Gillon on Johnson

Cleaning the kitchen last night, I listened with one ear to Steve Gillon on C-Span flogging his new book, The Kennedy Assassination--24 Hours After. It's a super concept and it's hard to imagine why nobdy seems to have thought of it before, and it sounds like a fine book. Gillon's point is to focus on the transition, and in particular, the role of the unexpected President, the bane of all things Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson. As Gillon tells it, Johnson understood almost from the first gunshot that he was in a world-changing situation--which (subject to one possible qualification) he handled faultlessly.

If you need just one focus-point, consider the Cecil Stoughton's unforgettable photo of the swearing-in--the new President, with his wife Lady Bird at his side. Whom do we see upstage, next to the President and closest to the camera? Oh, look, it is Jackie--the wife of the dead president stands at the elbow of his successor. I can't think of anything more likely to send the message of stability and continuity, and per Gillon, it was Johnson's idea, and he was ready with it on the spot.

Gillon freights a lot onto the animosity between the Kennedy loyalists and the successor. Perhaps he overdoes it a bit for literary purposes, but I suspect he is mostly on the beam. Recall that it was Bobby who went so far as to ask Lyndon to turn down the Vice Presidency after it was offered (and it was Bobby who remained the defining figure in Johnson's White House for the rest of his term).

For all his apparent admiration of Johnson's initiative and instincts, Gillon seems to feel tht he overdid it--that his behavior in this first moment of crisis prefigures the (per Gillon) too-clever-by-half paranoia that dominated and ultimately destroyed the Johnson presidency. I wonder. If the loyalists were indeed as hostile to Johnson as Gillon represents them to be, then every Johnson haad every reason to put his survival instincts on stun. But you can leave that issue to the Monday morning quarterbacks. He's got a great story to tell and it sounds like a fine book.