LBJ's Texas White House "Our Heart's Home"

CHAPTER 4 The Vice President's Ranch

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By the end of the 1950s, Lyndon B. Johnson was prepared for the next stage of his career, hi first genuine effort to run for national office. After a decade in the House of Representatives and more than another in the Senate chambers, the funnel to the peak of power had narrowed considerably. Johnson had been an integral part of the Senate leadership for almost a decade, building strong alliances that he expected would serve him well in an effort to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He believed he had the stature, experience, and leadership capacity to be effective as the top official in the land.

Throughout the 1950s, Johnson had managed the symbols so crucial to his political aspirations in an astute manner. The run-down ranch he purchased in 1951 had been an important part of the creation of his national image. It had been first a ticket to membership in the inner club of the Senate—a symbol of Johnson's leadership and the vehicle through which he achieved his cultural transformation from southerner to westerner—and finally a backdrop for high-level political negotiations and the location of affairs of state. As Johnson readied himself for the move to higher office, he prepared his ranch, symbolically and physically, for the demands that inevitably would follow.

Late in the second Eisenhower term, Johnson positioned himself for higher office. Although widely perceived as inordinately capable, he carried many liabilities; his southern roots in particular loomed large. Even Republican presidential aspirant Richard M. Nixon recognized Johnson's abilities, but he questioned whether the electorate would support him. "If [Johnson] had only one strike against him, he might make it," Nixon told reporter Carroll Kilpatrick in 1958. "But I don't think he can with two." Although some believed a run at the presidency was Johnson's life-long goal, in pragmatic terms he recognized that he had to accomplish many political objectives before he could become a legitimate contender in anyone's mind but his own. Much of the 1950s had been devoted to the task of counteracting any negative impressions of Johnson the public might hold: his centrist position, his power-brokering in the Senate, and his anti-southern stance on the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 were all evidence, which the public easily interpreted, of the efforts of a national leader rather than a regional politician tied to the needs of his immediate constituency.¹

Johnson had feinted at the presidential nomination before 1960. In 1956, he came to the convention in Chicago as a favorite-son candidate, nourishing a slim hope that Adlai Stevenson could be thwarted, but he recognized that the Democratic ticket had little chance that year. In the end, Estes Kefauver, Johnson's rival in the Senate, secured the vice presidential nomination over Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, a prospect that seemed to disturb Johnson only a little. The Democratic ticket was trounced at the polls in 1956, but as always, the defeat of his party enhanced Johnson's standing. After Eisenhower was sworn in for a second term, Johnson's position as a leading contender for the 1960 Democratic nomination was secure. During Eisenhower's second term, Johnson again turned the precarious Democratic position to his personal advantage. Between 1956 and 1960, he accomplished much of the groundwork necessary for a serious run at the top spot on the ticket. A range of commentators, including Eisenhower, publicly announced that they regarded him as a leading presidential candidate.²

Throughout early 1960, Johnson inexplicably refused to declare his candidacy for the presidential nomination. He teetered ambivalently as others made headway, citing his health, the negative impression the majority leader of the Senate would make by campaigning while Congress still had work to do, and other factors. Along with a number of other Democrats, including Hubert Humphrey, Kennedy, Johnson's old friend Stuart Symington, and the perennial Stevenson, Johnson was considered one of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination, but unlike the rest, he remained in Washington, D.C., to run the Senate. The others hit the campaign trail with a zeal that reflected the imminent change in the occupancy of the Oval Office. Johnson even ignored Sam Rayburn's announcement that a "Johnson for President" office would open in Austin in October, 1959.

Johnson's biographers have all speculated on this seeming abandonment of a goal that was so close at hand. Conkin argues that Johnson lapsed into one of the periods of inactive lethargy that were paired with his hyperactive engagement and that he was intimidated by the prospect of running without an established national base. The success of the Democrats in 1959 and 1960 had hampered Johnson's ability to lead in the Senate. His critics began to get the best of him, and sensing the end of an era, Johnson became frustrated and contemplated retirement. According to Conkin, he may have meant it. Other biographers, such as Robert Dallek, have intimated that Johnson felt he deserved the nomination and waited to be drafted, expecting the party to come to him in the manner that he had demanded of supplicants all through his adult life. Johnson had a "limited understanding," Dallek states, "of how important style was in a presidential candidate and White House occupant." Whatever the cause, his refusal to declare himself a candidate limited even the remote chance that he would secure the nomination.³

At the very last moment, three days before departing for the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Johnson announced he would run. "The old Johnson came back to life," Conkin grandly suggests. The greatest prize was too close to ignore. But he had given up the entire campaign season, during which John F. Kennedy had successfully positioned himself as the front-runner. Johnson faced an uphill battle. After months of playing down his interest in the nomination as potential rivals toured the country, Johnson sought to pull together disparate support in a figurative instant. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, had emerged as the leading candidate; he and Johnson had different but enormous liabilities. Kennedy's religious faith was an issue throughout the campaign, as was Johnson's regional origin.⁴

The most unusual aspect of Johnson's behavior in 1960 was his reluctance to chase the nomination. The 1960 campaign seemed remarkably similar to other situations in which Johnson had advanced his political career. As a politician, Johnson had never defeated an incumbent. He secured his House seat after the death of its previous denizen and successfully won the Senate race after the retirement of his predecessor. No giant killer, Johnson benefited greatly from the type of circumstances that prevailed in 1960. Yet when they arose that year, he demurred. His lack of willingness to engage political rivals was the cause of much surprise in political circles. Johnson had never before been reticent about pursuing his ambitions.

