He'll Let Us Know

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

What must have been going through that handsome head as John Connally sat in the Cannon Office Building last week remembering the murder of John Kennedy? So many memories and regrets. So near for so many years to the power he sought, yet still so far away. Sitting there in the very building where he had first entered national politics 39 years ago as an aide to Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson. A President still in search of portfolio.

It must have been a heartache of many kinds. There was the horror of the assassination, of course, and the memory of his own wounds. And, back in Washington again, back in the spotlight, he must have pondered once more why he had not become President, why he should be President. There was not a flicker of that in his public testimony. But just as sure as the day was Wednesday, it was inside. All that testimony about the assassination will not put to rest the questions, the theories about conspiracy within and without the Government. But that may not have been the important thing.

Would the hearing make a difference for John Connally, draw attention to the man who feels he could be President? So many other events and coincidences had made differences during his long career. Had Connally not changed from a Democrat to a Republican, and had he stayed in Texas watching the Watergate drama and the tragedy of Richard Nixon, he might have won the Democratic nomination in 1976 and been President today. Or if Richard Nixon had only taken Connally's advice--made at least a partial confession of his involvement in the Watergate cover-up--he might have ridden out the storm and then that same John Connally might have been President. But a Republican President. Small difference to John Connally, who plays life as it lays.

Connally has been part of more of our history than we sometimes realize. He tried to get Lyndon Johnson the nomination in 1960. Failing that, he joined the Kennedy Administration as Secretary of the Navy. He was a good one. Then he went back to become Governor of Texas. In his first year came Dallas, and later Richard Nixon, the man who was mesmerized by Connally. He became Secretary of the Treasury, but Nixon tantalized him with the vision of being his Vice President and finally moving into the Republican mainstream and the presidency. That is the kind of wide-screen thinking John Connally liked. Too much.

How much was it raw ambition on Connally's part that made him change parties? How much prescience, a feeling for the conservative turn the nation was about to take? Certainly a little of both. In any event, he was tossed along on the great tides of history from Dallas to last week--nearly 15 tumultuous years. A talented and exciting man who seemed to just miss being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

Was Connally coming back into the nation's future? He was a powerful figure before the committee, directed the drama, played the lead role, gave the epilogue. He was attentive to the Congressmen, one of whom is half his age, just 18 when the shots were fired on Nov. 22, 1963. He was not afraid to describe the shots, the blood, the brains, the feeling. Connall did not waver. The men in front of him were reduced to size. Once he referred to "Senator" Kennedy. John Kennedy had never really been more than that to the Texans.

John Connally left the building he had entered 39 years ago and stood in the brilliant sunshine in his elegant tailoring and the funny little hat he always wears. He is an old-fashioned man in many ways, but one who relishes the world. He has always believed he could mold it.

Where was the Governor bound?

Back to Texas to do a little campaigning for other candidates, he said.

Not for himself?

"Oh no, not me," he laughed. "But when the November elections are over, I intend to sit down and do some thinking. If I decide to go I'll sure let you all know." As John Connally talked and joked, he was standing there on the very top of the hill that looks out over all of Washington. We may be hearing.

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