 I had the good fortune of introducing myself, my name is Tyler Abel, I had the good fortune of knowing President Johnson for some time and working for him in a few different capacities. I was a campaign office gopher in 1960, advanced man in 1960 and thereafter as advanced man and assistant postmaster general and chief of protocol. I didn't have as much interaction with him personally as my wife did because she was around the house all the time but one of the interesting things is to me what an impression he made. Every interaction that I think I ever had with him I still have a pretty vivid recollection of and although a lot of people tell stories about how he had temper tantrums and called him names and that sort of thing, I don't ever remember having that experience, a couple of arguments with him but I didn't argue with him unless I knew I was on sound ground and I think he respected that. I had the good fortune in my life to work for or know some of the most prominent and fascinating people in America at that time. My stepfather was a famous journalist Drew Pearson and he had a closer relationship with Lyndon Johnson than most other journalists and as he said both in his diaries and to friends, Johnson was the first president that he ever knew that he was on a first name basis with. My father-in-law was one of the strongest and most dynamic forceful politicians that I met in my long career at meeting politicians, Earl Clements, who was a close colleague of President Johnson's. When they were in the Senate together he worked in fact as Johnson's assistant majority leader and was majority leader when the senator had his heart attack in 1955 or 56. It was because of that that I remember my very first association with Mr. Johnson when he was a majority leader and he gave a wedding reception for Bess and myself and it was quite a reception and all of the senators I think almost all of them came and I was in the receiving line. Mr. Johnson was at the head of the receiving line and I would look up to see what was going on at the first part of the line and the different people coming in were many of them I knew and recognized and having a wonderful time meeting Mr. Johnson and laughing with him and trading stories and jokes as they went from him to Mrs. Johnson and down the line to Bess and myself and Bess's parents. But it was something that stuck with me because I realized that President Johnson, then Senator Johnson, knew so many people and was on such good terms with them and as I got to knowing better throughout his career I realized that his interaction with people was probably on a different level than any of the other Presidents that I knew or even any of the other really top politicians that I knew. He worked more and had a better grasp of things and of people and was willing to talk with people in a way that was just really remarkable. Some might say he was always on stage. I don't think it was a stage but he wanted to react with everybody and one story I remember vividly is when he appointed me Assistant Postmaster General. He called me on the radio. I was down at the ranch and where he asked me to come and visit he was trying to keep it a secret that he was going to give me this job and I can still remember the voice coming over the radio saying Tyler Tyler where are you and I said well I'm not far Mr. President I'm over here and Bess and I had gone over to Fredericksburg and he said well I want to take you deer hunting now come on back here. So 80 miles an hour down the road didn't take too long but the voice came over again Tyler Tyler where are you going where are you. I said Mr. President I'm crossing the Perth now it's right now be right there. So I came into the ranch house a few minutes later and he grabbed his hat and said now come on and I got in the little golf cart behind him and Paul Glenn was on the back of the cart and I guess one of the secret service agents and he turned and I think maybe I know that when we went deer hunting A.W. Morrison his good friend and neighbor and Jack Blunny and I were in the car with the driver but I can't remember who was on the golf cart except I remember Paul Glenn was there because I talked with him about it later and he backed out of his little shed where he parked the golf cart and he was going to drive over to where his Lincoln was parked and we go deer hunting in the Lincoln. He said Tyler I'm going to make you assistant postmaster general of facilities he said that's a four thousand dollar increase in pay for you and I want you to spend every penny of it on whiskey for me and I said well I thank you Mr. President that's wonderful and absolutely you know where do you want it so he said somebody's already told you that haven't anything and I lied to him and said you told me Mr. President and then he let it drop of course he he hated to have his secrets usurped by members of his staff so I didn't want to admit that that they had told me before he had but it's hard to keep something like that a secret then we went deer hunting and we were out a couple of hours and it was just you know as I reflect back on it and I frequently do it tells so much about him here he was out deer hunting with myself I was certainly the the strangest of the group but I certainly wasn't a stranger Jack Flinney and AW were you know he'd known closely for years and throughout the time we were deer hunting he was joking with us telling us different things but an awful lot of it was talking about you know what was going to happen next year and he kept moaning about the fact that the budget was going to be over a hundred billion