes in the legislative field.
Then the President took two equanil and said that if he couldn’t sleep, he’d get up and work, but he hoped that sleep would come.
March 18, 1967. 9.05 AM. LBJ welcomes state governors, including new California Governor Ronald Reagan, above, to the White House for the “White House Conference of Governors on Federal-State Relations.”
“We are here to advise and consult with each other, as public executives, on the central business of our governments—the welfare of the American people. We are here on common ground, nonpartisan ground—as elected officials charged with the obligation of using public resources for the public good.”
LBJ Presidential Library photo #A3858-22, public domain. Read the rest of his remarks here.
March 8, 1967. Meeting in the Cabinet Room, White House. (L_R) Walt Rostow, John McCloy, Francis Bator, Sec. Dean Rusk, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Sec. Robert McNamara LBJ Library photo #C4651-25, public domain.
Bottom left: Seated at table (l-r) Secy. Henry Fowler, John McCloy, Francis Bator LBJ Library photo #C4651-28, public domain.
Bottom right: Sec. Henry Fowler. LBJ Library photo #C4652-9, public domain.
March 1, 1967. 3:04 PM. An irritated LBJ complains to Sen. Richard Russell about a speech by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s in which he proposed a bombing halt in Vietnam. Referring to the Tet bombing pause of last month, LBJ says:
“Now we just finished doing that.. I don’t know where in the hell he was.”
Barbara Jordan recalls her first meeting at the White House on Feb. 13, 1967 (about 20 seconds from beginning of recording):
“Of course, everyone in Texas knew that Lyndon Johnson was a premier political figure in Texas. But when I was in the Texas State Senate—I served in the senate from January of 1967 until 1972 when I went to the Congress—Lyndon Johnson was president of this country, and I received a telegram at my home in Houston from Lyndon Johnson. The telegram was to the effect ‘we are having a meeting at the White House’ or having several people to discuss the future of a bill which was pending in the Congress. This bill was regarding changes in housing legislation to infuse that legislation with a civil rights component. And this telegram asked if I would meet at the White House to discuss this legislation, and it concluded, ‘Present this telegram at’ some gate of the White House.
“Well, I was, of course, quite startled to receive a telegram from the President of the United States asking that I come to Washington to talk about anything! I said, “Well, I guess I will go.” And I took the telegram—I was in Houston when I received the telegram—came back to Austin for the senate and showed it to my colleagues in the senate. I said, ‘You see, I’ve got an invitation to go to Washington.’ They were kind of excited about just the prospect. Now at the time, John Connally was governor of Texas, and I hadn’t had very good relations with Mr. Connally, but here was this invitation to the White House, so I went.
“At that time you would fly to Washington to Dulles Airport and then you would take a limousine, which is really a bus, to Twelfth and K Streets at the Albert Pick Motel or Hotel. Then you take a taxi to where you wanted to go. So I flew to Washington. I got the bus to the Albert Pick. I took my bag—I wasn’t staying overnight so I didn’t have much luggage, and I put whatever I had in a locker at the Albert Pick transfer point, got a taxi and went to the White House, presented my telegram and got in, just like magic.
“I went up to what I now know was the Cabinet Room. There were other people assembled, people who were active in the civil rights movement. We sat and waited around a table for the President and the Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, to arrive. Well, as I sat there really at the far end of the table, I still said to myself, ‘Now, Lyndon Johnson probably doesn’t know who I am or what I am about, and my name probably just slipped in somehow and got into that [list].’ So the President came in, everybody stood up. He sat down, we all sat down, and we started to discuss this legislation, fair housing legislation.
And the conversation was going around the table. The President would call on first one person for a reaction and then another person for a reaction. Then he stopped and he looked at my end of the table, he said, ‘Barbara, what do you think?’ Well, I just … in the first place, I’m telling you, I didn’t know the President knew me, and here he’s looking down here saying ‘Barbara’ and then saying, ‘What do you think?’ So that was my first exchange with Lyndon Johnson. I’m startled. I got myself organized, of course, not so that I wouldn’t stammer, since it is not my habit to stammer when talking, and I gave a response and then this conversation ensued.”
February 3, 1967. LBJ receives this memo from aide Marvin Watson, asking for details on the planned Mexican-American Conference. The President agrees to meet with Watson and Joe Califano, but his handwritten note at the bottom of the page indicates that there has been a change of plans.
Memo, Marvin Watson to the President, 2/3/67, Handwriting File, Box 20, LBJ Presidential Library.