The Los Angeles convention was typical of political affairs, with much back-room politicking and deals made left and right. Although Johnson may have expected the Democratic Party to rally around him, in reality Kennedy had such an immense lead that he was the likely candidate even before the convention opened. Hubert Humphrey also had an outside chance to secure the nomination. The vice presidential slot remained available. An effort to arrange the post for Humphrey, whose own rivalry with Kennedy had turned unfriendly during the West Virginia primary, failed. At the convention, Philip Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, and one of his top political correspondents, Joseph Alsop, secured a five-minute interview with Kennedy during which Graham suggested that Johnson be selected as the vice presidential nominee. Kennedy immediately agreed, Graham later recounted, leaving him "doubting the easy triumph." As Graham pressed his case, Kennedy informed the publisher that he had decided on Johnson because of the southern support Johnson brought to the ticket. After Kennedy was nominated, the Massachusetts senator officially named Johnson as his running mate.⁵

The emergence of the "inverted ticket"—by experience and age—with Kennedy at the top and Johnson as the running mate offered important insights into the changing character of American politics. Until the 1960 election, American politicians had followed a number of unwritten rules: place of origin, seniority, and an extension of the reverence for experience expected in the chambers of the legislature were important prerequisites in building a ticket. A long record was extremely helpful as candidates sought to communicate to the public. But as Johnson himself demonstrated in his 1948 senatorial campaign, the advent of broad-based mass-communications networks changed the nature of politics. Image had replaced demonstrated performance as a foundation for a candidate's appeal.⁶

Television, which had become an important medium by 1960, was more powerful than any previous form of communication. It could beam an image of an individual into millions of homes in an instant. But for many traditional politicians, there were drawbacks to this mode of communication. Accustomed to a different manner of speaking—in fact to different ways of thinking about reaching voters—they were confounded by the new technology.⁷ Nor did television help anyone with idiosyncratic or regional characteristics. Television seemed to amplify an individual's traits or flaws, highlighting their most visible aspects and framing them almost as caricature.

On television, the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had enormous advantages. The photogenic Kennedy, despite a regional northeastern accent in speech, conveyed a personal warmth across the airwaves that his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, did not. David Halberstam has aptly described Kennedy as "the first television president." Johnson's features, particularly his enormous ears, seemed a political cartoon on television screens, but his Texan and southern way of speaking coincided with a large segment of the American public that did not respond to Kennedy's northeastern accent. The resulting combination was powerful, and in the 1960 election the Kennedy-Johnson ticket won by a small plurality.⁸

The campaign offered another opportunity to highlight Johnson's western image, and as always, the ranch was central to that endeavor. The Hill Country and the West had become embodiments of Johnson's new national persona. By 1960, he had been distancing himself from the South for almost a decade; after the 1956 campaign and the Civil Rights Bill of 1957, Johnson presented himself to the national public as a western man, unencumbered by the legacy of the South. With the South appearing to be in a struggle between its history and its future, with its politicians increasingly marginalized but its electorate of vast importance, Johnson's western image and his long ties to the South were twin assets to Kennedy and the Democratic ticket.

The issue of religion loomed large throughout the campaign. Johnson's southern ties helped counter the strident denunciations of those who opposed Kennedy because he professed Catholicism. With the selection of Kennedy as the party's nominee, Johnson's Texan, southern, and western roots had become even more valuable. In a still parochial America, not yet homogenized by mass communication and readily available and seemingly instantaneous travel, Johnson seemed more typically American than Kennedy in large sections of the country. While the Democratic Party might not have been ready for a candidate with rural roots in Texas, coupling such an individual with a Catholic from the Northeast seemed a good political strategy. Johnson understood his role. He had to deliver the South and defend Kennedy against gratuitous attacks on his faith and character.⁹

In a changing America, Johnson's western posture was an asset of tremendous value. The West had a different image, as a place of reinvention and self-realization, and it appealed to Americans more broadly than did the South, with its racial problems and seemingly feudal economic and social situation. Johnson sounded southern but acted increasingly western. The ranch and its accouterments—the consistent stream of stories about it since Johnson's days as majority leader—contributed to his revitalized image. The site created an iconography mimicked across the nation. In one instance in Boston during the campaign, Johnson was met by a group of Italian-American women, all "absolutely overpowered by these great big [cowboy] hats," Elizabeth Rowe remembered.¹⁰ The cowboy hats represented a shared Americanism that transcended region, an American pose that obviated ethnic and religious differences. In effect, the ranch and the values its western mythology represented became a part of holding the political center against Nixon in 1960, a way of speaking to the South in southern terms while packaging the same message as a representation of the West for the rest of the nation.

Johnson assiduously defended Kennedy against attacks on his Catholicism, a strategy that had particular resonance in the heavily Protestant religious culture south of the Mason-Dixon line. He frequently mentioned John Kennedy's brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., who was killed as his plane went down during World War II. In the copilot's seat next to the young Kennedy sat a young man from New Braunfels, Texas. Johnson reminded audiences time and time again that as the two young men fell heroically to their deaths, no one asked what religion they professed. This seemingly western mythic trait—judging an individual by their actions instead of their words or beliefs—had great resonance. If a Texan and fellow Southerner could accept a Catholic, could argue that if a man was Wt to serve in the military and sit in the Senate he had to be Wt for the White House, so could the rest of the region. At the same time, Johnson's Stetson and the innumerable scenes of him on horseback captured in newspaper and magazine photographs played an important role in persuading the rest of the public that the number two man on the ticket was not a real Southerner. In a close election in which almost 67 million votes were cast, this combination of action and image contributed to the Democratic ticket's 112,881-vote margin. Considering Johnson's importance in carrying much of the South, Texas, and California, Kennedy's postelection trip to the LBJ Ranch a week after the Johnsons came to Florida to see the Kennedys was more than a mere gesture.¹¹

But for Johnson, the triumph was hollow. He had settled for the second highest office in the land, shy of his genuine objective of the Oval Office. He had much of which to be proud. Texas had voted Democratic in a presidential election for the first time since 1948, and the 1960 election helped remake the American political landscape. But rather than shortening the distance to what he hoped to achieve, ascension to the vice presidency in a younger man's presidency could easily have meant that Johnson had gone as high as he would go. As the returns came in, Johnson only smiled for the photographers. One account called him "demonstrably morose," and one of his secretaries recalled that after the victory was secure he "looked as if he'd lost his last friend on earth," a sentiment that accurately described the ambivalence of a man who had previously hoped that on November 8, 1960, he would be the one elected president rather than vice president.¹²