dollars says I just can't keep it under a hundred billion and Jack Flinney said well Mr. President that doesn't make any difference so you're going to do this and you're going to do this and people are going to understand that so you're going to go over a hundred billion dollars you know you shouldn't worry about it and he would go on about other things in the budget and it was just remarkable here we were out relaxing deer hunting he had some had a cooler with the ice and scotch and a couple of glasses and he and AW were having a little drink and he'd make me get out to open the gates he said that Jack had hurt something and you know we can't we can't make Jack be doing this extra work Tyler so now you get out and open this gate and I said oh yes you know I was thrilled to have something constructive to do and then the conversation would come back to the budget and and this dreaded nightmare of going over a hundred billion dollars well he did come in at ninety eight point six a few days later what some people claim was the start of credibility gap but I think it was just his hard work and perseverance another time years later I I don't know whether I was chief of protocol or whether I was over at the White House during the brief period in which I was in a private law firm he was having a group at his upstairs in the over room over room at the the upstairs over room at the at the White House beautiful lovely place and and it was a small group by down if there were more than 30 of us there maybe less we were having cocktails and he was talking about how he was drinking diet Pepsi or Diet Dr. Pepper or something like that I said I'm asked me how I kept so thin and I and I didn't have any good excuse just lucky and then I got in a little conversation with with Kermit Gordon who was then head of the Bureau of the Budget and Tom Mann I don't remember what we were talking about but the president was sort of close by and this was just a friendly Sunday afternoon little association of friends and Tom Mann who I think then was assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs had known the president through as many of us had for many years and I guess this was originally from Texas but he and Kermit Gordon started talking about something that I didn't know much about I can't remember now what it was had something to do with oil and they said well maybe this is a good time to tell the president about it and ask him about it so they did present was right there they said yanked on his arm and said come on over here we want to tell you about this and they hadn't gotten two minutes worth into what they were trying to sell him on before he came back and said you're wrong for this this this this this reason and was just stunning to me on several levels and here's a man you know he is relaxing trying to you know have a good time with his with his friends he never said anything about how you know we're not talking business not only that he was ready to talk business and the business that they brought up they've been rehearsing and talking among themselves about for you know five or ten minutes before they decided to spring it on him he'd been talking to somebody about you know whether they were overweight and you know laughing and talking the way he did kidding everybody and he's ready to just sink them right down and they weren't properly prepared and that was the end of that I don't think that policy was ever reviewed anywhere ever again end of end of that policy the he was such a had such a commanding presence everybody everybody respected him anywhere you went when I was chief of protocol one of our one of the things that that I did with him as I guess every chief of protocol does with every president I accompanied company to accompanied him to embassies and typically he would go to most of the embassy national days of which there's you know whether 200 embassies so you know some days there would be more than more than one and some days luckily there weren't any and I guess he missed some but this this was late in the administration and Nixon had been elected and we went out the out the door just two of us and the secret service you know was was driving and there was a he started to get into the limousine and the secret service man said Mr. President your limousine is over here this was Nixon's limousine so he you know humbly you know walked over and got in his limousine and off we went and at the embassies the waiters knew it and they knew what he wanted to drink and they knew that he wanted a really really really light scotch he preferred cutty shark but if there was something else you know you try to get J&B or something that would be as much like cutty shark as possible and if it if it didn't more than have just a flavor of of scotch in it he would complain and sometimes he I think he complained anyway just to be sure that nobody tried to be too liberal with the with the scotch in the but you know I thought it was really interesting that the waiters at embassy cocktail parties would know that he wanted just a tiny little bit and they you know I knew some of them too and and they knew me and I'd say now you know make sure oh yes yes we know Mr. Abel just a just a tiny little bit and they take it over to him on a silver train he frequently just drink the whole thing down but there wasn't enough scotch in there to make any difference I only saw him over and by once it was when he was in the Senate and we were I was there visiting him in his majority leader office which is right off the floor of the Senate so there was Senator Clements who was then not in the