October 26, 1997

Fear and Loathing in the White House

Why couldn't L.B.J. and Bobby Kennedy just get along?

By DAVID M. OSHINSKY

MUTUAL CONTEMPT

Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade.

By Jeff Shesol.

Illustrated. 591 pp. New York:

W. W. Norton & Company. $32.50.



n 1961, at a late-night supper in the White House living quarters, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson accosted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in front of embarrassed friends and officials. ''Bobby, you do not like me,'' Johnson declared. ''Your brother likes me. Your sister-in-law likes me. Your daddy likes me. But you don't like me. Now, why? Why don't you like me?'' Kennedy did not respond to Johnson that evening, but his feelings were clear. As Jeff Shesol notes in ''Mutual Contempt,'' a penetrating and richly detailed account of the ''feud'' that shaped the 60's, Kennedy despised Johnson with a ferocity that startled many observers, while Johnson harbored fears of Kennedy that bordered on paranoia.

Shesol, the creator of a syndicated political comic strip, is a gifted writer. His book, thoroughly researched, based on dozens of manuscript collections and interviews, adds fresh insight to a familiar story. Though Kennedy and Johnson came from different regions, social classes and generations, they shared the common trait of their New Deal Democratic Party -- identification with the underdog. What seriously divided them, apart from personal chemistry, was the struggle to lead that party in an era of domestic turmoil and political change.

The feud began in 1960, when Robert Kennedy directed his brother John's successful campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The main competitor, Johnson, the Senate majority leader, raised not only the ''Catholic issue'' but also the health problems of John F. Kennedy, who spent much of the 50's recovering from delicate spinal surgery and who had Addison's disease, an adrenal malfunction that required daily doses of cortisone. As the convention neared, Johnson described his now-robust opponent as a ''little scrawny fellow with rickets'' and other unnamed maladies. The Kennedy camp whispered about the lingering effects of Johnson's 1955 heart attack.

Neither candidate took serious offense at these charges. John Kennedy and Johnson had built a solid working relationship in Congress. Both men accepted the transparent, if sometimes venomous, nature of political campaigns. But Robert Kennedy was different. As a Senate committee aide in the 50's, he had confronted adversaries like Roy Cohn and Jimmy Hoffa with a moral fervor bordering on zealotry. Unlike his older brother, he considered the campaign slurs and insinuations to be personal attacks on his family and his church. ''Jack Kennedy is the first Irish Brahmin,'' a friend explained. ''Bobby is the last Irish Puritan.''

The Robert Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson feud took on a life of its own. With little thought (and for reasons that still are unclear), John Kennedy chose Johnson to be his running mate. When news of this selection enraged key Northern liberals, Robert Kennedy was dispatched to Johnson's hotel suite to persuade him to withdraw. He failed in his task, but did earn Johnson's enmity as a ''grandstanding little runt.''

Things quickly got worse. Johnson rankled the Kennedys by claiming credit for winning margins in Texas and other Southern states that provided the razor-thin Democratic victory in 1960. The Kennedys humbled Johnson, in turn, by denying him a meaningful role in the new Administration. When Johnson drafted a rather audacious executive order giving the Vice President ''general supervision'' of numerous Federal agencies, President Kennedy filed it away. He did treat Johnson respectfully, but the White House inner circle, led by Robert Kennedy, ignored Johnson in public and belittled him mercilessly behind closed doors. A visitor to Robert Kennedy's Virginia estate recalled a gathering at which friends gave Kennedy a Johnson voodoo doll. ''The merriment,'' he wrote, ''was overwhelming.''

In his evenhanded way, Shesol describes Johnson's Vice Presidency as a period of mental torture, fueled by Robert Kennedy's derision and Johnson's inflated expectations of the job. Denied a serious role in Washington, Johnson tried to regain his vitality by globe-trotting at a breakneck pace. Life, he said later, was a blur of ''chauffeurs, men saluting, people clapping. . . . I detested every minute of it.'' While remaining loyal to President Kennedy, he found their private meetings uncomfortable -- and increasingly rare. ''Every time I came into John Kennedy's presence,'' he said, ''I felt like a goddamn raven hovering over his shoulder.''

The President's assassination turned derision into rage. Though neutral observers were impressed by Johnson's compassion in these painful days, Robert Kennedy thought otherwise. It would have been difficult, under the best circumstances, to forget that his brother was murdered in Texas on a political visit Johnson had encouraged. Even worse, from Robert Kennedy's perspective, were rumors Johnson had behaved boorishly on the plane ride back from Dallas. In his anguish, Kennedy seethed at every move the new President made. It was ''quite clear,'' a Cabinet member recollected, that Kennedy ''could hardly countenance Lyndon Johnson sitting in his brother's seat.''

Once in office, Shesol notes, Johnson moved quickly to restore public confidence through a smooth transition of power. To provide stability in the executive branch, he persuaded many Kennedy appointees to remain at their jobs. He also made certain that Robert Kennedy, who resigned as Attorney General in September 1964, would not be his running mate that year. ''I'll quit it first!'' Johnson said. ''I don't want it that much!'' Seeking a political niche apart from White House control, Kennedy ran successfully for a Senate seat from New York. It was in Congress, Shesol writes, that he came into his own. His brother's death seemed to sensitize him to the suffering of others. He spent long hours investigating hunger in the Mississippi Delta, joblessness in the Northern ghettos and squalid conditions in the migrant camps of central California. Though he and Johnson agreed on most domestic issues, the Senator's public presence and personal magnetism easily overshadowed the President at the peak of his political success. As Shesol puts it, Johnson's Great Society ''kindled no passion, just respect; there was no emerging Johnson legend, just a Johnson record.'' Measured against the Kennedy magic, he came up short again.

It was the Vietnam War that turned this private feud into a public brawl. While Shesol is on shaky ground in describing Kennedy's supposed ambivalence about the Vietnam buildup in the early 60's, he does provide a careful critique of his evolving antiwar stance later. As his feelings intensified, Kennedy became a savior to disillusioned Democrats, a politician who expressed the anger and idealism of the New Politics by linking the Vietnam debacle to the racial and generational struggles tearing the nation apart. Shesol is correct, I believe, in claiming that Kennedy's animus shifted from Johnson's personality to his policies after 1964, while Johnson's loathing of the Senator remained a deeply personal matter.

Shortly after Kennedy announced his candidacy for President in 1968, Johnson withdrew from the race. While convinced he could win re-election, the President no longer relished the prize. The White House had become his prison, surrounded by demonstrators chanting Kennedy's name. ''I'm tired of feeling rejected by the American people,'' he said, ''tired of all these personal attacks on me.'' Johnson blamed Kennedy for spreading ''lies'' about him, in league with ''those bomb-throwing . . . fuzzy-headed Georgetown liberals.'' In June 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot by a deranged Arab nationalist in Los Angeles. As the Senator lay dying, Johnson went on national television to express his ''shock'' and ''dismay.'' That evening, Johnson repeatedly phoned the Secret Service to ask if Kennedy had died. He paced the floor for hours, phone in hand, muttering: ''I've got to know. Is he dead? Is he dead yet?''

This, sadly, was not the end of it. Though Johnson promised Kennedy's family to do ''anything I can do to help,'' he delayed their lone request -- to finance a permanent grave site for the Senator at Arlington National Cemetery, next to his brother John's. In 1969, a new President took the appropriate steps. As he signed the final authorization, Richard Nixon, who knew a thing or two about political grudges, must have smiled.