Why did Robert F. Kennedy loathe Lyndon B. Johnson?Did President Kennedy really cut 100,000 government jobs during his presidency?Did Ted Kennedy turn to the Soviet Union for help winning an election?Were any other members of the Kennedy (Political) family affected by Addison's disease?Why did Thomas Jefferson almost lose the 1800 presidential election to Aaron Burr?Why did Abraham Lincoln choose Andrew Johnson as a vice presidential running mate?Did John F. Kennedy know about his judicial nominee's racism?Was the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson a “media circus”?Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?Why did Kennedy refuse any military action in Laos at first and then decided otherwise by sending combat troops?

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Why did Robert F. Kennedy loathe Lyndon B. Johnson?


Did President Kennedy really cut 100,000 government jobs during his presidency?Did Ted Kennedy turn to the Soviet Union for help winning an election?Were any other members of the Kennedy (Political) family affected by Addison's disease?Why did Thomas Jefferson almost lose the 1800 presidential election to Aaron Burr?Why did Abraham Lincoln choose Andrew Johnson as a vice presidential running mate?Did John F. Kennedy know about his judicial nominee's racism?Was the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson a “media circus”?Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?Why did Kennedy refuse any military action in Laos at first and then decided otherwise by sending combat troops?






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margin-bottom:0;

.everyonelovesstackoverflowposition:absolute;height:1px;width:1px;opacity:0;top:0;left:0;pointer-events:none;








16

















Robert Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson but it's not clear to me why.



Johnson was a dutiful vice-president and honored JFK's legacy by passing the civil rights act that Kennedy would likely have been incapable of passing himself.



One may say it was Vietnam, but the hostilities seem to have begun far earlier than that. Not to mention that it was the Kennedy administration which got the US into that quagmire and LBJ was pretty much just left holding the bag with an impossible situation beyond his control



So, why did RFK hate LBJ?










share|improve this question























  • 11





    You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

    – Mark Olson
    Jul 5 at 1:16







  • 8





    "plainly obvious" in what source?

    – Aaron Brick
    Jul 5 at 1:19

















16

















Robert Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson but it's not clear to me why.



Johnson was a dutiful vice-president and honored JFK's legacy by passing the civil rights act that Kennedy would likely have been incapable of passing himself.



One may say it was Vietnam, but the hostilities seem to have begun far earlier than that. Not to mention that it was the Kennedy administration which got the US into that quagmire and LBJ was pretty much just left holding the bag with an impossible situation beyond his control



So, why did RFK hate LBJ?










share|improve this question























  • 11





    You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

    – Mark Olson
    Jul 5 at 1:16







  • 8





    "plainly obvious" in what source?

    – Aaron Brick
    Jul 5 at 1:19













16












16








16


2






Robert Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson but it's not clear to me why.



Johnson was a dutiful vice-president and honored JFK's legacy by passing the civil rights act that Kennedy would likely have been incapable of passing himself.



One may say it was Vietnam, but the hostilities seem to have begun far earlier than that. Not to mention that it was the Kennedy administration which got the US into that quagmire and LBJ was pretty much just left holding the bag with an impossible situation beyond his control



So, why did RFK hate LBJ?










share|improve this question

















Robert Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson but it's not clear to me why.



Johnson was a dutiful vice-president and honored JFK's legacy by passing the civil rights act that Kennedy would likely have been incapable of passing himself.



One may say it was Vietnam, but the hostilities seem to have begun far earlier than that. Not to mention that it was the Kennedy administration which got the US into that quagmire and LBJ was pretty much just left holding the bag with an impossible situation beyond his control



So, why did RFK hate LBJ?







united-states political-history 1960s






share|improve this question
















share|improve this question













share|improve this question




share|improve this question








edited Jul 8 at 13:17









Mark C. Wallace

24.9k9 gold badges77 silver badges121 bronze badges




24.9k9 gold badges77 silver badges121 bronze badges










asked Jul 4 at 23:45









Duke LetoDuke Leto

5141 gold badge5 silver badges11 bronze badges




5141 gold badge5 silver badges11 bronze badges










  • 11





    You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

    – Mark Olson
    Jul 5 at 1:16







  • 8





    "plainly obvious" in what source?

