Just before Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK, Robert Kennedy was given an LBJ VOODOO DOLL for his birthday and he and his Kennedy insider friends loved it. It was for RFK’s 38th birthday, which occurred on Nov. 20, 1963, a mere two days before the JFK assassination. They should have given RFK a mop so that he could clean up JFK’s brains from Elm Street in Dallas, TX. LBJ was acutely aware and highly agitated about the Kennedys’ attempts to utterly destroy him in November, 1963.
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[“Fear and Loathing in the White House,”
David Oshinsky, NYT, Oct. 26, 1997]
In 1961, at a late-night
supper in the White House living quarters, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson accosted
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in front of embarrassed friends and officials.
''Bobby, you do not like me,'' Johnson declared. ''Your brother likes me. Your
sister-in-law likes me. Your daddy likes me. But you don't like me. Now, why?
Why don't you like me?'' Kennedy did not respond to Johnson that evening, but his
feelings were clear. As Jeff Shesol notes in ''Mutual Contempt,'' a penetrating
and richly detailed account of the ''feud'' that shaped the 60's, Kennedy despised
Johnson with a ferocity that startled many observers, while Johnson harbored
fears of Kennedy that bordered on paranoia.
Shesol, the creator of
a syndicated political comic strip, is a gifted writer. His book, thoroughly
researched, based on dozens of manuscript collections and interviews, adds
fresh insight to a familiar story. Though Kennedy and Johnson came from
different regions, social classes and generations, they shared the common trait
of their New Deal Democratic Party -- identification with the underdog. What seriously
divided them, apart from personal chemistry, was the struggle to lead that party
in an era of domestic turmoil and political change.
The feud began in 1960,
when Robert Kennedy directed his brother John's successful campaign for the Democratic
Presidential nomination. The main competitor, Johnson, the Senate majority leader,
raised not only the ''Catholic issue'' but also the health problems of John F.
Kennedy, who spent much of the 50's recovering from delicate spinal surgery and
who had Addison's disease, an adrenal malfunction that required daily doses of
cortisone. As the convention neared, Johnson described his now-robust opponent
as a ''little scrawny fellow with rickets'' and other unnamed maladies. The
Kennedy camp whispered about the lingering effects of Johnson's 1955 heart attack.
Neither candidate took serious
offense at these charges. John Kennedy and Johnson had built a solid working relationship
in Congress. Both men accepted the transparent, if sometimes venomous, nature of
political campaigns. But Robert Kennedy was different. As a Senate committee aide
in the 50's, he had confronted adversaries like Roy Cohn and Jimmy Hoffa with a
moral fervor bordering on zealotry. Unlike his older brother, he considered the
campaign slurs and insinuations to be personal attacks on his family and his
church. ''Jack Kennedy is the first Irish Brahmin,'' a friend explained.
''Bobby is the last Irish Puritan.''
The Robert Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson feud took on a life of
its own. With little thought (and for reasons that still are unclear), John Kennedy
chose Johnson to be his running mate. When news of this selection enraged key
Northern liberals, Robert Kennedy was dispatched to Johnson's hotel suite to
persuade him to withdraw. He failed in his task, but did earn Johnson's enmity
as a ''grandstanding little runt.''
Things quickly got worse. Johnson rankled the Kennedys by
claiming credit for winning margins in Texas and other Southern states that provided
the razor-thin Democratic victory in 1960. The Kennedys humbled Johnson, in
turn, by denying him a meaningful role in the new Administration. When Johnson drafted
a rather audacious executive order giving the Vice President ''general supervision''
of numerous Federal agencies, President Kennedy filed it away. He did treat Johnson
respectfully, but the White House inner circle, led by Robert Kennedy, ignored Johnson
in public and belittled him mercilessly behind closed doors. A visitor to Robert Kennedy's Virginia estate recalled a gathering
at which friends gave Kennedy a Johnson voodoo doll. ''The merriment,'' he wrote,
''was overwhelming.''
[The date of this gathering was very close to Nov. 20, 1963, Robert Kennedy’s
38th birthday and just before the JFK assassination.]
