celebrated political whiz. Miss Henry would croak. I would be on my way as a top Democratic strategists, writer and guru. Maybe.
In rented rooms converted to offices at the Watergate Hotel was the campaign’s headquarters. Ironically, the hotel was adjacent the office building that, following a dumb burglary, would spell the end of Richard Nixon’s reign. More ironically, a few years later it would be I, Joe Carter, would help oversee the physical relocation of the Democratic National Committee from the Watergate to the Airline Pilots Building as ordained by Robert S. Strauss, the party chairman whom I served as press secretary.
But there, in late March, 1968, the Johnson-Humphrey re-election campaign staff treated me professionally. Dispatched by Marvin Watson, they seemed to think that I knew what I was about to undertake. I hoped only that I knew. The committee added me to the payroll and issued a booklet of airline/car rental travel vouchers that provided my fares. Flying first from Washington, I then left Oklahoma City late Sunday afternoon, March 30, 1968. Later that fateful evening, the President had scheduled a nationally televised address.
In a terse briefing by my new-found White House contact, Tom Johnson of the press office, I had been told that LBJ would announce a limitation of bombing to below the 19th Parallel in North Vietnam. Tom Johnson (no relation but beloved by LBJ) opined that it the presidential speech would help the campaign in Nebraska. I hoped that I would, too.
The Oklahoma City-to-Omaha leg of the trip included a late evening plane-change in Kansas City where during lay-over I telephoned my cousin Orian Carter. His angelic wife, Juanita, answered the phone. I explained my presence, alluded to my importance and said I had called only to chat.
“What do you think of the President’s speech?”Juanita bluntly interrupted.
“It should help a lot in the Nebraska primary,” I replied in my most spokesman tone, practicing a speech I figured that I would need for the Nebraska media. “Restricting the bombing above the 19th parallel….” I was cut off by her gasp.
”But,” Juanita said, “the president said he would not run again!”
“He did?” I was astounded. That didn’t quit fit what I—and most folks in America and Vietnam—expected to come out of that Sunday evening televised address.
While I long had sworn off all alcohol in times of reporting major news stories and other heavy challenges, this was catastrophic. I had just flopped into my airline seat when the stewardess (that’s what we called them then) asked if I wanted a drink. Did I! “Double vodka.”
“That will be $4,” she said as I handed her a $20, my smallest bill.
“I have no change,” she said and started to depart, leaving me dry and apparently bouncing in my seat with trying to suggest the startling news..
The man next to my seat spoke up: “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy, but I’ll buy his vodka.”
“Did Johnson really quit?” I asked him between gulps after whitewashing him with thanks.
“Yes, that’s what I heard on the TV,” he said, eyeing me strangely then uttering a career shattering question, “Does it really matter?”
In an Omaha hotel room, I found Hauan stretched out on his bed, fully dressed, holding a part-filled scotch bottle and himself totally full of questions like “what the hell is going on?” I had no answers to his quiz but helped with the booze. Terse discourse was typical of what so often transpires in campaigns: “You mean you didn’t know?” Hauan mumbling as I replied “you mean you didn’t know either?”
Following Monday lunch with a former Nebraska governor who was titular head of the Johnson-Humphrey Nebraska campaign, I flew back to Washington. My desk in the EOB had not been filled and the accumulated letters were piled high. What had been aghast now was anguished puzzlement relieved only by the hushed tones—and vodka with Roses Lime Juice—in Will Sparks office each day.
After the vodka, the speech writers and hushed tones traditionally trooped daily to the “White House mess,” the name of a fine dining room operated by the Navy. Located adjacent the super secret situation room in the basement directly under the Oval Office and ready to serve under all conditions, the mess offered juicy steaks to staffers at prices barely the cost of the raw beef. The food was great. The conversation subtle, careful but informed at round tables.