The Kennedy visit to the Johnson ranch eight days after the election underscored the complicated nature of Johnson's new position. Although the vice president's mood improved after the night of the election and
he was typically hospitable, the arrival of Kennedy, a few of his staff, and the flock of reporters signaled a new moment for Johnson at his ranch.¹³ The ranch was Johnson's place of power; there he controlled everything, made all the decisions, held close the power. Now his new superior, the president-elect of the United States, had dropped by to pay a visit. It was a classic situation, in which Johnson's desire to best anyone—particularly anyone who was part of the Northeastern liberal establishment—had to be muted.

During the visit, the new president and vice president engaged in a day of deer hunting. In many situations, Johnson regarded such hunting trips as a way to enunciate the superiority of a rural upbringing and experience with the land. He reveled in taking inexperienced people hunting, helping them prepare to shoot and then disrupting their aim, laughing it off as an enormous joke. Only the most skilled ever managed to hit a deer. Such seemingly childish behavior allowed Johnson to prove himself more accomplished and somehow more entitled to lead. Kennedy's visit acknowledged the president-elect's appreciation of Johnson's contribution to the campaign. After a 6:00 a.m. breakfast of hominy grits, home-cured bacon, home-baked bread, orange juice, and coffee, the two left on a seven-and-one-half-hour hunting excursion that began even as rain threatened. During the day, both men shot the two-deer limit. In Johnson's case, the results were attributable to experience; in Kennedy's to, in the words of reporter Joseph R. L. Sterne, "a streak of fabulous beginner's luck." Johnson brought down a buck more than six hundred yards away, a feat that Kennedy, who had never been deer hunting but who had considerable experience with weapons, called "the best shot I have ever seen." Kennedy's aides described the president-elect as a "crack shot," and Johnson was similarly laudatory of Kennedy's expertise. The president-elect himself joked that the number of his missed shots was "executive privilege."¹⁴ Yet for Johnson, this was a new role. Even in the privacy of their limousine, beyond radio range and accompanied only by presidential advisor Kenneth O'Donnell and Torbert MacDonald, a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, Johnson could not embarrass the new national leader as he could newsmen, friends from the Senate, and other visitors to the ranch.

The Kennedy visit was illustrative of the problems inherent in the vice presidency. As the two men "sat up late after eating charcoal-grilled sirloin strip steak," they discussed the issues that faced the country. Johnson had showed Kennedy his stock and his Welds during the visit, and after the sumptuous southern dinner, agriculture and ranching were the primary topics of their conversation. This was an area that Johnson had made his own, but again he had to defer to the younger man. For the first time at his ranch, Johnson was not in charge, not in control. The "crack shot" from Massachusetts set the agenda and even the tone in the sprawling living room of the ranch house. Despite his widely acknowledged significance in the triumph of the ticket, the proud Lyndon Johnson had to accustom himself to a subservient role in a younger man's administration. The change was apparent from the outset of the visit. When Kennedy arrived, Johnson met him wearing an enormous Stetson. The president-elect quipped in response to Johnson's greeting, "I could see you if you took that hat off." In his home country, on his home place, Johnson shed his Stetson, his symbol of westernness and independence, in an instant.¹⁵

This simultaneous increase and decrease in stature weighed upon Johnson. After the Kennedy visit, the ranch returned to its daily rhythm. Cattle and sheep grazed, the low-water bridge was again open to local traffic, and the large Secret Service contingent departed.¹⁶ But the tone of the place had changed. Instead of reflecting Johnson's power and leadership, the ranch now reflected his ironically subordinate status as the second-in-command of the most powerful nation in the free world. The Johnsons returned to the ranch for the 1960 Christmas holidays in the manner typical of the family, but that year the vice president-elect was preoccupied. His new office was a powerless, limiting position, in many ways less valuable than the majority leadership he would abandon when inaugurated. Despite Kennedy's efforts to develop a rapport to promote closeness between the first and second families, Johnson still felt the potential to be left out. This feeling was acute, for it was a sentiment of which he was keenly aware as a result of the experiences of his youth. Johnson used the holidays to devise a strategy for overcoming the inherent powerlessness of his new position.

The vice presidency was a new and different role for Johnson, more ceremonial than his majority leadership and less alive with the machinations of politics. For a skilled legislative broker, it must have been something of a disappointment; the vice president had little influence and even less power. Johnson's predicament was compounded by his uncomfortable position in the Kennedy administration. During his visit to the ranch, Kennedy had predicted that Johnson would become "the most effective vice president in history," but even that distinction had dubious connotations. Although the Kennedys included the Johnsons in all the White House social events and the president kept the vice president involved in every major political decision—except, as Kennedy later noted, the Bay of Pigs Wasco—Johnson still felt he remained on the fringes of decision making. His expertise was necessary, but around the Kennedy White House, Johnson did not Wt in. The new president surrounded himself with people like himself. Eastern, well-educated, from fashionable backgrounds, they were unlike the rural and often self-conscious Johnson. Conversely, Johnson regarded many of the individuals in the Kennedy White House as inexperienced and often incompetent political and legislative maneuverers. Despite his expertise with Congress, Johnson was kept out of the process of crafting legislation on many occasions. When he tried to offer assistance, he usually wound up feeling rebuffed. The new vice president felt his insecurities exacerbated during the Kennedy presidency.¹⁷

But Johnson respected Kennedy's political sense and accomplishment, respected the challenges they had overcome to win the election, and he played the role of vice president. He refused to become a John Nance Garner—a disloyal vice president who undermined his president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whenever the opportunity arose. Instead, Johnson worked hard for the new administration. The Johnsons sold their previous home in Washington, D.C., and purchased a mansion called The Elms. They turned it into an official residence, preparing it for the lavish formal entertaining required of the office. In a role that limited his most valuable skills and reined in his instincts, Johnson endured.

