Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 26, 1998 | by Michael Rust

By the end of the 1 960s, the Democratic Party had surrendered control of the White House; more importantly, it had enthusiastically embarked on an orgy of self-mutilation from which it has never quite recovered. With Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud That Defined a Decade (W.W. Norton, 576 pp), first-time author Jeff Sheshol offers a valuable retelling of one of the key stations in the Democratic via dolorosa -- the acrimonious relationship between Sen. Robert Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson.

It says something about the current state of American scholarship that one of the finest political histories of recent years should be written by a professional cartoonist. Sheshol, the Washington-based 28-year-old creator of the syndicated strip Thatch, wrote his honors thesis at Brown University on the tumultuous relationship between RFK and LBJ. The two men, natural enemies from the moment they met, were the "political titans of the decade," asserts Sheshol, and their relationship seems to have achieved that kind of symbiosis between enemies who feed off one another.

Kennedy -- intense, moralistic, stiffened by the arrogance of youth and privilege -- was the perfect antagonist for the devious, gregarious Texan, always hyper-sensitive to slights both real and imagined. Johnson had been the elder Kennedy's chief rival for the 1960 Democratic nomination; any tendency toward amity between LBJ and RFK was erased by the battle for the 1960 presidential nomination. One of the most impressive facets of Mutual Contempt is that Sheshol presents the clearest, most concise examination of the various theories swirling around that event.

If both Kennedy and Johnson could exhibit remarkable pettiness and vindictiveness, they also showed courage and foresight, especially with regard to civil rights. (On this last point especially, Sheshol can be a useful balance to the ever-darker portrait of LBJ being painted by Robert Caro in his ongoing biography.) During the New Frontier, Kennedy made clear his contempt for Johnson, who had gone from being one of the most effective legislative leaders in Senate history to a politically emasculated vice president. Johnson endured a lingering political death, shut out of power in the new administration and made the butt of not-so-secret jokes by White House loyalists who looked forward to a 1968 campaign without LBJ.

At Dallas, everything changed. A case can be made that Johnson behaved with exceptional correctness during his vice presidency -- when he never questioned or denigrated the president -- and the days after the assassination when he retained Kennedy's staff, a point of later regret. To Kennedy, however, LBJ was "mean, bitter, vicious -- an animal in many ways." Mixed in with grief, guilt and resentment was a new reality. "Like Johnson during his vice presidency, Kennedy on the periphery of power felt increasingly like an alien, a victim, a forgotten man." Kennedy saw Johnson as an unworthy interloper and a daily reminder of the horror of Dallas -- as well as a stumbling block to his own ambitions.

Vietnam, of course, became the vortex of the feud. As a study of the intricacies, efficacy and morality of American involvement in southeast Asia, Sheshol's book is markedly incomplete. But as a study of the way Vietnam affected the psyches of both of the key players in Democratic presidential politics, it succeeds brilliantly. Johnson almost certainly thought he was carrying out JFK's policies; he could not accept Robert's opposition as a stand born from genuine conviction. "Every time Bobby spoke a word of dissent it begged the question: What would Jack have done?" writes Sheshol. "Although Johnson had surrounded himself with JFK's best and brightest -- Bundy, McNamara, Rostow, Rusk -- Bobby seemed far better qualified to answer that question."

Sheshol concludes by linking the RFK-LBJ feud to the current dispute between New Democrats and old-style "big-government" liberals. There is something to this, although RFK's racial politics in some ways set the stage for the Democrats' growing embrace of quotas and what would become known as "multiculturalism." However, there is no doubt that the feud between Kennedy, the last Democrat truly to appeal to both blue-collar whites and minority groups, and Johnson, the last Democrat in the White House to possess a true policy vision, had a lasting effect. Mutual Contempt is an important contribution to our understanding of recent history and current politics.