One Monday during breakfast, departing White House press secretary George Reedy had arrived with a black eye and battered face. “I was mugged in New York,” he explained grimly. It prompted me to gallows humor: “Were you raped?” The joke fell flat. Reedy glared. I downed my eggs and fled to my stack of unanswered letters while hoping for a new assignment . In that time, Marvin Watson departed the White House to become Postmaster General and Jim Jones was elevated to chief of staff. To diversify my life, Jones suggested my name to the chief of political advance, Marty Underwood. Refined from his Iowa-born upbringing, Underwood schooled me on his tactics and helped to educate me beyond my journalism experiences. Quickly, we learned that each of us had been riding in the Dallas motorcade when President Kennedy was shot. Underwood had advanced part of the Texas trip and I was the United Press International back-up reporter for Merriman Smith, the dean of the White House press corps. While we never previously had met, Underwood and I became fast friends. We both had offices on the 17th Street side of second floor of the Executive Office Building. Across the way, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s second floor suites had windows over West Executive Avenue where many vice presidents had kept an eye on the coveted Oval Office. Underwood kept an eye on everything vital to traveling Presidents—both Kennedy and Johnson.
With the Democratic National Convention looming in Chicago, Underwood was charged with planning President Johnson’s “surprise” birthday appearance during the event that was more like a celebration that would honor Humphrey as nominee to face the haunting specter of Richard Nixon on the Republican side.
“Bring a suitcase to your office and standby to help,” Underwood told me. “We are unannounced. This is not to be disclosed.”
Protests quickly flared to riots outside the convention hall in Chicago. The Democratic convention was under bloody siege. Literally. Phone calls were terse from both political and security experts. Sensibly, Lyndon Johnson’s appearance at the Chicago podium became non-history when quietly cancelled. Underwood remained in his office and my suitcase returned to my hotel room six blocks from the White House.
Walking to the White House each morning generally was invigorating. However, from the Manchester Hotel on Thomas Circle to my office became almost impossible shortly after shots rang out the lives of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. In the terse afternoon following King’s death, a secret service agent called with a suggestion that, unless vital to government service, staffers should flee to the safety of their suburban homes. My home wasn’t suburban. It was a lonely room in a hotel in a largely black, outraged neighborhood. As I raced to the Manchester Hotel, young hoodlums gathered with insulting shouts. I grabbed the ever-ready suitcase and returned to my lonely office. I alone decided that I would be “vital to government service” and I rather surely reckoned that I would personally be safer from the smoke and violence that had begun to rise from the urban ghetto surrounding my hotel. I selected my sofa as a cot for two nights while rioting raged. I used the EOB “men’s room” toilet for hygiene. The basement mess hall gave blessed nourishment. Navy stewards and cooks also were “vital to government service” and food was great. Yes, I was just like the vital but grim staffers assigned to the ever-sensitive “situation room.” “Vital” and safer.
After nightfall, as Washington burned worse than the drama of the War of 1812, I stood on West Executive Avenue near the South Gate and watched with awe. The overcast of smoke reflected the flames of the ghetto lapping within a dozen blocks of the White House. The white paint on the building where the most powerful man in the world worked took on a shade of pink—nearly fire red—in the
glow. Riot noise thundered. Tear gas flicked into my nostrils resurrecting my Army training years. Except at this time in 1968 I had no sidearm or rifle. But I felt fearless because I was amply protected by White House fences, guards and Secret Service agents. Thankfully, LBJ and Johnson family were believed to be at the ranch in Texas. Rioters’ fire miraculously failed to ignite the Manchester hotel and slowly the ashes cooled. Walking past smoldering ruins, I returned to my room. Across Thomas Circle and also unburned was the august Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church where five years later, in 1973, my then boss Bob Strauss, I would attend the funeral of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a fellow southwestern man we both admired and a president whom I will revere to my grave. Screw his critics, I felt at the time and now that LBJ was a great president. While I answered some of his mail, I stood ready for any greater assignment. It came and was good.
“Get your bags,” Jim Jones’ secretary instructed over the phone. “You’re going somewhere.”
Somewhere was San Salvador, El Salvador, for a meeting of ODECA, the Spanish language acronym for the common market organization of Central American republics. A black White House Mercury Marquis (LBJ