    – Aaron Brick
    Jul 5 at 1:19












  • 11





    You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

    – Mark Olson
    Jul 5 at 1:16







  • 8





    "plainly obvious" in what source?

    – Aaron Brick
    Jul 5 at 1:19







11




11





You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

– Mark Olson
Jul 5 at 1:16






You're looking for reasons beyond them both being aggressive, egotistical, overbearing asses [note that these are not necessarily bad traits in a politician!} who were political rivals? And as a Yankee, was prejudiced against Southerners? And was 30 years younger? (I think it was a miracle they worked together at all.)

– Mark Olson
Jul 5 at 1:16





8




8





"plainly obvious" in what source?

– Aaron Brick
Jul 5 at 1:19





"plainly obvious" in what source?

– Aaron Brick
Jul 5 at 1:19










1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes


















36


















Robert A. Caro's The Passage of Power goes into some detail on this, dating RFK's antipathy towards LBJ to before they had met for the first time. Leaving aside the political aspects (especially disagreements over Vietnam) which are mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Robert F. Kennedy, Caro relates the first meeting between the two in January 1953 in the Senate cafeteria where RFK was sitting at a table with Joseph McCarthy and others:




As Johnson, Busby and Reedy walked by, McCarthy, as was his custom,
jumped up to shake Johnson’s hand, calling him, as senators were
already starting to do, “Leader,” and McCarthy’s staffers also rose—
except, quite conspicuously, for Bobby, who sat unmoving, with a look
on his face that Busby described as “sort of a glower.”



Lyndon Johnson knew how to handle that situation. Moving around
the table, he extended his hand to take McCarthy’s and those of the
standing staffers, and, when he got to Bobby Kennedy, stood there, with
his hand not exactly extended but, in Busby’s words, “sort of halfraised,”
looking down at Kennedy. For a long moment Kennedy didn’t
move. The glower had deepened into something more. “Bobby could
really look hating,” Busby says, “and that was how he looked then. He
didn’t want to get up, but Johnson was kind of forcing him to,” and
finally, without looking Johnson in the eye, he stood up and shook his
hand.



Later, after the Johnson group had finished their breakfast and were
leaving the cafeteria, Busby asked, “What was that all about in
there?” and Johnson replied, “It’s about Roosevelt and his
father.”...The long relationship between Joseph P. Kennedy and
Franklin Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson,
the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protégé.




To make things worse, LBJ had for many years been telling the story of how Roosevelt (FDR) had fired Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to the UK (LBJ had been in the presence of Roosevelt when FDR had spoken to the elder Kennedy on the phone):




Johnson related how Roosevelt, in his booming voice, had said, “Joe,
how are ya? Been sittin’ here with Lyndon just thinkin’ about you, and
I want to talk to you, my son. Can’t wait.… Make it tonight,” and
then, hanging up the phone and turning to him, had said, with a smile,
“I’m gonna fire the sonofabitch.”




This was, unsurprisingly, humiliating to RFK, who was very close to his father, especially as Johnson, a skilled raconteur, told the story many times and, apparently, with great relish while making use of his gift for mimicry.



LBJ friend and advisor Tommy Corcoran related another incident when RFK felt the Kennedy name to have been slighted by LBJ, this one concerning the run-up to the 1956 presidential election and Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to gain the Democratic nomination. At a meeting with Corcoran, Joseph Kennedy, accompanied by his son RFK, made an offer:




If Johnson would announce his intention to run for President and
promise privately to take Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe would
arrange financing for the ticket.




Source: Robert Dallek, 'Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908–1960'



Later,




Corcoran put the proposition before Lyndon, who turned it down.
“Lyndon told me he wasn’t running and I told Joe,” Corcoran recalls.
“Young Bobby … was infuriated. He believed it was unforgivably
discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”




Source: Dallek



Corcoran also relates that the calmer JFK was “more circumspect" about the rejected offer. Geoffrey Hodgson, in JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents, also mentions a later incident of LBJ attacking Joseph Kennedy, this time at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. LBJ




attacked the founding father of the Kennedy clan.... Joseph P. Kennedy,
ambassador to London before World War II, had been distinctly
sympathetic to those British conservatives led by Neville Chamberlain,
the prime minister always portrayed by the cartoonists with an
umbrella, who sought to appease Hitler. “I wasn’t any
Chamberlain-umbrella policy man,” LBJ assured the Washington state
delegation. “I never thought Hitler was right.” Robert Kennedy, for
one, never forgot or forgave this slur on his father




