Chief of staff - Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency

A sometimes defensive, sometimes hagiographic, but revealing account of LBJ’s confidant and sidekick. Lyndon Johnson was, famously, a tall and imposing man who “would come close, invading your physical space, leaning over you, touching you, grabbing your elbow or arm,” all by way of steering a person into doing his will. And that was the good part: writes Watson, who served as Johnson’s chief of staff and, later and briefly, Postmaster General, LBJ could be quite the brute (though, in deference to Watson’s Christian sensibilities, didn’t curse around him).

Little bits of dish pop up throughout this memoir, some illuminating (Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t like Jack Kennedy one damn bit, Jim Garrison was certifiably crazy), some not. More substantively, Watson tells the tale of an ever-so-carefully hatched plot on the part of Robert Kennedy to steal away the 1964 Democratic Convention, a maneuver that Watson quashed just in time. “The fact that I had uncovered and thwarted Robert Kennedy’s scheme to seek the presidency did not deter him from lobbying for an alternative plan to become Lyndon Johnson’s running mate for Vice President,” Watson offers by way of denouement, an alternative that Johnson, as sensitive as a Mafia don to loyalty and disloyalty, declined. (Another bit of dish: Interior Secretary Stewart Udall pulled a minor coup when, in the last few days of LBJ’s presidency, he authorized the naming of Washington’s municipal stadium after RFK.)

Though indifferently written (with the help of fellow LBJ staffer Markman), Watson’s memoir shows just how tirelessly LBJ worked, putting in very long days, shunning vacations, keeping tabs on everyone and everything, mastering vast troves of information, and demanding that those around him work just as hard, all in contrast, say, with the reported habits of the current president, who might learn a thing or two from his über-Texan predecessor—especially on how badly planned wars can bring an administration down. Mostly mundane, but a decent companion and sometimes corrective to Robert Caro’s big-picture portraits of LBJ.

Pub Date : 17/09/2004
ISBN : 0-312-28504-3
Publisher : Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online : May 20th, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue : June 15th, 2004
Author : W. Marvin Watson, Sherwin Markman