The Worst Week

Lyndon Johnson's presidency was collapsing. By day, LBJ watched as the Vietnam War worsened and his polls and credibility plummeted. Brave boasts by the generals that they could see the light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam had been swept away; now even establishment figures like CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite were saying the United States had to begin winding down the war. In the New Hampshire primary in mid-March, an upstart peace candidate, Eugene McCarthy, a senator heretofore known more for his poetical moods than his legislative achievements, had nearly upset the incumbent president. As the winter of 1968 turned to spring, LBJ's aides were telling him he would lose the Wisconsin primary to McCarthy on April 2.

Johnson dreaded the nights. He dreamt that he was lying in the Red Room of the White House, his body wasted and numb. His grandmother had been paralyzed in her last years, and so had Woodrow Wilson, another president who had struggled with the burden of war. Waking from his tortured sleep, LBJ would take a small flashlight and walk the halls of the White House until he found the portrait of Wilson. Touching the painting, he would be soothed, for the moment, and go back to bed.

Johnson was bitter. "How is it possible," he repeatedly asked, "that all these people could be so ungrateful to me after I had given them so much? Take the Negroes. I fought for them from the first day I came into office. I spilled my guts in getting them the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress … I asked so little in return. Just a little thanks. Just a little appreciation. That's all. But look what I got instead. Riots in 175 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting …" On and on, Johnson would rant, against the students and poor people who had turned against him, despite all he had done for them, "young people by the thousands leaving their universities, marching in the streets, chanting that horrible song about how many kids had I killed that day …" ("Hey! Hey! LBJ! …")

Johnson's worst dream, the most violent and diabolical, began with a twisted take on a cattle stampede. "I felt," Johnson later confided to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, "that I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions." There were "the rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, and hysterical reporters. And then the final straw. The thing that I had feared from the first day of my Presidency was actually coming true. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother. And the American people, swayed by the magic of his name, were dancing in the streets."

Sen. Robert Kennedy had announced for the presidency on March 16. On Sunday evening, March 31, Johnson was scheduled to go on national television to address the nation. The speech was supposed to be about Vietnam, and it contained some surprising news on the war front. Johnson announced that the United States would cease bombing in almost all of North Vietnam, and he invited the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. But as evening air time approached, the speech still didn't have an ending. At about 5 p.m., as Johnson's speechwriter, Harry McPherson, was laboring over a draft, the president phoned McPherson to tell him he had written his own peroration. McPherson instantly guessed what it would say. "I'm very sorry, Mr. President." "Well," Johnson replied, "I think it's best. So long, podner."

March 31, 1968, was the beginning of one of the worst weeks in American history. From works by historians like Goodwin, Taylor Branch and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., it is possible to reconstruct the inner thoughts of the major players who staggered on- and offstage that week, like doomed actors in a Greek tragedy.