And he would have beaten Richard Nixon in the 1968 general election as well. Remember, there would have not been riots at the 1968 Democratic convention if Robert Kennedy had been the presumptive Democratic nominee for President.
That evidence begins with what Bobby really meant that night when he uttered “on to Chicago.” Journalists and most everyone else assumed he was referring to that summer’s Democratic Convention in the Windy City, but this last progressive icon was a master political maestro, and he wasn’t about to wait until August. What he actually was signaling is that he intended to stop in Chicago on his way from Los Angeles back East, and to meet quietly with Mayor Richard J. Daley, who’d help Jack Kennedy win the White House eight years before. “I would say there was a 70 percent chance he was going to endorse him,” says Bill Daley, son of the legendary mayor and chief of staff to President Obama, who was privy to and told me about the planned rendezvous. “Then the momentum would have shifted to where other people like my dad who were still left would have been hard pressed not to go there.”
Bobby knew that Humphrey was counting not on primary voters but on kingmakers like Daley to anoint him the nominee. I think RFK was right about the way to upend the vice president’s plans and nail down the nomination for himself. Daley would woo other Democratic leaders into the Kennedy camp, justifying the move by pointing to Bobby’s wide margin over Humphrey among actual voters. The party would then unite behind a Kennedy-Humphrey ticket much as it had four years before behind former adversaries JFK and LBJ. And the Chicago convention would have had none of the angry left-wing riots that ended up dooming Humphrey’s campaign and leading to a bitter third-party bid by George Wallace, who captured 13.5 percent of the vote in an election where Nixon edged Humphrey by just 0.7 percent.
That’s not history’s conventional version of what would have come next, but it is the read of crucial insiders from back then. “Had Bobby lived,” said Humphrey, “I think there’d have been a Democrat in the White House.” And on that night of the California primary, Nixon told his family, “It sure looks like we’ll be going against Bobby.” Nixon knew that it was Bobby even more than Jack, who’d orchestrated the Kennedy win over him in 1960, and that nobody was better situated than Bobby to answer Nixon and Wallace on fighting crime and restitching the social safety net into a trampoline.
UNQUOTE
LBJ slitting his finger across his throat at the mention of Robert Kennedy, spring 1968
“And friendliness, though, was quickly fleeting. Eugene McCarthy soon paid a courtesy call to the Oval Office, and when McCarthy mentioned Kennedy, the president said nothing.; instead he drew a finger across his throat, silently, in a slitting motion. Later that week, Johnson exploded at press reports of the April 3 meeting with Kennedy and Sorensen, whom, he now charged, had leaked the story to score political points.”
[Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p. 444]
LYNDON JOHNSON HAD A MURDEROUS ATTITUDE TOWARDS ROBERT KENNEDY -
"I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do."
Robert Caro describes the LBJ-RFK relationship post 1960 Democratic convention, where RFK had moved heaven and earth attempting to keep LBJ off the 1960 Democratic ticket. Caro:
John Connally, who during long days of conversation with this author was willing to answer almost any question put to him, no matter how delicate the topic, wouldn't answer when asked what Johnson said about Robert Kennedy. When the author pressed him, he finally said flatly: "I am not going to tell you what he said about him." During the months after the convention, when Johnson was closeted alone back in Texas with an old ally he would sometimes be asked about Robert Kennedy. He would reply with a gesture. Raising his big right hand, he would draw the side of it across the neck in a slowing, slitting movement. Sometimes that gesture would be his only reply; sometimes, as during a meeting with Ed Clark in Austin, he would say, as his hand moved across his neck, "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do." [Robert Caro, "The Passage of Power," p. 140]
Lyndon Johnson canceled Air Force plane for top Boston brain surgeon for a dying RFK
[C. David Heymann, RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert K. Kennedy, p. 505]
QUOTE
Ted Van Dyk: “In the middle of the night I was shaken awake by David Gartner, a personal aide to the vice president. And Dave said, ‘Humphrey says get up, Robert Kennedy's been shot.’ And I said, ‘David, that's a sick joke.’ He said, ‘No, no, Robert Kennedy's been shot.’
“So I got up and Humphrey was absolutely distraught, he was just absolutely beside himself with anxiety and concern. And we then received a telephone call from Steve Smith and Pierre Salinger in California. They said, ‘There's a brain surgeon we trust in Boston. Could you arrange for a private plane to fly him to Los Angeles? Because Robert Kennedy's still alive and there's a possibility of saving him.’
Humphrey called up the commanding general of the air force, who happened to be there at the academy. And Humphrey said, ‘Will you please dispatch this plane?’ The general said, "I surely will."
“Ten minutes later we received a call from an aide in the White House: President Johnson had canceled the plane because Humphrey had no authority to send it. The fact was, Johnson preferred Robert Kennedy dead.
“It was one of the most heinous acts I've ever experienced in my life, and it all but broke Humphrey's heart.”
UNQUOTE
[C. David Heymann, RFK: A Candid Biography Of Robert F. Kennedy, p. 505]
--Ted Van Dyk, Aide to then Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey
Bio: Ted Van Dyk has been active in national policy and politics for more than 30 years. He began active military duty in 1957 as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst. His subsequent jobs have included Soviet specialist and intelligence analyst at the Pentagon; senior assistant to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and coordinator of foreign assistance programs in the Carter Administration, to name just a few. He also served as a senior political and policy advisor to seven Democratic presidential candidates. Since early 2001, he has been an editorial-page columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has continued writing periodically for national publications.
http://www.washington.edu/
Pat Speer on LBJ nixing a plane for a brain surgeon for a dying RFK
June 7, 2014 post at Education Forum:
QUOTE
Although Heymann is a serial fibber, there may be some truth to this one. No less than Ramsey Clark has admitted that Johnson's buddy Hoover deliberately timed the release of info about James Earl Ray's arrest to interfere with TV coverage of RFK's funeral. If you've ever taken a peak at the FBI file of Robert Kennedy, moreover, you'll find that Hoover sent agents to a gathering in RFK's honor, not to honor Kennedy, but to report on who was there and whether they were crying, etc. In other words, he wanted to know who was loyal to Kennedy, and thus, who he should consider an "enemy." Johnson was of the same mind-set. It is still little-appreciated in academic circles, but Johnson was completely obsessed with the thought RFK was gonna get him, and find some way to blame him for the JFK assassination. Johnson made at least three phone calls to Fortas in which he claimed Bobby was behind Mark Lane, etc, and that they were all out to get him.
UNQUOTE
Lyndon Johnson wanted to name the stadium for the Washington Redskins after HIMSELF but it was named RFK Stadium
Jeff Sheshol on C-SPAN 1997: "Johnson wanted it named after himself. He thought it would appropriately be named LBJ Stadium. But a group of Kennedy aides in Interior Department under Stewart Udall...plot was crafted..."
No comments:
Post a Comment