When Bobby Gulped

In the continuing clash of personalities and political purposes between President Lyndon Johnson and New York's Senator Robert Kennedy, there "is a meaning which may continue to agitate the Democratic Party for some years to come."

So says Theodore H. White in his new book, The Making of the President 1964 (Atheneum; $6.95). As White points out, everyone knows that Lyndon and Bobby have never had much use for each other. "The indifference of Robert F. Kennedy to Lyndon John son during his brother's Presidency had been embittering," writes White. "So, too, was Kennedy's abruptness of manner. Kennedy, a man as straightfor ward as Johnson is complicated, had not so much offended Johnson as ignored him."

This mutual lack of admiration was never more obvious than in the way that Johnson handled Bobby's aspira tions to be his vice-presidential running mate, and it is in recounting that incident that White's book strikes most of its sparks. With Bobby-for-Vice-President trial balloons going up all over the country, the President in late July 1964 summoned the Attorney General to the White House. Versions differ, more in tone than detail, as to just what happened, and White gives both sides.

His Voice Was Funny. Bobby's version, according to White: "The President had looked at the wall, then looked at the floor, then said that he'd been thinking about the Vice-Presidency in terms of who'd be the biggest help to the country and the Party--and help to him, personally. And that person wasn't Bobby. The Attorney General had said fine, and offered to help and support him. The Attorney General had been restrained during the entire conversation--he knew that the President had taken to the habit of recording conversations in his office on tape, and he could see that the buttons were down and the tape recorder was on."

White himself did not talk to President Johnson about the incident, but he tells about a long luncheon that the President had with three senior Washington reporters* two days after the session with Kennedy. Writes White: "When he'd called Bobby on Monday, the President told his three visitors, he could sense that Bobby's voice was kind of funny . . . Then, on Wednesday, when Bobby had come at 1 o'clock, Bobby had sat there in the chair to the right of his desk and he'd sat behind the desk. He'd told Bobby he approved of his desire to run the country some day, but after giving the matter a lot of thought he had decided that he wasn't going to ask him to run for

Vice-President with him this time. The President had watched Bobby when he said that, and he remembered that Bobby had said nothing, just gulped. The President, at this point in his recounting of events, gulped himself to show how Bobby had done it ... They had then, according to the President, discussed how the announcement should be made, and Bobby had said he wanted time to think it over."

In any event, says White, when Bobby heard that Johnson had been talking with newsmen, he was enraged, protested to Johnson about "this breach of confidence. The President assured the Attorney General that he hadn't told anyone about their conversation. The Attorney General observed directly to the President that the President was not telling the truth."

"Let's Lob One." As for the rest of the book, which is certain to be a bestseller, White had his problems. In The Making of the President 1960, he told the story of one of the most exciting, closely fought elections in U.S. history. In telling of 1964, he is at the mercy of his material--one of the dullest, most one-sided elections ever.

Still, he makes a brave try, recording scores of small but interesting scenes. There is President Johnson, the day after he took office, emotionally telling Dwight Eisenhower "that it was up to him to carry out the Kennedy dream, the Kennedy vision"--and being advised to buckle down to work right away on the budget and the economy. (He did.) There is Barry Goldwater, musing about foreign policy: "Let's lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin." There is Lyndon, dressing for the Atlantic City convention with the door of his White House bedroom open--a figure of triumph in undershorts.

But for all that, Author White was stuck with the fact that, as he says, the election "was over before it began."

* New York Timesman Tom Wicker, the Washington Post's Eddie Folliard, the New York Herald Tribune's Douglas Kiker--all of whom wrote guarded accounts of the meeting.

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