The demands of the vice presidency continued to drive the transformation of the LBJ Ranch. Johnson's new role increased the ranch's importance as part of an image of America projected to the nation and the world. The ranch now represented the nation's aspirations as well as Johnson's, and the press and foreign visitors could point to it as a mythic version of the American experience and the roots of the nation. Johnson's ranch continued to be tied to an iconographic American heritage, its attributes expressed as a colloquial representation of the creation myth of the nation. The state events that began with the Lopez Mateos visit became more common during Johnson's vice presidency, and the ranch underwent another series of renovations in a seemingly endless process.

The Lopez Mateos visit had highlighted the limited amenities of the ranch house. The Johnsons were embarrassed to have the Mexican president, his wife, and their daughter be forced to share one bathroom during their stay. Immediately after the visit, the Johnsons discussed adding on to the guest rooms. Following the inauguration, early in 1961, the Johnsons again contacted J. Roy White and requested that he draw a plan for altering the east wing of the second story of the house. White's drawings reflected the Johnsons' desire to change the guest bedrooms into suites to accommodate the stream of important guests likely to visit during the vice presidential years. Dressing rooms and bathrooms were built into the Green and Gay rooms, creating suites that were ready for use by the summer of 1961.¹⁸

The vice presidency allowed Johnson to play a role in international relations that he had never before experienced. Prior to ascending to the vice presidency, the time he had spent overseas was limited. He had last been overseas in 1945; since then he had visited only Mexico outside the borders of the United States. In 1960, Johnson could be characterized as an amateur in matters of foreign culture and even provincial in his outlook on the rest of the world. He did bring some advantages to the informal position of roving ambassador that was part of the vice president's duties. His rural background amid the poverty of the early-twentieth-century Hill Country prepared him for the economic and social state of the Third World and offered him insight into its many predicaments. Johnson understood poor people and ambition, and he respected practices that developed the land: agriculture, animal husbandry, and similar economic endeavors. Poverty, in his view, was a correctable problem, one solved by a combination of the application of technology and the hard work of poor people. At the moment when Americans propagated the "Green Revolution"—a package of technologies designed to further the expansion of agriculture, particularly market crops, throughout the world—Johnson's view of remedies to poverty and official American attitudes nicely coincided. Johnson's personal traits—his gregariousness; his willingness to shake hands, to mix in crowds, to kiss babies, to taste raw fish—gave him a popularity that more refined and effete American leaders never achieved with the public in the Third World.¹⁹

His first trip, to a celebration of the independence of Senegal, a former French colony in West Africa, in April, 1961, demonstrated all the characteristics of Johnson overseas. The role of vice president restrained him at home, but overseas he could behave with the reckless abandon to which he was accustomed. Warned by the American ambassador that he should not go among the people of Senegal without gloves because they were dirty and diseased, the bare-handed Johnson plunged into the crowds in Dakar anyway, shaking hands, giving away souvenir pens, visiting homes, and drawing comparisons with Texas. In one instance, he saw immense baskets of peanuts and remarked to Lady Bird, "Why, it's just like Texas." On another occasion, Johnson left the sleeping ambassador and toured the city himself. He arose at 4:30 a.m. to visit a fishing village, where he discovered that the per capita income was about $100 per year. He told the people that when he was young, the per capita income in rural Texas was about $180 each year but that improvements had since raised it to $1,800. In the determined eyes of an African mother of eight, Johnson saw the "same expression I saw in my mother's eyes when she, the wife of a tenant farmer, looked down upon me and my little sisters and brothers, and determined that I should have my chance and my opportunity, believing that where there was a will, there was a way." This sentiment made a similar rise for the people of Senegal seemed foreordained.²⁰

Johnson's foreign travel continued. During a 1961 Asian jaunt, he visited Saigon, South Vietnam, Bangkok, Thailand, New Delhi, India, and Karachi, Pakistan, with brief overnight stays in Manila, Taipei, and Hong Kong. At each stop he continued to visit markets, leaving reporters behind in Bangkok while he toured the Klong, the water market; meeting crowds in Manila; and being mobbed by admirers in Karachi. In India, he kissed Lady Bird inside the Taj Mahal and gave a Texas yell there to test the echo, gestures that violated decorum and shocked both the American retinue and his hosts. Long-time Johnson aide Walter Jenkins recalled "thousands and thousands of people lining the street [of Karachi] to the point that we had to stop and let them open the way."²¹

Stuck in the crowd in Karachi, Johnson got out and began his customary practice of shaking hands. To one side stood a man with his camel, an individual with "an unusual face, a very fine face, a sort of Santa Claus face that looked like a tremendous amount of humanity," George Reedy recalled. Johnson conversed with the man through an interpreter, making the off-the-cuff remark that he hoped the man would someday have the opportunity to see the United States. Johnson continued to the palace for talks with Mohammed Ayub Khan, the leader of Pakistan, and forgot about his encounter with the camel driver. But the following morning, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn featured an article lauding the vice president. "He reaches out to the man with no shirt on his back," the paper insisted, reporting that the bazaars of Karachi were filled with talk of Johnson's invitation to the camel driver, Bashir Ahmed, to come to the United States and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.²²

While the episode could have turned out to be an embarrassment for Johnson and the United States, a quick response averted the problem. After he returned home, Johnson was informed by the U.S. embassy in Karachi that while he might not have intended to invite Ahmed, all of Pakistan regarded his remarks as an invitation to the camel driver. Johnson groaned and endured the prospect of this unlikely visitor. A detachment from the U.S. embassy was sent to Ahmed's mud hut in Karachi to formally invite him to visit, but when they arrived the camel driver was gone. Pakistani police had taken him away, preferring that the Pakistanis who attracted the attention of the U.S. press were educated members of the elite, not illiterate camel drivers. The issue seemed closed.²³

Despite such unusual situations, Johnson's international excursions were part of the development of the social role of the second family. The responsibilities of the vice president were often limited to formal and ceremonial events. Visits had to be reciprocated, and the second family played an important role in entertaining foreign dignitaries in the United States. Beginning in 1961, the Johnsons often hosted affairs at The Elms in Washington, D.C., but continued their practice of saving their best and most genuine entertaining for the LBJ Ranch.