But there was more to it than that:




But there was also the aspect that lay beyond the political, and
beyond analysis, too, the aspect that led George Reedy to ask, “Did
you ever see two dogs come into a room … ?” There was Bobby’s hatred
for liars, and his feeling that Lyndon Johnson “lies all the time …
lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.” There was his hatred for
yes-men—and for those who wanted to be surrounded by yes-men—and
Johnson’s insistence on being surrounded by such men, an insistence
which, Bobby was to say, “makes it very difficult, unless you want to
kiss his behind all the time.” He detested the politician’s false
bonhomie, and Johnson embodied that bonhomie. “He [Bobby] recoiled at
being touched,” and of course Lyndon Johnson was always touching and
hugging. And talking. “It was southwestern exaggeration against Yankee
understatement,” Arthur Schlesinger has written. “Robert Kennedy, in
the New England manner, liked people to keep their physical distance.
Johnson … was all over everybody.” So many of Bobby Kennedy’s pet
hates were embodied in Lyndon Johnson.




Source: Caro



Caro also cites Harry McPerson, who was LBJ's counsel and speechwriter, and William vanden Heuvel, assistant to RFK:




Says Harry McPherson, who had worked for Johnson before the vice
presidency, “If your brother is President, and you’ve got this
powerhouse accustomed to being in command as Vice President, it would
make you as suspicious as anything.” Kennedy’s aide William vanden
Heuvel says that Robert Kennedy saw Johnson as “a manipulative force”
who could, if he ever got off his leash, be very difficult to rein in
again. So the leash had to be kept tight.




Source: Caro



Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol goes into great depth on the LBJ - RFK relationship. However, as Caro observes by citing RFK himself, there was a recognition of LBJ's consummate political skills:




“I can’t stand the bastard,” he once said to Richard Goodwin, “but
he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” “He just eats up
strong men,” he said on another occasion. “The fact is that he’s able
to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong
figures.”







share|improve this answer





























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    36


















    Robert A. Caro's The Passage of Power goes into some detail on this, dating RFK's antipathy towards LBJ to before they had met for the first time. Leaving aside the political aspects (especially disagreements over Vietnam) which are mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Robert F. Kennedy, Caro relates the first meeting between the two in January 1953 in the Senate cafeteria where RFK was sitting at a table with Joseph McCarthy and others:




    As Johnson, Busby and Reedy walked by, McCarthy, as was his custom,
    jumped up to shake Johnson’s hand, calling him, as senators were
    already starting to do, “Leader,” and McCarthy’s staffers also rose—
    except, quite conspicuously, for Bobby, who sat unmoving, with a look
    on his face that Busby described as “sort of a glower.”



    Lyndon Johnson knew how to handle that situation. Moving around
    the table, he extended his hand to take McCarthy’s and those of the
    standing staffers, and, when he got to Bobby Kennedy, stood there, with
    his hand not exactly extended but, in Busby’s words, “sort of halfraised,”
    looking down at Kennedy. For a long moment Kennedy didn’t
    move. The glower had deepened into something more. “Bobby could
    really look hating,” Busby says, “and that was how he looked then. He
    didn’t want to get up, but Johnson was kind of forcing him to,” and
    finally, without looking Johnson in the eye, he stood up and shook his
    hand.



    Later, after the Johnson group had finished their breakfast and were
    leaving the cafeteria, Busby asked, “What was that all about in
    there?” and Johnson replied, “It’s about Roosevelt and his
    father.”...The long relationship between Joseph P. Kennedy and
    Franklin Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson,
    the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protégé.




    To make things worse, LBJ had for many years been telling the story of how Roosevelt (FDR) had fired Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to the UK (LBJ had been in the presence of Roosevelt when FDR had spoken to the elder Kennedy on the phone):




    Johnson related how Roosevelt, in his booming voice, had said, “Joe,
    how are ya? Been sittin’ here with Lyndon just thinkin’ about you, and
    I want to talk to you, my son. Can’t wait.… Make it tonight,” and
    then, hanging up the phone and turning to him, had said, with a smile,
    “I’m gonna fire the sonofabitch.”




