True that -- the assassination was such a wrenching event, it totally changed the political landscape in just five seconds.
Plus, Lyndon Johnson, as the first thing he did, was to get a vise-grip on the White House for himself. Jack Kennedy's body was still cooling in the Capitol Rotunda when LBJ held his first re-elect meeting in DC.
Ruthless b*stard -- I've suspected him for about 20 years now, him and Hoover.
What clinched it for me was an isolated story about the 1960 convention, when Evelyn Lincoln (Jack's longtime secretary) finally broke her secretarial silence, 30-40 years after the fact, and told some stories about things she eyewitnessed. One of them was that LBJ apparently blackmailed his way onto the 1960 ticket (the Kennedys wanted Stuart Symington of Missouri instead, who had border-state crossover appeal and a rep in foreign affairs and Mafia crimefighting).
Think about that a minute. Blackmailed the Kennedys, extorted the VP nod .... for an office that John Nance Garner, another Texan who held the office, once described (in cleaned-up language) as "not worth a bucket of warm spit". Now think about that for a while, and about LBJ's "emptiness" or whatever it was he suffered under -- Robert Caro just completed another volume of his LBJ bio (he's still working on the last one, the presidency and afterward), and he is all eloquent about how deflated LBJ was without the real power he had wielded in the Senate -- and ask yourself, why would a man not only subject himself to such a political exile from power, and blackmail someone to get it?
Yeah, think about that a while.
Well, it’s been discussed endlessly. Was LBJ ruthless ? Of course. I think he probably remains unmatched as the most effective Majority Leader in the Senate before or since (and Republicans should use him as a model in that regard instead of the Melvin Milquetoasts that have followed. Better to be feared and respected than well-liked and get rolled by the opposition).
Whether he was explicitly behind the assassination, I can’t quite go that far. I know the Kennedys wanted Symington for VP, but as a formality and courtesy, offered it to LBJ with the presumption that he wouldn’t take it. Clearly they were shocked when he did and had no way to dump him (though I believe LBJ was headed for the door in ‘64 of his own accord, and they’d get their man that time).
I find it interesting now to realize LBJ, despite having been in DC almost a quarter-century by 1961, was only 52 (and by DC standards, that’s fairly young now, as so many don’t even land in DC in Congress until roughly that age). He looked so much older and tired. Whatever methods by which he may have used to get power, it certainly took its toll on him. He was still only 59 when he announced he wouldn’t run in 1968 and died at just 64 (the same age Bush, Sr. was when he was running for his first term for President in 1988, and a year younger than Willard running in this past election).
Still, I have little sympathy for him. The agenda he supported and passed in DC has had a horrific effect on the country (from the drastic expansion of big government, entitlements, so-called immigration “reform”, and the reenslavement of the Black community to the Democrat party), and we’ve never recovered from it. The big question remains if Nixon had been recognized as the legitimate victor in 1960, would he have resisted such efforts or would the GOP have saddled the country with that “Great Society” agenda ?