Nov 17, 2018 3 min read

The story goes that when Lyndon Johnson was vice president, having been sent on a junket to Africa by President Kennedy, he was approached by an African leader and asked if it was true he was born in a log cabin.

“No, no, you are confusing me with Abe Lincoln,” Johnson replied. He then paused and added, “I was born in a manger.”

True or not, Johnson had a very healthy ego, which in politics is often necessary, and in the run-up to the 1960 presidential election, he was considered a viable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His egotism, together with an infinite capacity for hard work, had made him one of the most effective Senate majority leaders in congressional history, and due to his years in Congress, including 12 years in the House of Representatives, he was an experienced legislator who knew what it took – or more accurately, who it took – to get bills passed. As Adlai Stevenson, a former Democratic presidential nominee (he inevitably lost to World War II’s greatest hero, Dwight Eisenhower), said of Johnson, “He is the best qualified Democrat for the presidency from the standpoint of performance and ability.”

But, Stevenson added, he was “plagued with a great weakness. He was a Southerner.” In 1960, partly because of the rising Civil Rights movement, it was thought Southerners could not put together a nationwide coalition broad enough to win the White House, even though Johnson had been the leader in passing the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Thus, John Kennedy, a junior senator from Massachusetts with little in the way of legislative accomplishments, was the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Displaying real political savvy, Kennedy promptly asked Johnson to be his running mate, knowing that without the support of Southern states – the South was then the Democratic Party’s base – especially Johnson’s home state of Texas, he wouldn’t win. Surprising everyone, Johnson accepted, egotistically thinking, unlike previous vice presidents, his reputation for getting things done would allow him to accrue responsibilities and power heretofore unknown in that office.

Instead, the exact opposite happened. President Kennedy and his advisers, brother Bobby Kennedy especially, treated Johnson shabbily; for example, deliberately sending him on junkets, like the aforementioned one to Africa, to keep him as far away from the levers of power as possible.

But as it happens, another big factor in politics is fate, and this week (Nov. 22) in 1963, again knowing the South in general – and Texas in particular – were critical to his re-election, President Kennedy was in an open-air limousine, on a campaign swing in Dallas, just passing by the Texas Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, when shots rang out.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.