American Experience; 1964; Interview with Jon Margolis, Author, The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, part 1 of 5

Yeah, that is. What is, what was that, a fan? So on January 1st, 1964, what did observers think play ahead for America? Well, I think people were still pretty hopeful then, the whole, they were maybe still in denial. Not that there weren't some good things that happened. But I think the true meaning and the horror of the Kennedy assassination had not totally sunk in. There was all this morning that had gone on and that was by now kind of over. But I don't think the, I'm not sure yet we have quite absorbed what that event did to the country. And we certainly had not by January 1st, 1964. So, you know, there were people were making plans to run for president, which in those days you could wait until the actual campaign year, even to start running for your party's nomination. This case was almost, it wasn't just about entirely the Republicans because nobody was really going to challenge LBJ.

LBJ didn't think that. He was petrified that Robert Kennedy was going to challenge him, but Robert Kennedy was planning to try to persuade LBJ to make, put him on the ticket as his vice presidential running mate. Or he was, he was heading toward that decision, which we'll get to. But, you know, and of course, senators and congressmen were planning on a lot of important pieces of legislation, primarily the Civil Rights Act. But I know it's kind of a little bit of an exercise in projection to sort of imagine figuring out what the mood of the country was at January 1st. But can you, can you say that? I don't think the mood was, the mood was probably pretty good. People, you know, were really going to those bowl games. They were having parties. They were singing, were listening to people sing songs. There were a whole lot of people at Times Square on New Year's Eve. So, on the surface at least, the mood was still fairly hopeful. And to keep an eye, just for Boomshadow up top. I think it'll be okay, but for now we're going to just be a little, I know.

It's not just the time, but very good, and I hope it's better. Was there a consensus in America in 1964? Well, there had been. One of the really one of the points of the book is it began to fall apart. Right. No references to the book. Oh, okay. Okay, start again. Well, there had been a consensus for, since the end of the war, if not even earlier, sort of a what was called the liberal consensus, it was a rather conservative liberal consensus. And it began to fall apart in 1964, or at least people began to notice that it was falling apart in 1964. It had been unraveling for a while before that, but it was, it still dominated the established conversation or the establishment conversation. It was, it was, it was that this was a good country. Our system was excellent.

Both democracy and free market economy, not that they were without flaws, but we could deal with the shortcomings. And in foreign policy, it meant that communism was a threat. The Soviet Union was a threat. We had to contain it, but we were not going to go to war with it and risk nuclear war. That was pretty much across the board from, from most conservatives except the very, very, whether Barry Goldwater was part of that consensus is a bit of a question. And, but almost the entire liberal establishment, even people who were quite liberal, like Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, there might have been a very, very tiny sliver that tried to convince itself that maybe communism wasn't a threat. So that was really inconsequential in terms of numbers and almost inconsequential in terms of their ability to get their point across. Who made up the consensus? How was it, sort of business, major politicians, office holders, policy makers in and out of government, the corporate sector, academia, even entertainment.

Always has a little subversive edge, of course, because they're trying to make a point that maybe things aren't great, even late entertainment sometimes tries to make that point. But the entertainment, you know, Broadway and Hollywood were definitely part of the establishment and part of the consensus. What had supported the American commonwealth, and was that idea sort of sustainable? Well, sure, it was sustainable because we were very, they don't know what I'm asking, so if you can come in that commonwealth. Yeah. Well, the idea of the American commonwealth was sustainable because we were rich. We were the richest country in the history of the universe, I think we still are.

And we were relatively peaceful. There were some uprisings, but there had been rather few before 1964. So we had peace and prosperity. We were not at war. We were engaged in what turned out, what developed into war, but in 1964, we had some advisers in Vietnam. They were not combat troops. They were combat troops, but they were not yet American combat units, a fairly important distinction. And so, I think you could say that the success of the American commonwealth and its foundation was not a delusion. There was evidence for it. What did the death of JFK represent? Why did it represent such a break from American society? Well, somebody once said, Lee Harvey Oswald killed two people that day and unleashed a million demons.

But it's hard to quantify that or even to provide evidence for it. But it did shake the confidence and that we were a peaceful and prosperous nation, didn't hurt the prosperity. It did shatter perhaps the delusion that everything was okay here. And people had a hard time dealing with that. Two people meaning officer tidbits. Officer tidbits, right? It was the other person. They didn't quite kill John Connolly, wounded him. Almost everything was remarkable about Kennedy's funeral. The pump, the somebody referred to the mourning family as Romans, then they really did come across with that sort of solid nobility. The other thing that was extraordinary about it was the entire country or as close to the entire country as you're going to get was there. We all attended that funeral television for all its horrors and flaws became the nation's funeral parlor and then its living room in which everybody mourned together.