    This was, unsurprisingly, humiliating to RFK, who was very close to his father, especially as Johnson, a skilled raconteur, told the story many times and, apparently, with great relish while making use of his gift for mimicry.



    LBJ friend and advisor Tommy Corcoran related another incident when RFK felt the Kennedy name to have been slighted by LBJ, this one concerning the run-up to the 1956 presidential election and Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to gain the Democratic nomination. At a meeting with Corcoran, Joseph Kennedy, accompanied by his son RFK, made an offer:




    If Johnson would announce his intention to run for President and
    promise privately to take Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe would
    arrange financing for the ticket.




    Source: Robert Dallek, 'Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908–1960'



    Later,




    Corcoran put the proposition before Lyndon, who turned it down.
    “Lyndon told me he wasn’t running and I told Joe,” Corcoran recalls.
    “Young Bobby … was infuriated. He believed it was unforgivably
    discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”




    Source: Dallek



    Corcoran also relates that the calmer JFK was “more circumspect" about the rejected offer. Geoffrey Hodgson, in JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents, also mentions a later incident of LBJ attacking Joseph Kennedy, this time at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. LBJ




    attacked the founding father of the Kennedy clan.... Joseph P. Kennedy,
    ambassador to London before World War II, had been distinctly
    sympathetic to those British conservatives led by Neville Chamberlain,
    the prime minister always portrayed by the cartoonists with an
    umbrella, who sought to appease Hitler. “I wasn’t any
    Chamberlain-umbrella policy man,” LBJ assured the Washington state
    delegation. “I never thought Hitler was right.” Robert Kennedy, for
    one, never forgot or forgave this slur on his father




    But there was more to it than that:




    But there was also the aspect that lay beyond the political, and
    beyond analysis, too, the aspect that led George Reedy to ask, “Did
    you ever see two dogs come into a room … ?” There was Bobby’s hatred
    for liars, and his feeling that Lyndon Johnson “lies all the time …
    lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.” There was his hatred for
    yes-men—and for those who wanted to be surrounded by yes-men—and
    Johnson’s insistence on being surrounded by such men, an insistence
    which, Bobby was to say, “makes it very difficult, unless you want to
    kiss his behind all the time.” He detested the politician’s false
    bonhomie, and Johnson embodied that bonhomie. “He [Bobby] recoiled at
    being touched,” and of course Lyndon Johnson was always touching and
    hugging. And talking. “It was southwestern exaggeration against Yankee
    understatement,” Arthur Schlesinger has written. “Robert Kennedy, in
    the New England manner, liked people to keep their physical distance.
    Johnson … was all over everybody.” So many of Bobby Kennedy’s pet
    hates were embodied in Lyndon Johnson.




    Source: Caro



    Caro also cites Harry McPerson, who was LBJ's counsel and speechwriter, and William vanden Heuvel, assistant to RFK:




    Says Harry McPherson, who had worked for Johnson before the vice
    presidency, “If your brother is President, and you’ve got this
    powerhouse accustomed to being in command as Vice President, it would
    make you as suspicious as anything.” Kennedy’s aide William vanden
    Heuvel says that Robert Kennedy saw Johnson as “a manipulative force”
    who could, if he ever got off his leash, be very difficult to rein in
    again. So the leash had to be kept tight.




    Source: Caro



    Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol goes into great depth on the LBJ - RFK relationship. However, as Caro observes by citing RFK himself, there was a recognition of LBJ's consummate political skills:




    “I can’t stand the bastard,” he once said to Richard Goodwin, “but
    he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” “He just eats up
    strong men,” he said on another occasion. “The fact is that he’s able
    to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong
    figures.”







    share|improve this answer
































      36


















      Robert A. Caro's The Passage of Power goes into some detail on this, dating RFK's antipathy towards LBJ to before they had met for the first time. Leaving aside the political aspects (especially disagreements over Vietnam) which are mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Robert F. Kennedy, Caro relates the first meeting between the two in January 1953 in the Senate cafeteria where RFK was sitting at a table with Joseph McCarthy and others:




      As Johnson, Busby and Reedy walked by, McCarthy, as was his custom,
      jumped up to shake Johnson’s hand, calling him, as senators were
      already starting to do, “Leader,” and McCarthy’s staffers also rose—
      except, quite conspicuously, for Bobby, who sat unmoving, with a look
      on his face that Busby described as “sort of a glower.”



