JFK SAYS HE WILL KEEP LBJ

November 15, 2013

JFK SAYS HE WILL KEEP LBJ AND JACKIE TALKS ABOUT TEXAS TRIP

Palm Beach  (JFK+50) President John F. Kennedy flew to spend the weekend here in Palm Beach 50 years ago today, November 15, 1963 and there, according to Thurston Clarke's new book "JFK's Last Hundred Days," talked privately about retaining Lyndon B. Johnson on the 1964 Democratic ticket as his Vice President.*

JFK and LBJ

South Lawn, The White House

August 31, 1961

Photo by Abbie Rowe

JFK Library Image

Mr. Clarke writes that Senator George Smathers of Florida, a close friend of JFK, remarked...

"'Everybody on the Hill says Bobby is trying to knock Johnson off the ticket.'"

That statement elicited a "vehement" denial from the President.  

JFK said...

"'I love this job, I love every second of it."

Clarke says that JFK asked what the point would be of "picking a fight" with LBJ which might cost him to lose the South in 1964.

He also brought up the Bobby Baker scandal.  JFK said...

"Life magazine would put...pictures of these...ladies running around with no clothes on...pictures of Bobby Baker and hoodlums and vending machines, and then the last picture would be of me.  And it would say 'Mess in Washington under Kennedy Regime...'"

Thurston Clarke identifies LBJ as the "likely source for the rumors that Bobby (Kennedy) was scheming to replace him."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, spending the weekend end at the vacation home, Wexford, in Virginia, talked on the telephone about the upcoming trip to Texas with her social secretary, Letitia Baldrige.

Clarke tells us that during the conversation, Jackie said...

"You won't believe it, but I'm going campaigning in Texas with Jack next week, and I'm going because I want to."

Kennedys Arrive in Dallas

Love Field, Nov 22 1963

Photo by Cecil Stoughton

JFK Library Image

It was brought out in a JFK television documentary airing this week that the trip to Texas was the first time the First Lady had taken a domestic trip with the President during his term of office.

*Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's personal secretary, later said that JFK told her privately that his VP running mate in 1964 "would not be Lyndon."


SOURCE

"JFK's Last Hundred Days:  The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President,"  by Thurston Clarke, Penguin Books, New York, 2013. 

LETITIA BALDRIGE, JACKIE KENNEDY'S CHIEF OF STAFF, DEAD

LETITIA BALDRIGE, JACKIE KENNEDY'S CHIEF OF STAFF, DEAD

Bethesda, Maryland (JFK+50) Letitia Baldrige, White House Chief of Staff for 1st Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, passed away here in Bethesda on Monday, October 29 at the age of 86.

Letitia Baldrige was born in Miami, Florida on February 9, 1926 & grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.

Her father was a lawyer & won election as a state legislator & United States Congressman.

At the age of 35, she left her position as public relations director for Tiffany & Company to become Jacqueline Kennedy's social secretary at the White House.

                        Letitia Baldrige
                       Social Secretary
                      The White House
                     JFK Library Photo

She left in June 1963 to work at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.

In an oral history interview recorded for the JFK Library in 1964, Ms. Baldrige said:

"(JFK) was like a wonderful department store manager who...knows everybody's name & knows how all the departments work &...how to wrap packages better than the wrappers in the wrapping room."

Many years later, she said:

"I would wager that if you asked any American woman which administration would she have most liked to work for as social secretary, she would pick Jacqueline Kennedy's White House as the place to be."

Sources

"Letitia Baldrige, Etiquette Maven, Is Dead at 86," by Anita Gates, The New York Times Obituaries, October 31, 2012.

"Letitia Baldrige, Kennedy White House Social Secretary, 1st Lady's Chief of Staff, dead at 86." foxnews.com/AP