In his evenhanded way,
Shesol describes Johnson's Vice Presidency as a period of mental torture, fueled
by Robert Kennedy's derision and Johnson's inflated expectations of the job. Denied
a serious role in Washington, Johnson tried to regain his vitality by
globe-trotting at a breakneck pace. Life, he said later, was a blur of ''chauffeurs,
men saluting, people clapping. . . . I detested every minute of it.'' While remaining
loyal to President Kennedy, he found their private meetings uncomfortable --
and increasingly rare. ''Every time I came into John Kennedy's presence,'' he said,
''I felt like a goddamn raven hovering over his shoulder.''
The President's assassination
turned derision into rage. Though neutral observers were impressed by Johnson's
compassion in these painful days, Robert Kennedy thought otherwise. It would
have been difficult, under the best circumstances, to forget that his brother
was murdered in Texas on a political visit Johnson had encouraged. Even worse,
from Robert Kennedy's perspective, were rumors Johnson had behaved boorishly on
the plane ride back from Dallas. In his anguish, Kennedy seethed at every move
the new President made. It was ''quite clear,'' a Cabinet member recollected,
that Kennedy ''could hardly countenance Lyndon Johnson sitting in his brother's
seat.''
Once in office, Shesol
notes, Johnson moved quickly to restore public confidence through a smooth transition
of power. To provide stability in the executive branch, he persuaded many Kennedy
appointees to remain at their jobs. He also made certain that Robert Kennedy,
who resigned as Attorney General in September 1964, would not be his running
mate that year. ''I'll quit it first!'' Johnson said. ''I don't want it that
much!'' Seeking a political niche apart from White House control, Kennedy ran successfully
for a Senate seat from New York. It was in Congress, Shesol writes, that he came
into his own. His brother's death seemed to sensitize him to the suffering of
others. He spent long hours investigating hunger in the Mississippi Delta, joblessness
in the Northern ghettos and squalid conditions in the migrant camps of central
California. Though he and Johnson agreed on most domestic issues, the Senator's
public presence and personal magnetism easily overshadowed the President at the
peak of his political success. As Shesol puts it, Johnson's Great Society ''kindled
no passion, just respect; there was no emerging Johnson legend, just a Johnson
record.'' Measured against the Kennedy magic, he came up short again.
It was the Vietnam War that
turned this private feud into a public brawl. While Shesol is on shaky ground in
describing Kennedy's supposed ambivalence about the Vietnam buildup in the early
60's, he does provide a careful critique of his evolving antiwar stance later.
As his feelings intensified, Kennedy became a savior to disillusioned Democrats,
a politician who expressed the anger and idealism of the New Politics by linking
the Vietnam debacle to the racial and generational struggles tearing the nation
apart. Shesol is correct, I believe, in claiming that Kennedy's animus shifted
from Johnson's personality to his policies after 1964, while Johnson's loathing
of the Senator remained a deeply personal matter.
Shortly after Kennedy
announced his candidacy for President in 1968, Johnson withdrew from the race.
While convinced he could win re-election, the President no longer relished the
prize. The White House had become his prison, surrounded by demonstrators chanting
Kennedy's name. ''I'm tired of feeling rejected by the American people,'' he said,
''tired of all these personal attacks on me.'' Johnson blamed Kennedy for
spreading ''lies'' about him, in league with ''those bomb-throwing . . . fuzzy-headed
Georgetown liberals.'' In June 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot by a deranged Arab
nationalist in Los Angeles. As the Senator lay dying, Johnson went on national
television to express his ''shock'' and ''dismay.'' That evening, Johnson
repeatedly phoned the Secret Service to ask if Kennedy had died. He paced the
floor for hours, phone in hand, muttering: ''I've got to know. Is he dead? Is
he dead yet?''
This, sadly, was not
the end of it. Though Johnson promised Kennedy's family to do ''anything I can
do to help,'' he delayed their lone request -- to finance a permanent grave
site for the Senator at Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brother John's.
In 1969, a new President took the appropriate steps. As he signed the final authorization,
Richard Nixon, who knew a thing or two about political grudges, must have
smiled.
David M. Oshinsky, a professor of American
history at Rutgers University, is the author of '' 'Worse Than Slavery':
Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.''
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