06-01-2009, 02:17 PM
Myra Bronstein Wrote:Why did Senate Majority Leader LBJ accept the warm pitcher of piss VP job Charlie? As a Southerner he was unlikely to be elected President, which he was determined to be at any cost.
LBJ backer Senator Robert Kerr, of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, was furious at LBJ's VP acceptance of the VP slot and reportedly slapped Bobby Baker when Baker told him. However, once the strategy was explained Kerr apologized & shook Baker's hand.
What was the strategy?
In 1963 Don B. Reynolds told the FBI that friend Bobby Baker said the "SOB" Kennedy would never live out his term & would "die a violent death," providing possible explanation for LBJ's otherwise puzzling acceptance of the VP slot.
Where did you get that info? From Talbot's book "Brothers"? Talbot, and anyone else who claims LBJ was a cowering wreck on the 22nd is wrong.
Look at the attached photos taken immediately before and after the murder. That is no cowering wreck. That is a smug conspirator looking forward to drop-kicking JFK's rocking chairs out of the white house.
While CD has made very good points in this thread, Myra's points are the ones that always come back to my forefront. The more I studied the life of Landslide Lyndon the more culpable he became. Having people killed as he rose to power was as natural as stealing elections. And he was an absolute "smug conspirator" on 11/22/63, demanding and wielding his new power all that day, no fear that he could be next. He absolutely knew better.
He would come to be "a cowering wreck" toward the end of his term, but it appeared to me that this was because the public so turned on him over Vietnam. Perhaps too he realized at some point the magnatude of this particular murder. I do not see LBJ as the prime sponser- those persons remain behind the veil- but he's no false sponser either. Far from it. Who had the most to lose at that moment in time? And who had the most to gain on 11/22/63? Same man: Lyin' Lyndon.
Dawn
For a most interesting look at Lyndon toward the end of his life when he truly did become a "cowering wreck", Barr McClellen's book "Blood Power and Money" offers rich insights.