George W. Bush, the Accidental President, boasts stellar White House and family advisers. And if he wants to keep learning while exercising or bombing Baghdad, there are nifty cassettes to stick in a Walkman.
The tapes were recently released by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin and are among 632 hours of phone tapes that a nifty institution is slowly letting out in chronological order. The new batch, 51 hours, brings the total to 385 hours.
Those on the other end of the phone did not know Johnson was taping, while he was clearly unaffected, forever giving evidence of masterly political skills. If Richard Nixon’s secret tapes have tarnished his reputation, Johnson’s consistently show the extent to which people underestimated him.
One previously undisclosed tape involves a May 24, 1965, conversation with Drew Pearson, a once-famous syndicated columnist and Washington insider who had two relatives on the Johnson administration payroll. He was the mentor of investigative reporter Jack Anderson, who by then generally had taken over Pearson’s column.
Johnson was chagrined by an Anderson column suggesting divisions between him and certain key Democrats, such as Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Sen. Russell Long and Rep. Hale Boggs, both of Louisiana (the latter was the late father of journalist and capital social doyenne Cokie Roberts).
It came just as he was pushing through a historic raft of legislation, including Medicare, the Higher Education Act and the Voting Rights Act that abolished the notorious Southern poll tax that made voting tough for blacks and poor whites.
Johnson has a thinly disguised mission, which, despite his denials, becomes pretty clear as the conversation unfolds.
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Johnson: How you doin’? How you getting along?
Pearson: Oh, pretty good, pretty good.
Johnson: Well, you talk like you’re not pretty good! You have a hard Sunday at that old farm?
Pearson: No, didn’t have such a hard Sunday, I relaxed a little bit, felt better. Why?
Johnson: I see that you’re giving away fertilizer.
Pearson: Yeah, yeah, I am. Sendin’ around for Lady Bird’s project [a high-profile plan to limit billboards and improve the look of highways spearheaded by Johnson’s wife], manure actually. “Drew Pearson’s Best Manure–all cow, no bull.”
Johnson: Where do you get it from? You manufacture it?
Pearson: No, I’ve got a lot of cows out there at the farm in Maryland.
Johnson: Oh, that’s where you get it.
Pearson: I, of course, a lot of people say I get a lot out of my typewriter too . . . We’re milking 83 cows. We get a lot of manure.
Johnson: Can you break even on it?
Pearson: No, no, I don’t.
After some more scintillating small talk, Johnson quickly changes tone.
Johnson: Say, I’ve got a problem. Did you see Jack Anderson’s story yesterday?
Pearson: Yes, I did.
Johnson: I never heard of that. Just never heard of it. Not one part of it, at any time.
Pearson: I told Jack, I said this doesn’t . . . .
Johnson: Why write that, to hurt the program, the Democratic program? . . . I’ve been getting things through the Senate wonderful. I am very happy, I didn’t care one way or another about poll tax. I’m not mad at Mansfield. I’m very happy with Long. I’m depending on Long to get my excise tax through Byrd’s committee [the finance panel headed by Virginia’s Harry Byrd] . . . I’m not unhappy with anybody in the Senate, not even Teddy Kennedy because I don’t care much one way or another. Someone must have planted that . . . .
Pearson: And I thought it was a kind of funny story too. I talked to Jack about it. I cautioned him a little bit about it. In fact, I say a little bit, I cautioned him very definitely. But he claimed he had it right. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll talk to him again. And, if it’s not right, we’ll, I will definitely, even if Jack doesn’t like it, I will write something to the contrary. I’ll straighten it out.
Johnson: I don’t care about writin’ it. You might ask, I don’t know who would be the source, [White House congressional liaison] Larry O’Brien is the only one I know. . . . And though I talked to Mansfield a long time on general foreign policy matters, as I do nearly every week, and he’s always available. And he and I never had a quarrel. I never criticized anything he’s done. And I thought he’s been very helpful to me and I thought the Senate had. I rather think we’ve gotten more done in the Congress than nearly any administration in history, ah, with our medical care, school bill . . . .
Pearson: Good God, you sure have, there’s no argument about that. Nobody can argue about that . . .
Johnson: I’m afraid the senators will see that and think we’re fighting and the Democrats are divided. And the Republicans are doing their best to make out like they’re the sole supporters of my program. And we’ve had some very bad, injurious, hurtful reporting. [Undersecretary of State] George Ball told me he sat down with [Washington Post major domo] Kay Graham and [Post Managing Editor] Al Friendly and they said they had a complete new conception when he told them of what our purposes were in the Dominican Republic [troops were sent during a civil war between allies and foes of former President Juan Bosch] and what we were trying to do. They just couldn’t believe that this is what’s happening. They were very pleased. But we’ve had some very bad reporting down there. But I don’t want anybody to think that I’m at odds with [House Speaker John] McCormack or [Rep. Carl] Albert or Mansfield or Hale Boggs or Long.
. . . And we haven’t had a cross word, haven’t had a disagreement. But I’m afraid a new senator, maybe [Fred] Harris from Oklahoma, or maybe someone from New Mexico, [Sen. Joseph] Montoya, will see this article, and say, “Goddamn it, Johnson’s unhappy with Mansfield, causing troubles there, and unhappy with Russell Long.” And I’m afraid Russell Long will say, “Well, hell, piss on Johnson. If he thinks I can’t vote for repeal of the poll tax, well, then why the hell is he telling me it ought to be repealed?” . . . So if you would look into it, I would correct it. But I wouldn’t want Mansfield and Long to feel like I had read it.
Pearson: I think I know how I can handle it diplomatically.
Johnson: I don’t want to fuss, I don’t want to be sensitive, I don’t want to gripe. But if somebody came in there and told me that I thought Drew Pearson thought I was terrible and hated me, I know you’d want to correct it. And I don’t feel that way about Long or Mansfield or the Senate. I’m damn proud of ’em. If they never do anything but pass the education bill, I’ll think I had the biggest year ever. But I’m going to pass medical care next week, voters’ rights this week, and I’m just going to town.
Pearson: You’re just a thousand percent right. By god, you’ve had one hell of a success. I’ve tried to say that several times . . .
Johnson: You have, you have. It’s just basically Long and them and Mansfield. I don’t want them to feel that the Democrats ought to be split up and go in opposite directions and kill a lot of our good programs. I’ve got beautification, and I’ve got pollution, and I’ve got all this, voter rights this week, I got medical care [Medicare] next week, higher education [the seminal Higher Education Act] the next week. I don’t want them to get crossways with me right now because somebody thinks Johnson’s mad with them, cause I’m not.
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Pearson: Well, I agree with you.
Johnson: OK, pal.
Pearson: I’m sorry about it.
Johnson: Never mind, don’t worry. Let’s just get it straightened out and go on from here.
Pearson uses his dwindling apple-polish time to try to get a German editor invited to a White House function, a “tea or something.”
Johnson: Well, we’ll look at it and see what we can do.
Pearson: Fine. Thank you.
Johnson: All right.
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Tribune Washington bureau chief James Warren co-hosts “Unconventional Wisdom” with Michael Tackett of U.S. News & World Report at 7:05 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.