      Lyndon Johnson knew how to handle that situation. Moving around
      the table, he extended his hand to take McCarthy’s and those of the
      standing staffers, and, when he got to Bobby Kennedy, stood there, with
      his hand not exactly extended but, in Busby’s words, “sort of halfraised,”
      looking down at Kennedy. For a long moment Kennedy didn’t
      move. The glower had deepened into something more. “Bobby could
      really look hating,” Busby says, “and that was how he looked then. He
      didn’t want to get up, but Johnson was kind of forcing him to,” and
      finally, without looking Johnson in the eye, he stood up and shook his
      hand.



      Later, after the Johnson group had finished their breakfast and were
      leaving the cafeteria, Busby asked, “What was that all about in
      there?” and Johnson replied, “It’s about Roosevelt and his
      father.”...The long relationship between Joseph P. Kennedy and
      Franklin Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson,
      the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protégé.




      To make things worse, LBJ had for many years been telling the story of how Roosevelt (FDR) had fired Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to the UK (LBJ had been in the presence of Roosevelt when FDR had spoken to the elder Kennedy on the phone):




      Johnson related how Roosevelt, in his booming voice, had said, “Joe,
      how are ya? Been sittin’ here with Lyndon just thinkin’ about you, and
      I want to talk to you, my son. Can’t wait.… Make it tonight,” and
      then, hanging up the phone and turning to him, had said, with a smile,
      “I’m gonna fire the sonofabitch.”




      This was, unsurprisingly, humiliating to RFK, who was very close to his father, especially as Johnson, a skilled raconteur, told the story many times and, apparently, with great relish while making use of his gift for mimicry.



      LBJ friend and advisor Tommy Corcoran related another incident when RFK felt the Kennedy name to have been slighted by LBJ, this one concerning the run-up to the 1956 presidential election and Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to gain the Democratic nomination. At a meeting with Corcoran, Joseph Kennedy, accompanied by his son RFK, made an offer:




      If Johnson would announce his intention to run for President and
      promise privately to take Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe would
      arrange financing for the ticket.




      Source: Robert Dallek, 'Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908–1960'



      Later,




      Corcoran put the proposition before Lyndon, who turned it down.
      “Lyndon told me he wasn’t running and I told Joe,” Corcoran recalls.
      “Young Bobby … was infuriated. He believed it was unforgivably
      discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”




      Source: Dallek



      Corcoran also relates that the calmer JFK was “more circumspect" about the rejected offer. Geoffrey Hodgson, in JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents, also mentions a later incident of LBJ attacking Joseph Kennedy, this time at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. LBJ




      attacked the founding father of the Kennedy clan.... Joseph P. Kennedy,
      ambassador to London before World War II, had been distinctly
      sympathetic to those British conservatives led by Neville Chamberlain,
      the prime minister always portrayed by the cartoonists with an
      umbrella, who sought to appease Hitler. “I wasn’t any
      Chamberlain-umbrella policy man,” LBJ assured the Washington state
      delegation. “I never thought Hitler was right.” Robert Kennedy, for
      one, never forgot or forgave this slur on his father




      But there was more to it than that:




      But there was also the aspect that lay beyond the political, and
      beyond analysis, too, the aspect that led George Reedy to ask, “Did
      you ever see two dogs come into a room … ?” There was Bobby’s hatred
      for liars, and his feeling that Lyndon Johnson “lies all the time …
      lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.” There was his hatred for
      yes-men—and for those who wanted to be surrounded by yes-men—and
      Johnson’s insistence on being surrounded by such men, an insistence
      which, Bobby was to say, “makes it very difficult, unless you want to
      kiss his behind all the time.” He detested the politician’s false
      bonhomie, and Johnson embodied that bonhomie. “He [Bobby] recoiled at
      being touched,” and of course Lyndon Johnson was always touching and
      hugging. And talking. “It was southwestern exaggeration against Yankee
      understatement,” Arthur Schlesinger has written. “Robert Kennedy, in
      the New England manner, liked people to keep their physical distance.
      Johnson … was all over everybody.” So many of Bobby Kennedy’s pet
      hates were embodied in Lyndon Johnson.