Nothing like that had really ever happened in the history of the world, but it happened those four days. And Jack, she was the nobleestroman of them all. And really, and then of course the famous picture of little John John saluting. It's hard to think that all those people are gone now, even John who died young. What happened at the White House the day after JFK killed him? Lyndon Johnson decided he should go to the Oval Office that first full day of his presidency, the 2030, even though he was a little nervous about it. And he found not in the Oval Office, but outside it in the building, Robert Kennedy.

It was not a happy meeting. They did not like one another. The dislike was mutual, but not entirely symmetrical. Bobby disliked LBJ more than LBJ. Disliked Bobby. In fact, Johnson wanted Robert Kennedy to like him. Robert Kennedy, I don't think actively would have discovered LBJ from liking, but he didn't really care one way or another where the Johnson liked him. So it was an uneasy meeting. And Johnson wanted his own people there right away. He wanted to get rid of JFK's, not to get rid of her, to fire her, but to get her out of the office. JFK's personal secretary, Mrs. Lincoln, Kennedy was horrified. It was a bad beginning. Johnson is in this extraordinary position at that moment. And he has some incredible choices to make when he assumes the office was there.

Yes, it's the worst way to become president. I mean, to become president at the death of the president, of the former president, is terrible. But the murder of the assassination makes it really terrible. And then, of course, there are the peculiarities of these particular people. Johnson felt with some justification that the Kennedy White House had been kind of freezing him out. We forget now because the vice presidency has become more important in the last 20 or 30 years. But that was rather typical. The vice president, the running mate, was there to help you get elected. And then you kind of forgot about him. And to some extent, Kennedy did forget about Johnson. He used him somewhat. It was not unkind to him personally, but LBJ did not feel that he was really being used to the full extent of his extraordinary abilities. Which were extraordinary, perhaps not quite as extraordinary as he thought they were. But that doesn't make him unique in politics or for that matter or other walks of life either.

So when he became president, there was all this tension. And he had decisions to make. There was, first, what to do about Vietnam, which he had been pretty much kept out of the loop. Not totally. He'd even been sent over there at one point by Kennedy. And he knew, you know, he was in touch with the military leaders, but he had not really been in on all the information there. So that was probably the biggest and most critical kind of area where he had to make decisions. We'll get to that back of Johnson, but he does something pretty remarkable in Austin, Texas on New Year's Eve. Well, first of all, the day or two before, he had managed to steal from another government agency, a young woman, a young, what we would now call African American woman, a rather attractive one. The term everybody used then was negro, including Martin Luther King and the civil rights leaders until toward the end of that year.

And on New Year's Eve, she went down to Austin with the presidential party. And there was a big New Year's Eve party at club at the university, which had been segregated. And he just insisted that she walk in with him. She was petrified. She said, Mr. President, what are you doing? He said, they'll all think you're my date. And they walked in, and that club has never been segregated since. But that was quite a gesture. What was Johnson doing? He was making trouble, and he was signaling in the right kind of way, and he was signaling, I'm serious about this. This is not just my predecessor's legislation, the Civil Rights Bill, which Kennedy had proposed in 1963 after murder of civil rights leader in Mississippi, and a whole lot of other events. Johnson was saying, this is really important to me. I have pledged to fulfill JFK's agenda and his vision, but this is really me. This is what I really believe in.

Describe the mood at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Oh, everybody was having fun. The Cotton Bowl was, if I remember correctly, that was the big game. Navy versus Texas versus Navy, and Texas was the big favorite. Navy, however, had this young quarterback named Roger Staubuck that most people apparently had never heard of until then, but they all heard of them afterwards. Of course, for the next, I don't know, forget how many years, and he led Navy to, I think Texas had been undefeated all year. Navy had not been in it. It had sort of an okay year to an upset. The president, of course, was at Israel. He didn't care one, but you're not allowed, if you're a Texan, you may not say you don't care whether the long horns win the Cotton Bowl, which I think that year was, was the unofficial,

the effect on national championship game. But was there something going on post assassination there? I mean, it wasn't just an ordinary game. I can't really remember. Well, it was in Dallas, the Cotton Bowl is in Dallas, and that's where, of course, the assassination was. You're referring to? I don't know. I mean, you're the one. Yeah, but it doesn't sound to me like we need to go. But Meg, I would love you to do one more thing for me. Yeah. Can you just?