Senate he'd been defeated in 56 and this was 1960 in the in the pre pre convention era just a not too long before the convention so it must have been June that was Senator Clements Senator Humphrey myself and Senator Johnson and I think that was all the people in the room there may have there might have been one other person in there but I don't recall who it was and we sat and talked about the the upcoming convention the primaries Humphrey by this time was had either pulled out or was you know he was had clearly been defeated and he laughed at Senator Johnson had said now Lyndon you know how many votes do you really have and Senator Johnson went through the litany about you know well we got some of this we got some of this and we were all I think kidding ourselves into thinking that we really did have a chance against Senator Kennedy and Humphrey called him on and said now Lyndon I don't think you've got that many votes oh they argued with it they argued about it a little bit but you know needless to say it didn't come to anything but as the time went on I know he had you know more and more scotches and it was it was getting real late by the time we finally pulled out and he was clearly feeling the scotches very clearly and my firing law who knew him you know really well they served in the Senate together and I think it well they'd actually served in the house together way back in the year because my father-in-law served in the house in 1940 and Johnson was in the house until 48 my father-in-law only served one term and then he went back to Kentucky and ran for governor but anyway he pulled me the senator Johnson got into his limousine and drove back home and this must have been close to 11 o'clock and my father and I left and I had a car and we we drove back to I was living in Alexandria I don't know I guess he was in a hotel anyway he said you know I've never never seen him really drunk before I was the one time he was just a you know an incredible incredible human being dedicated to what he was doing and you know everybody has read about him and I do it with with with great interest read several biographies and I try to see whether the early days that I didn't know him personally read true to the man that that I knew and I think I think the stories about how he how he got started and how he was so interested in people and the way his personality shown through is very true to the man that that I knew and you know any successful politician has to has to be able to know people and to talk with them and to recognize them the the masters are wonderful at remembering names but I never met a good one that wasn't pretty good at that but he I think he was just much much better than any that I ever knew and his ability to to just talk with everything with everybody about everything and do that all while he was you know concentrating on being the president of all the people or trying to be president of all the people I thought was just just remarkable absolutely remarkable and a tireless campaigner gosh you know he just he'd complain sometimes but not very much when I was an advanced man you know he just kept going and kept going until early morning till late at night I remember my first trip with him we he came to when he was still senator Johnson he was on the ticket with JFK and his first trip was to come to JFK's hometown Boston and Horace Busby wrote his speech which was used over and over and over again through the campaign it's a long ways from Austin to Boston that was the catch line and it was my first trip advancing anybody on anything and I tried to do all the things I was supposed to do and and it it worked out very well we got big crowds and and the thing that that amazed me most about the trip is that he or somebody probably he personally had come up with the idea of handing out passes to the United States Senate as majority leader he had these little passes as all congressmen senators representatives had to tell you you're welcome to visit the Senate and with his signature on it and I didn't know anything about this but when we as we were driving from the airport we came to a point where I had suggested that he might want to stop and greet the crowd and I was I had done everything I could to get the crowd out and there were quite a few people along the street it was pretty successful but he was just a master he got out of the convertible and started along the street shaking hands and handing out these cards well the people just you know there were some looking at the windows and they just all flocked down and came out and just filled up the street made a beautiful picture in the paper and he was just handing out cards and I don't know if somebody I guess was deputized from the from his vehicle to come up with more cards because his pockets never empty he was just handing them out and shaking hands and going up and down the street it was one of those things about him that that I'll never forget another story that that I love about him it was Christmas of 1968 which was a dark day that was close to the end and my wife best has suggested to the Johnson's that this was their last Christmas in the in the White House and maybe they would like to spend it in the White House instead of going back to the ranch which they did and they had several parties where staff members and their children were invited in I say several because they didn't want to get too many people in one party but anyway the the night that I remember we had two sons Dan and Lyndon. Lyndon was 10 and Dan was to have been 11 or 12 and 68 no way second Lyndon was eight so Dan would have