      Source: Caro



      Caro also cites Harry McPerson, who was LBJ's counsel and speechwriter, and William vanden Heuvel, assistant to RFK:




      Says Harry McPherson, who had worked for Johnson before the vice
      presidency, “If your brother is President, and you’ve got this
      powerhouse accustomed to being in command as Vice President, it would
      make you as suspicious as anything.” Kennedy’s aide William vanden
      Heuvel says that Robert Kennedy saw Johnson as “a manipulative force”
      who could, if he ever got off his leash, be very difficult to rein in
      again. So the leash had to be kept tight.




      Source: Caro



      Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol goes into great depth on the LBJ - RFK relationship. However, as Caro observes by citing RFK himself, there was a recognition of LBJ's consummate political skills:




      “I can’t stand the bastard,” he once said to Richard Goodwin, “but
      he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” “He just eats up
      strong men,” he said on another occasion. “The fact is that he’s able
      to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong
      figures.”







      share|improve this answer






























        36














        36










        36









        Robert A. Caro's The Passage of Power goes into some detail on this, dating RFK's antipathy towards LBJ to before they had met for the first time. Leaving aside the political aspects (especially disagreements over Vietnam) which are mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Robert F. Kennedy, Caro relates the first meeting between the two in January 1953 in the Senate cafeteria where RFK was sitting at a table with Joseph McCarthy and others:




        As Johnson, Busby and Reedy walked by, McCarthy, as was his custom,
        jumped up to shake Johnson’s hand, calling him, as senators were
        already starting to do, “Leader,” and McCarthy’s staffers also rose—
        except, quite conspicuously, for Bobby, who sat unmoving, with a look
        on his face that Busby described as “sort of a glower.”



        Lyndon Johnson knew how to handle that situation. Moving around
        the table, he extended his hand to take McCarthy’s and those of the
        standing staffers, and, when he got to Bobby Kennedy, stood there, with
        his hand not exactly extended but, in Busby’s words, “sort of halfraised,”
        looking down at Kennedy. For a long moment Kennedy didn’t
        move. The glower had deepened into something more. “Bobby could
        really look hating,” Busby says, “and that was how he looked then. He
        didn’t want to get up, but Johnson was kind of forcing him to,” and
        finally, without looking Johnson in the eye, he stood up and shook his
        hand.



        Later, after the Johnson group had finished their breakfast and were
        leaving the cafeteria, Busby asked, “What was that all about in
        there?” and Johnson replied, “It’s about Roosevelt and his
        father.”...The long relationship between Joseph P. Kennedy and
        Franklin Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson,
        the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protégé.




        To make things worse, LBJ had for many years been telling the story of how Roosevelt (FDR) had fired Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to the UK (LBJ had been in the presence of Roosevelt when FDR had spoken to the elder Kennedy on the phone):




        Johnson related how Roosevelt, in his booming voice, had said, “Joe,
        how are ya? Been sittin’ here with Lyndon just thinkin’ about you, and
        I want to talk to you, my son. Can’t wait.… Make it tonight,” and
        then, hanging up the phone and turning to him, had said, with a smile,
        “I’m gonna fire the sonofabitch.”




        This was, unsurprisingly, humiliating to RFK, who was very close to his father, especially as Johnson, a skilled raconteur, told the story many times and, apparently, with great relish while making use of his gift for mimicry.



        LBJ friend and advisor Tommy Corcoran related another incident when RFK felt the Kennedy name to have been slighted by LBJ, this one concerning the run-up to the 1956 presidential election and Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to gain the Democratic nomination. At a meeting with Corcoran, Joseph Kennedy, accompanied by his son RFK, made an offer:




        If Johnson would announce his intention to run for President and
        promise privately to take Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe would
        arrange financing for the ticket.