The first guest at the ranch to experience Texas vice presidential hospitality was Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, who arrived in April, 1961. Texas retained a mythic hold on many Europeans. The work of nineteenth-century German author Karl May presented a fictionalized but enticing view of the West that was part of the cultural milieu for German youth before the rise of Hitler. As did many other young Germans of his day, Adenauer dreamed of seeing the legendary places of the American West. Texas, with its heritage of fierce independence and its large German population, was first among these places. During a visit to the United States two years before, Adenauer had expressed his interest in visiting Texas to Johnson, who was glad to oblige. Adenauer and his daughter, Libeth Werhahn, flew from Washington, D.C., to Texas on Sunday, April 16, 1961, transferring to a helicopter at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin. Landing in Stonewall, the party attended a special Mass officiated by Father Wunibald Schneider at Saint Francis Xavier Church. To accommodate Adenauer, Father Schneider had to circumvent church rules that prohibited saying Mass after noon. The German chancellor "was a very strict Catholic and he wouldn't miss Mass for anybody," Father Schneider recalled Johnson informing him. "No matter what happens, I'll say Mass when Adenauer comes," the priest responded after his bishop agreed to the plan. After the Mass, a helicopter took Adenauer and his entourage to the ranch for a barbecue.²⁴

For the Adenauer visit, the Johnsons prepared a sumptuous spread in the classic Texas style. Two huge tents were set up in the grove near the river, a hedge against a Texas spring rainstorm. The tent floors were carpeted, and the interior "looked sort of like a rich Turk's harem," KTBC employee and Texas humorist Richard "Cactus" Pryor recalled. Mary Kooch of Green Pastures in Austin catered the affair, trucking in the "fixings" and barbecuing some of the ribs over an open grill outside the tents. Ham, potato salad, Texas-style baked beans, cole slaw, pickles, and Texas toast rounded out the menu. A crowd of between four hundred and five hundred gathered to greet the chancellor, who arrived in a sleek Johnson convertible after the helicopter landing scared the horses that were supposed to pull the chancellor in a surrey. The affair presented, Pryor recalled, "a pretty fancy spread."²⁵

After the meal, which was quite popular with the guests, a program followed. Cactus Pryor had driven the entertainment—a duo called Tommy and Sandy, who along with Arthur Godfrey later became the nucleus of the Serendipity Singers, and two chemical engineering majors from the University of Texas who were fine singers—to the ranch. Although he thought he was "just functioning as a chauffeur," Johnson's executive assistant, Elizabeth "Liz" Carpenter, told Pryor that Lady Bird Johnson wanted him to serve as master of ceremonies. "I immediately acquired an almost lethal attack of stage fright—tent fright, I guess you'd call it," Pryor remembered, "and then when she signaled that she wanted the entertainment, I went on in. . . . There were more brass than I'd ever seen assembled in one place in my life." Ambassadors, generals, and other dignitaries dotted the crowd, and even the irrepressible Pryor was intimidated. Without a microphone, he meekly asked for everyone's attention not once but twice. Everyone continued talking. Finally, he recalled, "I shouted out in my best Texas voice, 'Simmer down!' And they did." Pryor introduced the acts and told some jokes, which Adenauer's translator conveyed to the chancellor while Pryor waited, and the afternoon was judged a success. During the ceremonies, Johnson presented Adenauer with a modified Stetson hat.²⁶

Adenauer and his entourage continued to Fredericksburg, the home of Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the World War II hero. Nimitz had flown back from California to meet the chancellor, and although his wife became ill and remained at the ranch, he enjoyed the barbecue and joined the group for the trip to Fredericksburg. At Gillespie Fair Park, more than seven thousand people awaited the chancellor, who marveled at the tremendous reception, gave a brief address, and repeatedly remarked on his excitement at finally visiting the Hill Country. The party returned to the ranch for a private dinner that consisted of the Johnsons, the Nimitzes, and Adenauer and his daughter. The next day, the chancellor left Texas after a brief stop to address the state legislature in Austin. It was, he told the representatives, a genuine pleasure to visit Texas.²⁷

As a result of Adenauer's visit, the symbolic value of the ranch became apparent to many who had previously ignored its potential. The ranch was not in the iconographic "boondocks," as some of the Kennedy White House staff had assumed. Johnson's Texas roots and the way he presented them at the ranch had tremendous pull even for people of other countries. The American West and its ranching, its barbecues, beans, and chuck wagons, had a cross-cultural resonance that allowed even those raised in other parts of the world to participate in an American myth made universal by popular fiction and the movies. Foreigners could see their preconceived vision of the "real America" in the vistas, settings, entertainment, and libations of the LBJ Ranch. For Europeans, this was all especially poignant; it resonated with the myths they held about the American West. Adenauer's visit began a universalization of the ranch, its transformation from a place of continental iconography to one of international symbolic meaning.