been ten or maybe nine no just just ten never mind don't get lost in all the arithmetic he was a little boy and Johnson's this towering presence of a man you know just dominated the room for the staff you know it didn't really I don't think it mattered how well you knew him just you couldn't help but but be a little bit intimidated just by his very presence and I have no idea who the president was talking to doesn't make any difference for the purposes of this story Danny who was all dressed up in his nice little neat blue blazer and dark flannel pants and a little necktie and and his hair brushed and everything and he comes over and he pulls it quite literally pulls at the president's coat sleeve and the president was busy in this conversation turns down he sees this little kid and he says just a minute and he turns back and keeps on with his conversation a couple more minutes go by and Danny tugs again and the president looks down he says well I asked you to wait a minute and a little bit gruff you know so the other minute goes by Danny pulls again the president turns back to him and he says Merry Christmas Mr. President and the expression on Jackson's face was just wonderful he just beamed and he knelt down talked to Danny for a couple minutes it was so touching it was just a memory that I'll always have going back to that that evening in 60 LBJ always said publicly at least that he never really wanted to run for president and never thought it was going to win but that he felt that Kennedy needed needed the competition what is that just his way of rewriting history did he really want the want the nomination Bobby Baker said it all when when Johnson accepted the vice presidential nomination and so many Texans had been opposed to running on the ticket Bobby said I was very near him and this announcement came across and Bobby said well he's the most complicated man I ever knew and I think that says it all but I I don't feel that there's any question that Johnson wanted to be president and Horace Busby told me that years ago years before he had told Johnson that that Johnson would be become president by being vice president now Horace was a very bright guy and he could quite easily have figured the scenario where a southerner was not going to be nominated the that's the way the Democratic Party was divided up they had some southerners as vice presidents Garner Sparkman and ran with Adelaide Stevenson a key father ran with Adelaide Stevenson but I don't think the Democratic Party was prepared to nominate a southerner so I assume that that's what Busby had thought through but certainly his precious about that was it was truly remarkable whether whether Johnson believed that he really had the votes that his staff was saying he had I don't know I don't think he did but I think he felt that you know you had to say that his speech at the convention when he announced and he didn't announce until just before the the convention when he got to Los Angeles it was about three or four days before at the most maybe maybe just the day before I remember the line that he had that he said I I think you ought to have a president with just a little more gray in his hair which is a line that his friend the Bill White had written that speech for him his excellent speech really a good speech and I thought that was a great line didn't carry enough weight to get him the nomination I remember another occasion earlier that same year when they first opened the LBJ for president office in Washington it was at the the hotel there on the corner of 14th and K belonging to K Fritz all of a sudden I got a blank about the name of the hotel but it was it's been torn down long since had a swimming pool in the basement and we had the the mezzanine floor maybe it was called Citizens for LBJ or something like that anyway the John Connelly was one of the people that had pulled that together and ran in the space and put up the sign and got a bunch of people there and uh we were all you know trying to act like we were collecting delegates and you know we were we talked to delegates and those were the days before primaries are only a handful of primaries West Virginia Florida Wisconsin California maybe three other states not New Hampshire of course but the the majority of the delegates were either went through the convention process and and a lot of them you know had the option of you know voting for whoever they wanted to vote for and many of them was whoever the governor told them to vote for anyway Senator Johnson John Connelly Earl Clements Bobby Baker and I uh had a breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel and it was uh you know to talk about you know how we were going to get get more votes um and Johnson was in a little bit of a grumpy mood uh and the scene that I remember remember a couple of scenes there one was that the the waiters were so anxious to both listen and please us that they kept spilling coffee all over the table they if you take a sip of coffee they immediately come and fill it up and that would spill into the saucer and then they take that away and it would spill on the table to the point where the head waiter finally came over and told them to get the heck out of there uh and then uh we got in the car I had driven there and uh when we left they said well we'll give you a you know come on up with us and so anyway I went in the senator's limousine and I think all of us went together and uh Johnson was uh braiding John Connelly about spending too much money he said how much money are you spending down there anyway and Connelly of course didn't want to tell and