        Source: Robert Dallek, 'Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908–1960'



        Later,




        Corcoran put the proposition before Lyndon, who turned it down.
        “Lyndon told me he wasn’t running and I told Joe,” Corcoran recalls.
        “Young Bobby … was infuriated. He believed it was unforgivably
        discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”




        Source: Dallek



        Corcoran also relates that the calmer JFK was “more circumspect" about the rejected offer. Geoffrey Hodgson, in JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents, also mentions a later incident of LBJ attacking Joseph Kennedy, this time at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. LBJ




        attacked the founding father of the Kennedy clan.... Joseph P. Kennedy,
        ambassador to London before World War II, had been distinctly
        sympathetic to those British conservatives led by Neville Chamberlain,
        the prime minister always portrayed by the cartoonists with an
        umbrella, who sought to appease Hitler. “I wasn’t any
        Chamberlain-umbrella policy man,” LBJ assured the Washington state
        delegation. “I never thought Hitler was right.” Robert Kennedy, for
        one, never forgot or forgave this slur on his father




        But there was more to it than that:




        But there was also the aspect that lay beyond the political, and
        beyond analysis, too, the aspect that led George Reedy to ask, “Did
        you ever see two dogs come into a room … ?” There was Bobby’s hatred
        for liars, and his feeling that Lyndon Johnson “lies all the time …
        lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.” There was his hatred for
        yes-men—and for those who wanted to be surrounded by yes-men—and
        Johnson’s insistence on being surrounded by such men, an insistence
        which, Bobby was to say, “makes it very difficult, unless you want to
        kiss his behind all the time.” He detested the politician’s false
        bonhomie, and Johnson embodied that bonhomie. “He [Bobby] recoiled at
        being touched,” and of course Lyndon Johnson was always touching and
        hugging. And talking. “It was southwestern exaggeration against Yankee
        understatement,” Arthur Schlesinger has written. “Robert Kennedy, in
        the New England manner, liked people to keep their physical distance.
        Johnson … was all over everybody.” So many of Bobby Kennedy’s pet
        hates were embodied in Lyndon Johnson.




        Source: Caro



        Caro also cites Harry McPerson, who was LBJ's counsel and speechwriter, and William vanden Heuvel, assistant to RFK:




        Says Harry McPherson, who had worked for Johnson before the vice
        presidency, “If your brother is President, and you’ve got this
        powerhouse accustomed to being in command as Vice President, it would
        make you as suspicious as anything.” Kennedy’s aide William vanden
        Heuvel says that Robert Kennedy saw Johnson as “a manipulative force”
        who could, if he ever got off his leash, be very difficult to rein in
        again. So the leash had to be kept tight.




        Source: Caro



        Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol goes into great depth on the LBJ - RFK relationship. However, as Caro observes by citing RFK himself, there was a recognition of LBJ's consummate political skills:




        “I can’t stand the bastard,” he once said to Richard Goodwin, “but
        he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” “He just eats up
        strong men,” he said on another occasion. “The fact is that he’s able
        to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong
        figures.”







        share|improve this answer
















        Robert A. Caro's The Passage of Power goes into some detail on this, dating RFK's antipathy towards LBJ to before they had met for the first time. Leaving aside the political aspects (especially disagreements over Vietnam) which are mentioned in the Wikipedia page on Robert F. Kennedy, Caro relates the first meeting between the two in January 1953 in the Senate cafeteria where RFK was sitting at a table with Joseph McCarthy and others:




        As Johnson, Busby and Reedy walked by, McCarthy, as was his custom,
        jumped up to shake Johnson’s hand, calling him, as senators were
        already starting to do, “Leader,” and McCarthy’s staffers also rose—
        except, quite conspicuously, for Bobby, who sat unmoving, with a look
        on his face that Busby described as “sort of a glower.”



        Lyndon Johnson knew how to handle that situation. Moving around
        the table, he extended his hand to take McCarthy’s and those of the
        standing staffers, and, when he got to Bobby Kennedy, stood there, with
        his hand not exactly extended but, in Busby’s words, “sort of halfraised,”
        looking down at Kennedy. For a long moment Kennedy didn’t
        move. The glower had deepened into something more. “Bobby could
        really look hating,” Busby says, “and that was how he looked then. He
        didn’t want to get up, but Johnson was kind of forcing him to,” and
        finally, without looking Johnson in the eye, he stood up and shook his
        hand.



        Later, after the Johnson group had finished their breakfast and were
        leaving the cafeteria, Busby asked, “What was that all about in
        there?” and Johnson replied, “It’s about Roosevelt and his
        father.”...The long relationship between Joseph P. Kennedy and
        Franklin Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson,
        the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protégé.