The ranch was also a highlight of the state visit of Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan of Pakistan, whom Johnson had visited earlier in 1961. Pakistan played a crucial geographic role in Cold War politics. The United States sought an ally on the Indian subcontinent. The insistent nonaligned status of India, the other substantial state in east Asia, and the religion- and territory-based rivalry between the two nations made the Pakistanis attractive to American foreign policy experts. In no small part, the location and strategic importance of Pakistan accounted for Johnson's visit to Karachi and were contributing factors in Kennedy's invitation to Ayub Khan. After a state visit to Washington, D.C., that included a candlelight dinner on the lawn of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, in rural Virginia, Ayub Khan flew to Texas on July 15, 1961. He visited the Alamo, in San Antonio, where he participated in a wreath-laying ceremony, and then continued by helicopter to the LBJ Ranch.²⁸

Typically, Johnson offered a Sunday barbecue in honor of Ayub Khan as the highlight of the visit, with other smaller activities preceding and following the affair. Ayub Khan arrived on Saturday evening. A fifty-person dinner at the ranch that evening included a number of influential Texans. Educated in England, the Pakistani leader was quite secular. He spoke the English language with fluency and aplomb and understood western ways. The Johnsons were able to organize a sophisticated entertainment program without worrying about offending Ayub Khan's mores. Pryor, who again served as master of ceremonies, remembered Ayub Khan as a "very happy fellow" who "laughed very easily." On an evening graced by a stunning full moon, the Johnsons provided a candlelight dinner on white linen tablecloths for their guests. Among the visitors were Secretary of State and Mrs. Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense and Mrs. Robert McNamara, Texas Governor and Mrs. Price Daniel, and other Texas dignitaries. Aquatic teams performed, and an Australian, Diana Trask, who was then appearing on television's Mitch Miller Show, sang. Wearing a blue gown and bathed in the light from a blue spotlight, she sang "Blue Moon." Cactus Pryor remembered the evening as "a very romantic setting."²⁹

The barbecue the next afternoon drew more than five hundred visitors to the ranch. "The planes came in from all over the Southwest," Pryor recalled, "jets—swarming around like turkey buzzards coming in for landings." Among the guests were more than fifty-five Pakistani students studying at Texas colleges. One of Johnson's favorite entertainers, Eddy Arnold, the "Tennessee Plowboy," sang, as did regional celebrity Rosalita of San Antonio, and a mariachi band played. Pryor again served as master of ceremonies, standing on a raised dias adorned with red, white, and blue bunting and flying the United States and Pakistani flags. Johnson presented Ayub Khan with a saddle, three Texas-style hats, a pair of spurs, and a leather-trimmed hunting jacket and then inexplicably took the Pakistani leader away in a golf cart. Eddy Arnold began singing to the backs of the guests' heads as everyone's eyes followed the two departing leaders. Pryor recalled that Arnold was "a little bit miffed" at his treatment.³⁰

Ayub Khan's secular bearing and experience with the larger world helped avoid what could have become an uncomfortable international incident. On the menu along with barbecued beef and chicken was barbecued pork—a taboo for any devout Moslem, a threat to the status of any Moslem leader who might sample it, and potentially an inadvertent insult. Although the pork ribs were not on the trays offered to the Pakistani guests, even their appearance on the menu could have been considered an affront.³¹ Ayub Khan's worldly experience and his sense that he was among friends allowed him to consider the offering of the meat as simply a mistake on the part of the Americans, and an incident that could have been extremely embarrassing was avoided. Johnson's Texas background gave him charisma and had symbolic value, but it also contained limitations.

Johnson and Ayub Khan had a great deal in common. Both enjoyed hunting and were excellent marksmen; both, according to Liz Carpenter, "loved the land, loved the countryside." The shared outlook of the two men became clear during their conversation. "How much rainfall does your country have?" Johnson asked Ayub Khan in his typical measure of the nature of a people. As the leader of a country with vast arid regions, the general could respond with an answer Johnson appreciated. After the barbecue, Johnson took Ayub Khan on a drive across the ranch, and the two men discussed a range of subjects as a friendship began to grow. Among the topics was the camel driver from Karachi, whom Johnson insisted should be brought to the United States for a visit.³²

Bashir Ahmed, the camel driver, posed an ongoing problem for the Kennedy administration. Johnson's "promise" to him had to be fulfilled, or the Americans would seem to have reneged on a meaningless promise that could have ramifications for foreign policy. The visit was set for October, 1961. There were problems beyond the timing. Ahmed was illiterate and unskilled in the ways of the diplomatic and official world. He had never been to the West, never seen its customs, and the modern world contained many features that would shock a devout Moslem. Press coverage of the trip also posed problems. The cynical American media would likely have a field day with this ordinary representative of a populous protoindustrial nation. Ahmed's visit ran a real risk of becoming a farce. Newspapers assigned their humorists to cover the trip, potentially turning the gesture of the invitation into an event that could be offensive in a personal sense and might also seem to mock the Pakistani people. Despite Johnson's contention that the United States "need[ed] on our side the camel drivers of the world," the attitude of the American press remained a sensitive issue.³³

Ahmed's visit had to be closely managed. Johnson and his staff repeatedly informed the press of their obligation to treat Ahmed gently in their reports. Johnson told reporters that he thought it would be "cruel and foolish to poke fun at him in print," reminding them that not only was Ahmed a personal guest of Johnson's but that he represented the type of people in the world who Americans wanted to support their goals in the international arena. Henry B. Gonzalez of San Antonio, a friend of Johnson, echoed these sentiments with Lady Bird Johnson and Liz Carpenter at his side during a political rally in San Antonio just as Ahmed arrived at Idlewild Airport in New York City. Lyndon Johnson met him there and whisked him off to Texas, in no small part to control press access to someone nearly everyone believed was an unsophisticated visitor. Liz Carpenter was enlisted to play "nursemaid" to the visitor. Planned events were kept to small groups, and for a time during the visit Johnson simply kept Ahmed away from reporters.³⁴