figure that there was no value in carrying on this kind of a conversation but Johnson wasn't going to let it go Kennedy Connelly would try to steer the conversation over to something else and Johnson said well I know what's going to happen so you're going to tell me that if I meet so-and-so and stick my nose four feet up his ass and he's going to give us $50,000 to pay for all this well I just think you ought to stop spending all that money uh and I you know my thought was well now that's the way politics works but sure is a graphic way to state it things were a lot looser in those days but we didn't spend nearly the amount of money that's spent now it's just incredible incredible we just spent I mean you know it was just pocket money really I was making something like $50 a week and um when we uh when we flew out to the convention we flew in an unmarked plane that I found out from the pilot belonging to Brown and Root I just piled all the campaign workers in a Brown and Root plane and flew them out to Los Angeles no way he had a word to say about it it was a DC three um I that's uh that's my repertoire for now it's very good really fascinating thank you you're a great guy to remember I do it all the time best yeah are you gonna come back and talk about Lady Bird I'll get you the drink of water would you like me to go get sandwiches no I have I asked Gladys to make some ham sandwich okay just next to you everyone forgets that well it's wonderful to be here and I'd have to think that there's a camera or all that other kind of stuff I guess it goes around anybody see Dick Murphy at all I haven't seen Murphy in a while and our uh one day in 1964 it was probably in the spring but it doesn't make any difference I got a call at home from Walter Jenkins who said he wanted to see me Walter Jenkins was of course the most trusted of all of the President's Confidence and and a wonderful wonderful person so naturally I if Walter Jenkins wanted to see me I'd do anything so I suggested because I knew he lived not too far from where I lived I said well if you want I'll uh you know I'll come over there now or you want to see me in the morning he said yeah we'll meet in the morning I said well would you like me to pick you up and take you to work he said sure so I drove over to his house and we headed for the White House uh with me driving a little Volkswagen and uh which actually I'd given to my wife uh the year before two years before but she now had a White House car to drive her around so uh the Volkswagen got traded around and and used by other members of the family and Walter uh said Tyler he said there's something rather disturbing I have to tell you about he said a car registered in your name has been seen outside the Russian Embassy and uh I said well it's probably this car he said yeah he said this fits the description I said well I can explain that uh you know I loaned this car to my mother and stepfather because it's really my wife's car and she doesn't use it very much so uh they use it and uh and I know that my stepfather has a good relationship with the Russian ambassador so clearly you know that's why it's been parked in front of the Russian Embassy he said well okay that's a that's a good explanation and and we accept that but he says I I think you better tell your stepfather not to park in front of the Russian Embassy anymore uh so I you know that did exactly that and years later it was 1970 I was at a fundraising party in New Jersey for Pete Williams a senator from New Jersey and uh one of the you know it was a cast of hundreds at least and one of the people there was a congressman named Neil Gallagher and Neil Gallagher had gotten into a certain amount of trouble I can't remember now what it was but I I think he might have been indicted and possibly convicted and uh who knows how long that had been going on but Neil and I were uh not really friends and I was in fact kind of surprised that he knew who I was and um anyway we struck up a conversation as as which is the type of thing of course it's supposed to happen those parties and uh he said you know Tyler uh I know about your problems with the FBI well I didn't really have a problem with the FBI and then he said uh said the president told me uh that the FBI had seen your car parked in front of the Russian Embassy and I know that you got in a lot of trouble because of that and I said yeah wow that's that's true I said and and I've forgotten what else we had to say but you know we created stories and so forth for a while but what struck me and the point of this story is you know how detailed President Johnson was that it wasn't just that Dick Deloach from the FBI had called Walter Jenkins and told him about my car being in front of the Russian Embassy but that Walter had passed it on to the president obviously and the president had remembered it not only remembered it but when a congressman whose vote he probably wanted for something uh he was knowledgeable enough the president was to know that Neil Gallagher was in trouble with the FBI and to put him at ease by telling them about me this guy Johnson was just remarkable absolutely remarkable um another story that uh comes to mind is not quite in the same magnitude but uh does again tell something about a man who never lost an opportunity to do something um it was probably three or four days after he became president he still hadn't moved into the White House um he was occupying the Oval Office of course that happened the very next day after uh he arrived back in in Washington from Dallas but uh Mrs. Kennedy was still occupying the living quarters so uh and