Who Was Kennedys Vice President

Why The Kennedys Couldn't Stand Lyndon B. Johnson

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When John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Jan two, 1960, party leaders — and the nation as a whole — would have to wait several months before he would name a running mate. Many were hoping for an aspirational pick to lucifer JFK — a young, charismatic, and promising political leader. But at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in July, it was 51-year-old Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson who would emerge on the ticket with JFK.

That choice was a mismatch in the eyes of many who regarded the two as at odds in nigh ways, but Kennedy made a political adding that LBJ could help him win the South, where JFK was non in favor. For the two-and-a-half years LBJ served equally vice president before the assassination of JFK, the president viewed him as an ineffectual underling who rarely shared his thoughts on important matters. "Jack would say you could never go an opinion out of Lyndon at any chiffonier or national security meeting," JFK's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, later on said in an interview, according toABC News. "Lyndon, as vice president, didn't just do anything. But information technology was all correct. It was fine."

JFK wanted his younger blood brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to succeed him

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Even so, information technology was more than than a functioning review that put Johnson at odds with the Kennedy family. Within the first ii years of the Kennedy assistants, the Kennedy family unit became increasingly concerned about the prospects of Johnson in the Oval Office. They hatched a program that would position Robert F. Kennedy, JFK'south younger brother and attorney general, to accept the White House following JFK's presidency, co-ordinate to University of Virginia's Miller Center.

At the time, RFK was increasingly treated equally the second-ranking man in Washington behind his big brother, the president. That dynamic set up years of intense feuds between Johnson and RFK — and the Kennedy family, more broadly. "When this fellow looks at me," said Johnson of Bobby Kennedy during his time every bit vice president, "he looks at me like he's going to look a hole correct through me, like I'chiliad a spy or something," Robert A. Caro writes in his book, The Passage of Power.

Although LBJ did have plenty of reasons to recall he was increasingly pushed to the outside of JFK'due south power circumvolve, some of his problems were a straight result of his own feelings of inadequacies. "Bobby symbolized everything Johnson hated," said Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin, who later on served in the Johnson administration, according to Joshua Zeitz'sBuilding the Great Gild. "He became the symbol of all the things Johnson wasn't ... with these characteristics of wealth and power and ease and Eastern elegance; with Johnson e'er looking at himself as the guy they thought was illiterate, rude, rough. They laughed at him behind his dorsum. I think he felt all of that."

RFK became more combative afterwards JFK's assassination

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On November 22, 1963, when JFK was assassinated, Bobby resented that LBJ flew back from Dallas on Air Forcefulness 1, instead of the vice presidential aircraft on which he arrived, according to Politico. "Our president was a gentleman and a homo beingness," said RFK. "This man is not. ... He'southward mean, bitter, barbarous—an creature in many ways."

Nonetheless, Bobby Kennedy, who was determined to win back his family's position of power, attempted to force Johnson's hand in naming him as his running mate in 1964. When that effort failed, RFK resigned and ran for a Senate seat in New York. That race proved more difficult than Kennedy had expected, reluctantly forcing him to ask LBJ to assistance him campaign.

In one last shot at RFK, LBJ signed into law a measure that would bar future presidents from naming relatives to the Cabinet. The congressman who introduced the nepotism provision insisted information technology was non written with Kennedy in mind, but was chop-chop referred to equally the "Bobby Kennedy police force," according toRoll Phone call.