During the visit, however, Ahmed astounded Americans with a kind of grace and charm that they did not expect from a Third World camel driver. Treated as if he were a minor celebrity, Ahmed marveled at the United States and its many attributes. Serendipitously he became an archetypical foreign guest, albeit one possessed of considerable appeal and charisma. He became a public relations dream for Johnson and his staff. Ahmed had great personal presence. He was "extraordinarily gentle; he had this marvelous face," George Reedy remembered. "And he was a devout Mohammedan and didn't drink. He was past the age where he would chase women, if he ever had chased women. He really loved small children, and they responded to him. He handled himself with considerable dignity." An adept interpreter made the camel driver sound well spoken, witty, and innocent in a manner that Americans liked but could hardly emulate. "Smoother than a camel," Ahmed remarked of his horse ride on one occasion. He also demonstrated what Americans regarded as simple dignity. "Perhaps my body is weary but my heart will never tire of the friendship I have seen," he told reporters assembled in Washington, D.C. "When I sat atop my camel I thought I surveyed the world, but I had not seen one handsbreadth," he said from atop the RCA Building, overlooking New York City. He also had a profound innocence that enticed Americans. When he saw the coverage of his arrival in New York on television after he had reached the LBJ Ranch, he exclaimed with wonder: "How can I be here when I am there?"³⁵

The ranch served a dual purpose during Ahmed's visit. Johnson used it when he sought to hide his guest from the press; at the same time, the operations of the ranch were comprehensible to Ahmed in a way that American cities and customs were not. The ranching enterprise fascinated and awed Ahmed. Its machinery and what seemed to the guest to be a large number of animals were beyond his experience in Pakistan. Johnson used Ahmed's interests and his control of access to his ranch to manage the visit. Instead of showing Ahmed the United States, Johnson initially brought many aspects of Texas and American culture to him. As Ahmed became more comfortable and Johnson's staff recognized that the visitor could charm the American media, the vigilance that characterized the first stages of the visit relaxed.

The vice president treated Ahmed to a tour of Texas and a glimpse of Texas history and culture. Texas philosopher and folklore laureate J. Frank Dobie and famed Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb explained the history of the region to Ahmed, who responded: "Well-said words are like golden plums in silver bowls." Upon leaving the ranch, the Johnsons took the camel driver to the Texas State Fair in Dallas. After Lyndon Johnson bid him farewell, Ahmed continued to Kansas City, where he toured the headquarters of People-to-People, the organization that had handled the tour arrangements; saw a cattle auction; visited the Truman Library in nearby Independence, Missouri; and shook hands with former president Harry S Truman. "For every white hair on his head, there has been a troubled day," Ahmed said of the former president.³⁶ When he left to return to Pakistan, Americans wistfully watched this modern version of the natural man leave their midst.

Bashir Ahmed's visit remained a curious moment in Johnson's long political career. Lyndon Johnson must have invited thousands of people to Washington, D.C., as he shook hands across the country and the world, but as one of his aides remarked, "we thought it was just as well that of all those thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands that Mr. Johnson invited to Washington, only one ever showed up." Ahmed possessed the kind of charisma and bearing that made for a good human-interest news story, something Johnson acknowledged during the visit when he finally removed restrictions on contact with the press. In effect, at some point Johnson decided that the camel driver could handle media attention, and what had seemed an ordeal became a very pleasant and valuable public relations experience.³⁷

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan improved as a result of Johnson's endeavors. The Ahmed visit was a stunning success with both the American and Pakistani publics. Ayub Khan and Johnson had much in common, and after the Weld marshal's return to his palace at Rawalpindi, Johnson showered the Pakistani leader with mementos of the trip. "I have not yet got over the tremendous hospitality kindness and friendship you showed to me during my visit to your great country," Ayub Khan wrote after his return. "May I say again how impressed I was with your sincerety [sic] and wisdom?" Ayub Khan was also pleased that Ahmed "conducted himself with poise and dignity . . . the basic qualities of our people, however uneducated they may be." Pakistanis marveled at Johnson's generosity with Ahmed; across the Pakistani nation, "it tended to break down any existing wall of suspician [sic]," in the estimation of a member of the military guard at the U.S. embassy who traveled throughout the country. Everywhere he and his entourage stopped, the talk was of Ahmed. "In every teahouse all over Pakistan, they were talking of nothing else when [Ahmed] was here except his visit," Liz Carpenter recalled. "It was page one every day. . . [it allowed the U.S.] to identify with the man on the street and the peasant instead of the professor." In Pakistan, the vice president was referred to as "Friend Johnson Sahib." Americans and Pakistanis drew closer as a result, achieving an important diplomatic goal for the Kennedy administration.³⁸

During the vice presidency, the ranch increasingly became a focus for formal social affairs in the informal Texas style. With barbecues as the centerpiece, Johnson often brought an array of visitors to the Hill Country to experience regional color and hospitality. The ranch offered an all-purpose destination for dignitaries visiting Texas—a chance to charm anyone with gracious hospitality, a stunning rural setting, and the feeling of a down-to-earth experience. Visitors loved the ranch. During October, 1962, the Johnsons hosted a delegation of Latin American ambassadors from the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting in San Antonio. Brought in by bus, the delegates enjoyed an early afternoon cocktail party on the front lawn. After a lunch served among the trees, Johnson presented his visitors with "Honorary Texan" certificates and took them on a tour of the ranch. By late afternoon, the OAS delegates were on their way back to San Antonio for their banquet; Johnson rode a helicopter down to join them and gave the banquet address.³⁹

As the stream of dignitaries to rural Texas continued, the more formal barbecues functioned in a similar manner. When the Johnsons hosted United Nations ambassadors for a barbecue at the ranch in April, 1963, "Texas twang and clipped British" accents were juxtaposed, Cactus Pryor remembered. "The first thing that struck you was the contrast: The Oriental and the Occidental, there were Paris frocks and Levis." Liz Carpenter also noticed the contrasts. "The world really shrunk in my eyes," she remembered. "Seeing saried women from the Far East in a remote part of Texas was a whole new ballgame." The ambassador from Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, arrived dressed in a traditional gown and wearing the Stetson that Johnson had given him. Johnson's cousin Oriole Bailey asked Washington, D.C., socialite Perle Mesta what she did. "Well, I give parties," Mesta said after a moment's thought. "You mean that's all you do?" Mrs. Bailey inquired. "Yes, that's about all I do," Mesta replied. "My, that's a funny way to carry on," Cousin Oriole remarked. More than two hundred guests joined the twenty-five United Nations representatives for a noon barbecue, followed by a shooting exhibition, a bullwhip champion displaying her prowess, and a comedy by the Geezinslaw Brothers.⁴⁰

