JFK's Final Days: November 12, 1963
On Tuesday, November 12, 1963 (50 years ago today) President John F. Kennedy's day had at least two important themes: Cuba and re-election. Author Thurston Clarke, in his recent book entitled JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, tells us that on November 12, 1963, Kennedy chaired a meeting of senior administration officials to discuss the issue of getting rid of Fidel Castro. The President was discouraged to learn from CIA Director John McCone that Castro's military remained fiercely loyal to the Cuban strongman. Desmond Fitzgerald, who was in charge of the CIA's anti-Castro activities, reported that US sanctions against Cuba weren't doing very much because Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom continued to trade with the Cubans. In spite of the ineffectiveness of the US effort against Castro, the group agreed to continue their efforts because they didn't cost that much and because they helped the morale of the anti-Castro Cubans in the United States. Kennedy also agreed to used private diplomatic channels to send an invitation to Dr. Rene Vallejo, one of Castro's main advisers, to visit the United States.
Later that day, Kennedy's mind turned towards his re-election in 1964. Clarke writes, at pages 291-2:
Kennedy convened the first formal meeting of his re-election team in the cabinet room on Tuesday afternoon. Attending it were his brother Bobby, his brother-in-law Stephen Smith, who would be managing the campaign, his political advisers Lawrence O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, Ted Sorensen, John Bailey who chaired the Democratic National Committee (DNC), DNC Treasurer Richard Maguire and Richard Scammon, the Director of the Census Bureau. Vice-President Johnson had not been invited.
[The President's secretary Mrs. Evelyn] Lincoln noticed that Johnson's name appearing less often on the list of invitees to crucial policy and planning meetings in 1963. Her record of the private conferences between him and the president showed them meeting alone for more than ten hours in 1961, but only for seventy-five minutes in 1963. It is unlikely Kennedy simply forgot to invite him to the meeting, because he frequently complained about Johnson's sensitivity and must have known he would be hurt to be excluded from the first major planning session for the 1964 campaign. Johnson had left for his Texas ranch two days earlier but would surely have stayed in Washington to attend an important meeting like this one. Sorensen believed he had been excluded because he was "not part of the inner circle and did not have the warmest relations with - or full confidence of - everyone in that room," a polite way of saying that, as Sorensen well knew, Kennedy had little confidence in his ability to perform the only vice-presidential duty that really mattered, assuming the presidency.
Their relationship had reached a nadir that fall after Johnson aligned himself with the hard-line Diem supporters in the administration and criticized the wheat deal. He sat silently at White House meetings, offering a few mumbled remarks or becoming infuriatingly loquacious. Kennedy may not have wanted him around because he was afraid that a man who considered himself more politically astute than anyone else in the White House would try to dominate the meeting, and perhaps because he was undecided about keeping him on the ticket. Even so, it was a curious omission, since the meeting concerned a re-election campaign in which Johnson's home state that would play a key role. Kennedy even raised the subject of his forthcoming visit to Texas at the meeting, saying in an irritated voice that he would be seeking campaign funds as well as votes, and adding, "Massachusetts has given us about two and a half million, New York has been good to us, but when are we actually going to get some money out of those rich people in Texas?"
Later that day, Kennedy's mind turned towards his re-election in 1964. Clarke writes, at pages 291-2:
Kennedy convened the first formal meeting of his re-election team in the cabinet room on Tuesday afternoon. Attending it were his brother Bobby, his brother-in-law Stephen Smith, who would be managing the campaign, his political advisers Lawrence O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, Ted Sorensen, John Bailey who chaired the Democratic National Committee (DNC), DNC Treasurer Richard Maguire and Richard Scammon, the Director of the Census Bureau. Vice-President Johnson had not been invited.
[The President's secretary Mrs. Evelyn] Lincoln noticed that Johnson's name appearing less often on the list of invitees to crucial policy and planning meetings in 1963. Her record of the private conferences between him and the president showed them meeting alone for more than ten hours in 1961, but only for seventy-five minutes in 1963. It is unlikely Kennedy simply forgot to invite him to the meeting, because he frequently complained about Johnson's sensitivity and must have known he would be hurt to be excluded from the first major planning session for the 1964 campaign. Johnson had left for his Texas ranch two days earlier but would surely have stayed in Washington to attend an important meeting like this one. Sorensen believed he had been excluded because he was "not part of the inner circle and did not have the warmest relations with - or full confidence of - everyone in that room," a polite way of saying that, as Sorensen well knew, Kennedy had little confidence in his ability to perform the only vice-presidential duty that really mattered, assuming the presidency.
Their relationship had reached a nadir that fall after Johnson aligned himself with the hard-line Diem supporters in the administration and criticized the wheat deal. He sat silently at White House meetings, offering a few mumbled remarks or becoming infuriatingly loquacious. Kennedy may not have wanted him around because he was afraid that a man who considered himself more politically astute than anyone else in the White House would try to dominate the meeting, and perhaps because he was undecided about keeping him on the ticket. Even so, it was a curious omission, since the meeting concerned a re-election campaign in which Johnson's home state that would play a key role. Kennedy even raised the subject of his forthcoming visit to Texas at the meeting, saying in an irritated voice that he would be seeking campaign funds as well as votes, and adding, "Massachusetts has given us about two and a half million, New York has been good to us, but when are we actually going to get some money out of those rich people in Texas?"