Free The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro Page A

every one of the seventeen March requests), and then would regret that he had refused. Finally, in October, he agreed to visit six states in which Democratic candidates for the Senate were involved in tight races, and he told Reedy to set up small private meetings in his hotel suite after each appearance so that he could meet local political leaders. But at these meetings, he told the leaders he had come to their state strictly in his capacity as Senate Majority Leader, to help the Democratic senatorial candidate get elected; when they asked him if he would be a candidate for President, he said he would not, and said it so emphatically that they believed him. And then, as soon as he returned to Washington, he, in secret, took a step in the opposite direction. While in Tennessee, he had spoken at a Democratic fund-raising dinner that brought in $10,000 for theDemocratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Instead of having the money used in Tennessee, he directed the committee’s chairman, SenatorGeorge Smathers, to have it sent to West Virginia, to be used by Democratic officials who would have influence in that state’s 1960 Democratic primary, and to make sure the officials knew the money was coming at his, Johnson’s, direction. He told Smathers he wanted the committee’s resources husbanded for the moment—so they could be used in 1960. All through 1958, Johnson wavered between his yearning for the prize and his fear of being seen to yearn for it.
    His explanations for not becoming an active candidate—for not traveling to other states to rally delegates and leaders to his cause—varied widely. One day he would give someone the “tending the store” explanation, saying he wouldn’t campaign, at least not for a while, because that was the best strategy to win the nomination; he was going to remain the responsible leader above the fray, minding the nation’s business, while the other candidates killed themselves off in the primaries; then, when the party was deadlocked, it would turn to him.
Time
magazine’sHugh Sidey, who spoke to Johnson frequently during this time, says that he “had decided … that being above the battle was the big thing.” The next day—orto someone else the same day—he would say he didn’t want the nomination: that the South’s power was on Capitol Hill ( “This is my home,” Corcoran recalls him saying. “This is where
we
have our strength”) and that he had decided to stay there, in the Senate. On other occasions he said he wasn’t running because it was impossible for him, for anyone from the South, to win the nomination, that he was tarred not only with being a southerner but, despite his refusal ofCharles Marsh’s offer, with being an oilman as well, since he had supported legislation benefiting his state’s oil interests; even if he received the nomination, the North would never accept him, and he could not possibly win the election; therefore he would not allow himself even to be drafted; if he was drafted, he said, he would refuse. His decision, he would say on these occasions, was final.
    The year was summed up in his relationship with Rowe, who kept urging him to run. But “he didn’t do anything, said he wasn’t going to do anything. This went on for a long time. Any reasons? Just that he couldn’t make it. My argument was that you certainly can’t make it if you do nothing.” The harder Rowe pushed, however, the more adamant Johnson became. A few days after the end of the year, Rowe finally gave up, in a way that dramatized the validity of at least one aspect of his warning. He had been telling Johnson that one reason he couldn’t wait—that while he could say publicly that he wasn’t a candidate, he had to let party insiders, men with influence or power over other delegates, know that he would announce his candidacy when he judged the time right—was that these insiders were choosing up sides; many of them favored him, Rowe said, but for these political