Throughout the many barbecues, the tangy aroma of meat on the grill permeated the ranch grounds. Texans took great pride in their barbecue, and Johnson sought only the best for his affairs. For major events, Johnson hired Walter Jetton, the famous Fort Worth barbecue impresario, who would bring his chuck wagon and portable barbecue pits to the ranch. By nine o'clock on the morning of any event, the smell of pork ribs, beef brisket, and simmering chicken would "convince your stomach that breakfast had been days before," Pryor recalled.⁴¹

The ongoing flow of visitors required continuing changes to the ranch house. After the initial redesign inspired by the Lopez Mateos visit, two further additions took place. The bedrooms and bathroom in the west wing, previously used by live-in servants, were remodeled into two guest suites and became known as the Carnation rooms. By January, 1962, that work was completed. That same year, the dining room, kitchen, and the ancillary areas nearby were also remodeled. A tool room and utility room were added, and the carport was redesigned.⁴²

By the end of 1962, nearly two years into his vice presidency, Lyndon Johnson could look at his ranch and see more than a work in progress. In the decade during which the Johnsons had owned the property, the house had been redone to accommodate their growing need to host visitors, and the ranch had played an important role in the creation of a national image for Johnson that had contributed to his ability to secure the vice presidency. During the vice presidency, the ranch had become an international meeting place, an evocation of an America far different than the swirl of Washington, D.C., society. Even more important, the ranch had become home to the Johnson family. It was a far cry from the early 1950s, when floodwaters trapped Lady Bird and Luci in the ramshackle house. Throughout 1962 and 1963, the Johnsons made a series of ongoing trips to the ranch for personal and public affairs. The ranch provided time for relaxation from the busy, world-traveling schedule of the second-in-command of the free world.

Typical of the Johnsons' trips to the ranch was the Christmas vacation in 1962. From early December to early January, 1963, the Johnsons were at their ranch in the Hill Country. Arriving on December 7, Lyndon Johnson remained at the ranch until January 5. He was only away for three days, once for a brief trip to Austin and Fort Worth and once for a two-day return to the nation's capital. His first morning at the ranch, he breakfasted with his old friend and neighbor A. W. Moursand, and in time-honored Johnson fashion, the two drove around the ranch. During the afternoon, they went boating on Lake Granite Shoals, and the pattern continued throughout the holidays. Hunting and boating were regular activities during the entire trip.

In Lyndon Johnson's life, business and pleasure were always intertwined. During this stay at the ranch, a steady stream of political friends and acquaintances came by. Old Johnson friend and Texas governor-elect John Connally visited, as did Texas politico Dolph Brisco. A contingent from Georgia, including Governor Ernest Vandiver, Governor-Elect Carl E. Sanders, Senator Richard Russell, Judge Robert Russell, and Georgia state senator and state Democratic Party chair J. B. Fuqua, arrived to enjoy the hunting. The parade of guests and social events continued; twenty-six visitors enjoyed dinner at the ranch on December 27. By the time Johnson returned to Washington, D.C., to preside over the opening of the U.S. Senate on January 9, 1963, he had spent nearly a month in the element in which he was most comfortable.⁴³

Throughout the first ten months of 1963, the pattern continued. Johnson returned twice in February and for a week in March and spent at least half of April and May at the ranch. Beginning in late June, he spent forty of the next sixty-one days at the ranch, leaving just prior to his birthday at the end of August. During these frequent jaunts to Texas, Johnson attended to a number of ceremonial functions inherent to his position. A barbecue for Finnish Ambassador and Madame Richard Raphael Seppala took place in late March. During the Easter recess, Johnson addressed the graduating class of Johnson City High School as a favor to the superintendent, Kitty Clyde Ross Leonard, his high school sweetheart. Johnson attended the Gillespie County Fair, where his Hereford herd made a "clean sweep" of the division. Ranch foreman Dale Malechek, hired in January, 1962, earned most of the credit for this success. In the evening, Johnson would stroll down to "Cousin Oriole's place" for conversation.⁴⁴ Such a rhythm was characteristic of Johnson's visits home, both for political and personal reasons. It kept Johnson close to the people of his region and state, served to further illustrate the image he had worked so long to develop, and gave him the only kind of relaxation he could tolerate: busy, mobile, and involved.

As the winter of 1963 approached, the LBJ Ranch had become an important place in American political culture. Johnson's uses of it had been largely successful; it was a far different place than it had been in 1951, both physically and symbolically. The renovated and reconstructed house had acquired an important position in Johnson's vice presidential activities. Besides simply being Johnson's home, the ranch had become a window into the ways of leadership, a guesthouse to the world. It showed the world, from national leaders to camel drivers, the "real America," a place where people worked with their hands and with the land, where Americans' ties to the way the rest of the world lived were far closer than they might seem on a trip to Manhattan Island or Washington, D.C. At his ranch, Johnson could show dignitaries from other countries that not all of America was highways and skyscrapers, that Americans operated in a manner and on a scale that the rest of the world could understand. He could talk about how recently the people of rural Texas had been as poor as those of the Third World, and visitors from around the globe could see what he meant. He could show them the land and animals, vestiges of a preindustrial American economy that resonated with people in developing countries. For visitors from developed nations, the ranch evoked an American past that was mythologized around the world. The ranch symbolized a kind of reality, a brand of history, that Americans and their guests found pleasing. It highlighted a type of heritage that Americans claimed closely but from which most had grown distant. Lyndon B. Johnson's ranch reminded Americans of their mythic and actual roots in a way that no city could.