my wife was the not just the social secretary she was the person that took care of the Elms where he uh a home that he purchased uh after he became Vice President um so she ran everything at the Elms so fixed the pool did the pipes call the electrician took complaints from the vice president when he didn't like the heat of the pool or the or what was served for dinner or whatever else it was and so on this occasion uh there was a small dinner party and I the people that I can remember for sure that were there were Bess and myself the president and Mrs. Johnson my stepfather and my mother um and I I think possibly that uh that Arthur Goldberg was there um anyway it was you know it was it was an interesting eclectic guest list um and at one point during the conversation uh the president made a reference to me I was then working as a special assistant to the postmaster general and uh he said uh something to me about uh the fact that the the newspaper publishers and the and the catalog people got these huge mail subsidies and I said yes Mr. President uh but the real mail subsidy that you could put it into pretty quickly is what we pay the railroads uh we're subsidizing them with the amount of four hundred million dollars a year and uh you could put an end to that pretty quickly if you wanted to and uh nothing more was said about it but the next morning I got a call right and early um and uh you know I'd like a memo about that which I've prepared obviously expeditiously and sent it over there and uh the uh years later uh you know a couple years later I was then had been promoted to assistant postmaster general I got a call from Walter Jenkins and Walter said my friends on the Katie Railroad uh are worried that you're going to take a bail contract away from them I had nothing to do with the mail contracts that was a whole another division of the post office called a division of transportation and I said well you know Walter the that's one of the the first things that the president I ever spoke about and probably the only thing we ever spoke about concerning the post office department was the subsidy for the railroads and he said well if you if it if it shouldn't be done don't worry about it but if uh if you can stop it uh and it's the right thing to do you know just you know let me know so I did check into it and and let him know that we were going to stop the mail on the Katie Railroad but Walter wasn't about to tell me or anybody else to do something that wasn't the right thing to do and we all knew that uh that the president was omnipotent it was just phenomenal he kept track of everything all the time and uh he wouldn't argue with me about the mail subsidies because he was prepared to believe that that I understood what I was talking about um but he just didn't want it done right sorry about Bobby Kennedy uh yes that's uh I don't think there was any way that LBJ got involved in that but it's an interesting story of that era just because the only way I don't know that he got involved in it but when I was asking about it what you could do about it he said that I only have one friend in the White House fortunately his name is Jack Kennedy yeah this was when uh when LBJ was was vice president and I was working as a special assistant to uh the postmaster general a wonderful wonderful man named J. Edward Day and uh Mr. Day called me in one uh day to his office and said that he'd gotten a call from Bobby Kennedy uh that and Bobby had told him that Michael Monroni who was another assistant in fact was Mr. Day's executive assistant and I should both be fired because we were disloyal to the administration and we weren't doing the things that uh that he wanted done over here and uh I knew what it what had evolved because a justice department employee named Paul Corbin uh who was a maniac quite literally and uh but who worked for Bobby and who was always throwing Bobby's name around had told me that uh that Bobby wanted certain contracts changed in upstate New York and that the people who had the contracts uh shouldn't have them and that we ought to cancel them and give these contracts over to somebody else and uh he made Corbin made the allegation that these guys were crooks and uh you know they were in with the mafia and so forth and so forth and I had investigated it carefully and I couldn't find any reason that that we could come up with to do Bobby Kennedy's bidding and I just told uh Paul Corbin that we couldn't so Corbin in turn of course had uh you know had to play his trump card and tell Bobby that uh that we were bad guys and get us fired which uh had data was credit wouldn't do and uh I told best this story and uh she recited to me the what the president or then vice president told her which is uh I only have one friend in the White House fortunately it's Jack Kennedy I guess being vice president was a very difficult period for Johnson the times that I saw him during that period I don't think I ever saw any indication of the unhappiness that I frequently read about there were happy times and and good times going on and I guess the frustrations of the job were you know the kind of thing that made Thomas Jefferson call it the greatest job in the world and made John A. S. Carter call it the job that was worth no more than a bucket of warm spit but uh I do remember a time when uh the president came to the vice president's house it was after it was on the uh one-year anniversary of uh of his uh inaugural and they'd had a big uh uh party at the uh uh the armory and the uh the singers and dancers and entertainers who had been at the inaugural uh party uh the in 1961 