        To make things worse, LBJ had for many years been telling the story of how Roosevelt (FDR) had fired Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to the UK (LBJ had been in the presence of Roosevelt when FDR had spoken to the elder Kennedy on the phone):




        Johnson related how Roosevelt, in his booming voice, had said, “Joe,
        how are ya? Been sittin’ here with Lyndon just thinkin’ about you, and
        I want to talk to you, my son. Can’t wait.… Make it tonight,” and
        then, hanging up the phone and turning to him, had said, with a smile,
        “I’m gonna fire the sonofabitch.”




        This was, unsurprisingly, humiliating to RFK, who was very close to his father, especially as Johnson, a skilled raconteur, told the story many times and, apparently, with great relish while making use of his gift for mimicry.



        LBJ friend and advisor Tommy Corcoran related another incident when RFK felt the Kennedy name to have been slighted by LBJ, this one concerning the run-up to the 1956 presidential election and Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to gain the Democratic nomination. At a meeting with Corcoran, Joseph Kennedy, accompanied by his son RFK, made an offer:




        If Johnson would announce his intention to run for President and
        promise privately to take Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe would
        arrange financing for the ticket.




        Source: Robert Dallek, 'Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1908–1960'



        Later,




        Corcoran put the proposition before Lyndon, who turned it down.
        “Lyndon told me he wasn’t running and I told Joe,” Corcoran recalls.
        “Young Bobby … was infuriated. He believed it was unforgivably
        discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”




        Source: Dallek



        Corcoran also relates that the calmer JFK was “more circumspect" about the rejected offer. Geoffrey Hodgson, in JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents, also mentions a later incident of LBJ attacking Joseph Kennedy, this time at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. LBJ




        attacked the founding father of the Kennedy clan.... Joseph P. Kennedy,
        ambassador to London before World War II, had been distinctly
        sympathetic to those British conservatives led by Neville Chamberlain,
        the prime minister always portrayed by the cartoonists with an
        umbrella, who sought to appease Hitler. “I wasn’t any
        Chamberlain-umbrella policy man,” LBJ assured the Washington state
        delegation. “I never thought Hitler was right.” Robert Kennedy, for
        one, never forgot or forgave this slur on his father




        But there was more to it than that:




        But there was also the aspect that lay beyond the political, and
        beyond analysis, too, the aspect that led George Reedy to ask, “Did
        you ever see two dogs come into a room … ?” There was Bobby’s hatred
        for liars, and his feeling that Lyndon Johnson “lies all the time …
        lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.” There was his hatred for
        yes-men—and for those who wanted to be surrounded by yes-men—and
        Johnson’s insistence on being surrounded by such men, an insistence
        which, Bobby was to say, “makes it very difficult, unless you want to
        kiss his behind all the time.” He detested the politician’s false
        bonhomie, and Johnson embodied that bonhomie. “He [Bobby] recoiled at
        being touched,” and of course Lyndon Johnson was always touching and
        hugging. And talking. “It was southwestern exaggeration against Yankee
        understatement,” Arthur Schlesinger has written. “Robert Kennedy, in
        the New England manner, liked people to keep their physical distance.
        Johnson … was all over everybody.” So many of Bobby Kennedy’s pet
        hates were embodied in Lyndon Johnson.




        Source: Caro



        Caro also cites Harry McPerson, who was LBJ's counsel and speechwriter, and William vanden Heuvel, assistant to RFK:




        Says Harry McPherson, who had worked for Johnson before the vice
        presidency, “If your brother is President, and you’ve got this
        powerhouse accustomed to being in command as Vice President, it would
        make you as suspicious as anything.” Kennedy’s aide William vanden
        Heuvel says that Robert Kennedy saw Johnson as “a manipulative force”
        who could, if he ever got off his leash, be very difficult to rein in
        again. So the leash had to be kept tight.




        Source: Caro



        Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol goes into great depth on the LBJ - RFK relationship. However, as Caro observes by citing RFK himself, there was a recognition of LBJ's consummate political skills:




        “I can’t stand the bastard,” he once said to Richard Goodwin, “but
        he’s the most formidable human being I’ve ever met.” “He just eats up
        strong men,” he said on another occasion. “The fact is that he’s able
        to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong
        figures.”








        share|improve this answer















        share|improve this answer




        share|improve this answer








        edited Jul 8 at 12:56

























        answered Jul 5 at 2:01









        Lars BosteenLars Bosteen

        60.5k12 gold badges273 silver badges355 bronze badges




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