March 31, 1967. LBJ signs the Ratification of the Consular Convention in the Oval Office.
LBJ Presidential Library photo A3928-6a.
LBJ Time Machine
Taking a trip through time, from the birth of Lyndon Johnson in 1908 through 2013 at the LBJ Library and Museum.
http://lbjlibrary.org
LBJ Time Machine
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 14, 1967. Lady Bird (in the green dress) and her entourage of 50 or more reporters descend on the Mathis family during her visit to North Carolina.
The First Lady talks with family members about favorite television programs, the garden at the Ranch, and how the children like the Teacher Corps teachers in their school. Lady Bird presents Mrs. Mathis with preserves and honey from the ranch “wrapped incongruously in the elegant embossed paper from the White House.”
LBJ Library Photo #C4719-3, public domain. Lady Bird quote from A White House Dairy.
March 6, 1967. LBJ and Lady Bird, along with aide Jake Jacobsen and others, leave the LBJ Ranch for San Antonio and thence to Washington Along the way, according to the Daily Diary, they engage in some subterfuge in aid of LBJ’s teeth.
“8:56 PM. Arrive the LBJ Ranch—bid farewell to Luci and Pat and walked to the waiting Jetstar—The President came on board saying, ‘Jake, everything fine?’ To Jake’s reply that everything was fine, the President said that it certainly wasn’t with him—he had lost a tooth while eating a piece of candy—actually the crown of a tooth had come out.
“9:14 PM. President and Mrs. Johnson arrived Randolph AF Base, San Antonio, Texas. A dentist, Dr. Henry Pelc, FR 55820, 3510 USAF Hospital, RAFB, Tex, boarded AF One to look at the President’s tooth. To throw the press off as to the reason for delay, baggage was still being loaded. The plane taxied to the end of the runway when the dentist had finished and he went out the escape hatch behind the pilot’s seat to avoid being seen by the press. (Note: The dentist was in his dress uniform as he had been at a cocktail party when contacted.)”
LBJ Library photo #C3936-8, from 11/23/66, photographer snapping photos of LBJ’s Jetstar. Public domain.
January 16, 1967. Columnist Drew Pearson comes to the White House to report on his trip to Latin America. LBJ Presidential Library #C4293-12, public domain.
December 4, 1966. LBJ speaks with John Steinbeck, who is soon to travel to Vietnam. He will stay for five months, until April 1967. As you can tell from this conversation, the President and Steinbeck were very friendly—Lady Bird and Elaine Steinbeck, John’s wife, both attended the University of Texas, and LBJ and John had taken to each other at their first meeting in 1963. The Steinbecks also appear in at least two of Mrs. Johnson’s home movies of the Johnson family and their friends at Camp David, one from 1965 and one from 1967. John Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Steinbeck was a staunch supporter of LBJ’s Vietnam policies. Both of Steinbeck’s sons served there, Thom and John, pictured above with his father and LBJ in the Oval Office. The Steinbecks visited the White House in May 1966, shortly before John’s deployment.
While in Vietnam, the elder Steinbeck worked as a war correspondent for Newsday. Some of his columns from 1966-1967 were recently republished by the University of Virginia Press: you can listen to an interview with the book’s editor here. More on Steinbeck and LBJ here, via NARA’s Teaching with Documents.
LBJ Presidential Library photo #A2439-4, 5/16/1966. Public domain.
President’s press conference, 11/4/1966
“QUESTION. Does the cancellation of your big campaign trip mean that you do not intend to do anything to help Democratic candidates before election, such as one little speech in Texas, or maybe a TV pep talk before election?
THE PRESIDENT. First, we don’t have any plans, so when you don’t have plans, you don’t cancel plans.
We get invited to come to most of the States. In the last 6 weeks we have been invited to 47 of the States by the candidates for Governor, or the Senate, or the Congress.
We have been invited on nonpolitical invitations to the other three States, I might say.
But we have not accepted those invitations. We do contact the local people who extend them. We do investigate in some instances going there, and we do express the hope that we can go.
But until it is firm, until we know we can, we do not say, “We accept,” and schedule it.
The people of this country ought to know that all these canceled plans primarily involve the imagination of people who phrase sentences and write columns, and have to report what they hope or what they imagine.
We have no plans for any political speeches between now and the election. We know of no requirement that we forgo them. I just don’t think they are necessary.”
However, it had already been reported in the press that LBJ had planned a campaign trip to Massachusetts, Illinois, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado that was now cancelled. This discrepancy was used by Republicans as an example of the ”credibility gap” in the Johnson administration. This seeming disparity between what the White House said, or promised, and what it delivered, became an effective issue for Republicans as they tried to take back—or at least win more seats in—the House and Senate.
Source: Congress and the Nation, Vol. II 1965-1968, Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Service, 1969, p. 7. Full press conference text available here.