basically put on a similar show in 1962 and then afterwards the vice president had them out to his house the Elms uh for and after the show mixer and uh food and anytime you went to something that the Johnson's did that was first class and you got food and drink and uh of the very best kind and and so we were all having a good time and the uh the president and Mrs. Kennedy showed up and uh they suggested that the entertainers do some more entertaining which they did and it was it was wonderful it was great fun and entertaining we were all sitting on the own chairs and around on the floor and and uh in the uh big room at the Elms uh and uh Gene Kelly got up and said uh now Mr. Vice President he says I want you to come up here with me and Mr. Johnson started to get up and and sort of moved over to uh be with uh with Gene Kelly he said uh Gene Kelly said we're going to sing a song and at that the vice president he knew he was good at an awful lot of things but he was not a singer so he uh just sort of slunk back into the crowd and Kelly tried to drag him up and he said no no he wasn't going to get up there so then the president got up and uh Gene Kelly and the president sang when Irish eyes are smiling which uh and that was sort of the they knew more of the party had you you know I I'm sure you're going to drop a bunch of these but these little things keep coming back to me and they they all tell me stories about their stories about LBJ they're funny in some respects most of them have their humorous side but they all they all tell to me a story of a guy who thought that he could do everything and in many respects he was right but he recognized as the story I just told about singing there were certain things that he couldn't do but in terms of taking charge yes he could take charge of everything uh it was a hot summer day I mean really hot and uh we were best and I were invited to come over to the Johnson's to swim and when we arrived uh Vice President Johnson was in his pool in a one of these styrofoam chairs that you could sort of sit in the chair and and have a drink and the and the cubby hood cup holder and paddle around he was in there and his uh paddling around a little bit sitting relaxing and it was it was a little bit like you know what he'd love to do was to come in the room and you know be in charge of things and and sitting on this chair in the pool you know surrounded by by water it was you know a little bit like the king that wanted to tell the waves to get away and and he had his glasses on which you know most people don't wear glasses in the pool he said well I can't see without and he gave us a big welcome as we came through the house and came down through the terrace and down to the pool and he said I'm just in here paddling around he said just enjoy my life says I got to wear my glasses in here because otherwise I can't see a thing um and anyway we went on and swam and talked enjoyed life and as that as the day uh kind of dragged on he realized there were some things that he wanted to get done so he called got on the phone of course there are phones everywhere and he got on the phone and called Warren Woodward who was a uh I don't know whether Woody was still working for him or I think Woody was probably at that point working for uh the uh the tv station in in Austin but maybe he was on the staff in Austin or maybe he was off on his own doing something private didn't make any difference it was Saturday evening and so I'm sure he called Woody at home he said Woody I need some bait said we got this pool but we don't have enough uh and then we got guests coming in all the time and I need some bathing suits for these people that come here without their bathing suits I want you to order some bathing suits he said we need this size this size this size and this size and maybe we ought to get three or four this size and it's just you know it's just fascinating the guy couldn't sit still for a minute or he had to to get something done he had to accomplish something and uh the frustrations that he must have gone through with the war in vietnam would just uh boggle the mind I never was involved in uh and you know one centilla of that but uh I certainly knew his personality and how he you know he relied on the people around him when he had to for the you know the extra things that he wanted that he couldn't reach out that far but he he wanted to be sure he controlled them and to now have the McNamara's of the world coming in and and second guessing them on the war in vietnam after they told him what to do uh he must be rotating in his grave I was uh talking to uh his uh niece's husband one day uh Donald MacArthur wonderful guy and um the president had appointed him as deputy assistant secretary of defense for research and development a very bright scientist I say he was a bright scientist he was bright I don't know enough about science to know how bright a scientist he was but he must have been pretty good anyway uh he and I got talking about the war in vietnam and and uh Donald said you know it's it's hopeless you know there's no way we're going to win this war and knowing what I know about the president I said well you know he's going to respect you Donald because you know you're there in the Pentagon with all the details what happens when you tell him about that he says he didn't want to listen he said he didn't want to listen I said no he said if Donald said no he just you know I've raised it with him a couple of times and and he just doesn't want to listen there's uh uh he's in a impossible situation and uh he's not interested in what I had to say