February 1, 1967. Drew Pearson shares a story in his column that appears to demonstrate the power still wielded by 72-year-old FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover:
“Gov. Grant Sawyer, Democrat, running for reelection, charged the FBI with wholesale wire tapping in Las Vegas and waging ‘an invisible war against Nevada.’
J. Edgar was really sore. The election boiled down, in effect, to one between Gov. Sawyer and J. Edgar Hoover—though Hoover remained silent on the sidelines.
In the end Sawyer lost, and afterward came to Washington to talk with President Johnson, Vice President Humphrey, and John Macy, head of the Civil Service Commission. All three urged him to accept a federal job. Finally LBJ came up with the offer that Sawyer become the governor general of the Panama Canal Zone.
Sawyer hesitated, but finally agreed to accept the appointment. The White House then ordered the routine FBI check, and G-men started to ask questions in Nevada regarding Sawyer.
Either Hoover’s men were not discreet in asking questions, or they deliberately leaked. At any rate, their investigation got into the headlines.
There’s nothing LBJ dislikes more than being scooped on an appointment. This J. Edgar Hoover knows all too well. So the chances are his Nevada critic will not be governor of the Canal Zone.”
Check out more of the Drew Pearson columns here. Photo: Hoover and LBJ in the Oval Office. 4/28/1965. LBJ Presidential Library photo #A355-33, public domain.
January 2, 1967. Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as California Governor.
December 23, 1966. LBJ speaks with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara briefly about national security matters, then more extensively (at about 2 minutes in) about Sargent Shriver, the head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, or OEO. The OEO manages many of LBJ’s cherished Great Society programs, such as Head Start, the Job Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, the Community Action Program and Legal Services for the Poor. LBJ had chosen Shriver to run the agency in 1964 and refused to take no for an answer, in one the most famous recorded telephone conversations of the Johnson administration. Now, Shriver is threatening to resign over cuts to his budget by Congress.
McNamara describes his efforts to get Shriver to stay, and they agree that LBJ will call him next week himself. Whatever they do, it works: Shriver stays on until 1968.
Photo #A213-2A, 04/05/1965, LBJ and Shriver in the Oval office. LBJ Presidential Library.
December 21, 1966. 7:09 PM. LBJ is exasperated after spending the day with the Democratic state governors at the Ranch. LBJ tells Dean Rusk (starts at about 2:00) that they were “all rambunctious… rather insulting and so was I, so we didn’t do very well.”
Their complaints are about domestic issues, poverty programs, civil rights and patronage, LBJ says. Rusk then reports on questions he received at his press conference, on anti-ballistic missiles, Vietnam, and Food for India program.
LBJ Presidential Library photo #W526-3.
December 21, 1966. Governor Harold Hughes of Iowa takes questions at the press conference after the Democratic Governors’ meeting at the LBJ Ranch:
“Q. Governor, reports from White Sulphur Springs talked of the unpopularity of the Johnson administration being a heavy factor in the 1966 election results. Was that discussed?
GOVERNOR HUGHES. All factors were discussed this morning.
Q. Did that include the President running again in 1968?
GOVERNOR HUGHES. No, ma’am, that was not discussed this morning.”
LBJ Presidential library photo #4166-31
December 21, 1966. One of the Governors present at the ranch on Dec. 21, 1966, is John Connally of Texas, who has just won election to a third term with 74% of the vote. His relationship with the President has lately become more fraught: Connally opposes two pieces of 1966 legislation supported by the White House: raising the minimum wage and repeal of right-to-work provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act. Especially egregious to Connally was the FBI monitoring of Texas voter registrations in March 1966. According to George Christian, who worked for both men:
“Connally wanted to be independent. He didn’t want to be identified as just ‘Lyndon’s boy John’ type of thing. He had his own views on things.He was quite upset at some of the things that the federal government was doing in Texas, and he sounded off. If he didn’t like it, he’d call Marvin Watson or Willard Wirtz or whoever he could get to‑‑….The President made reference from time to time that John was more conservative than he was, ‘John doesn’t feel the same as I do on that,’ or something to that effect. But he knew it. He might think in his own mind, ‘Old John’s wrong on that.’ But I never heard him say anything mean or anything of that nature about John Connally. Now I heard him say some things about lots of people, but I don’t recall him ever, ever referring to John Connally in any demeaning fashion. In the first place he had very great respect for him. And one of the few people I think that the President just really has up on a pedestal.”
Transcript, George Christian Oral History Interview IV, 6/30/70, by Joe B. Frantz. Photo is LBJ and Gov. Connally (in foreground) at the Houston Astrodome, 04/09/1965, #A267-12. Both from the LBJ Presidential Library.
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