September 21, 1966. LBJ has a two-hour, off-the-record meeting with staff from the Washington Post. Left to right: Ben Bradlee, Russell Wiggins, Katharine (Kay) Graham, President Lyndon B. Johnson.
LBJ was an old friend of the Grahams: you can listen to an excerpt of a telephone conversation with Kay from December 2, 1963, a few months after she took over the Post upon her husband’s death.
LBJ Presidential Library photo A3178-13. Public domain.
JACK ANDERSON SAYS: TAX CRACKDOWN ON OIL GRANTS WOULD HELP PAY FOR VIET NAM WAR; BUT LBJ WOULD BE SQUEEZING HIS EARLY BACKERS
May 21, 1966. LBJ takes questions about the upcoming civil rights conference and announces a separate meeting for Mexican-Americans.
“QUESTION: Mr. President… I asked you a couple of months ago about the Mexican-Americans and their unrest. Can you tell me what the situation is today?
THE PRESIDENT: I went to California on a conference in that field when I was Vice President. I have done everything I could to contribute to a better understanding. I had Members of the House who were of Mexican-American ancestry go on a visit with me to Mexico.
During that time we talked about the desirability of a meeting with the Latin American leaders in the United States, that is, the Mexican-Americans. Since then, some of my people in the White House have had conferences with Members of the House and Senate, and other leaders of various organizations, the G.I. Forum [The American G.I. Forum of the United States, an organization of Mexican-American veterans], the LULACS, [League of United Latin American Citizens] the veterans organizations, and others.
We have been concerned about the special problems of the Mexican-Americans and other Spanish-speaking peoples in our country. I am very familiar with those in the Southwest.
We hope that we can arrange a meeting to invite the Mexican-American leaders and others to the White House to meet with members of the staff and probe more deeply into their problems and the actions that can be taken.
I have tried to find qualified employees for the Government from this group. I now have a good many requests out for recommendations.
QUESTION. What about the White House conference coming up? Will that include members of that group?
THE PRESIDENT. No, the White House conference flowed from my Howard [University] speech, but we will be glad to have one of the same type for their problems.”
Read the whole White House Press Conference here.
![April 22, 1966. LBJ takes a question about Vietnam at his press conference in the Oval Office:
“QUESTION: Mr. President, Senator McGee [Senator Gale W. McGee of Wyoming] has said more South Vietnamese troops will have to be used in the pacification program and that would mean more American troops would have to be used in combat. Do you have any comment?
THE PRESIDENT. I haven’t seen the Senator’s statement. We have secured the interest and deep concern and cooperation of the Vietnamese Government which is essential. General Westmoreland and those under his command will cooperate in this effort as outlined in Honolulu and as followed by the Vice President, Secretary of Agriculture, and Secretary Gardner.
Whatever cooperation is necessary for General Westmoreland to help the Government of Vietnam accelerate education, production, health efforts, I am sure it will be done.
One of our primary objectives at Honolulu was to get General Ky and General Westmoreland to understand how important we felt it was to carry along this two-pronged approach to matters there, not only military but economic.”
LBJ Library photo A2302-14, public domain.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdycxzkbxK1qlv77lo1_500.jpg)
April 22, 1966. LBJ takes a question about Vietnam at his press conference in the Oval Office:
“QUESTION: Mr. President, Senator McGee [Senator Gale W. McGee of Wyoming] has said more South Vietnamese troops will have to be used in the pacification program and that would mean more American troops would have to be used in combat. Do you have any comment?
THE PRESIDENT. I haven’t seen the Senator’s statement. We have secured the interest and deep concern and cooperation of the Vietnamese Government which is essential. General Westmoreland and those under his command will cooperate in this effort as outlined in Honolulu and as followed by the Vice President, Secretary of Agriculture, and Secretary Gardner.
Whatever cooperation is necessary for General Westmoreland to help the Government of Vietnam accelerate education, production, health efforts, I am sure it will be done.
One of our primary objectives at Honolulu was to get General Ky and General Westmoreland to understand how important we felt it was to carry along this two-pronged approach to matters there, not only military but economic.”
LBJ Library photo A2302-14, public domain.
Johnson used to have these little kind of seminars at the end of a long working day. You could go up to his tiny little room that he had when he was majority leader …. A lot of reporters would crowd in there, and the drink would flow pretty freely, and Johnson would put his feet up, and very often you’d have one of those Johnsonian monologues. But, in fact, Johnson was a brilliant monologist….
“You remember the whole era of the Johnson stories. All sorts of stories, many of them with scatological implications. These are the same stories he used to tell as majority leader, but when he was majority leader nobody cared. Nobody would repeat them much. Lyndon was just being Lyndon. But as president, it made all the difference. And that was the relationship with the press, which, in my view, as president, Lyndon Johnson never understood.
From LBJ’s yearbook: members of Southwest Texas State Teachers College’s Press Club in 1930. President, Lyndon B. Johnson.
