single-page memoranda

On January 18th, 1964, less than two months after the assassination of President Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger wrote,

Life continues to run down.  I spend most of my time doing things about and for the Kennedy Library.  My relationship to the new administration could hardly be more meager.  I have had no private talks with President Johnson since early December; and the only piece of ongoing business in which my participation was invited was the preparation of the State of the Union message.

I would say that the essence of the Johnson administration so far is motion without movement -- but again I must guard against my commitment to his predecessor and my dislike of the current style and corn; because in most public respects he has done well, and held the line on the big issues.  I am sure he will be a good President, but I am also sure that it's not my sort of thing.

January 31

On January 27 I submitted my resignation.  It was accepted with alacrity....

March 11

LBJ differs from JFK in a number of ways -- most notably, perhaps, in his absence of intellectual curiosity.  Again, he has the senatorial habit of knowing only what it is necessary to know for the moment and then forgetting it as soon as the moment has passed.  Thus a senator knows everything about railroad legislation one week and about urban renewal the next and about foreign aid the next -- by which time he can no longer remember anything about railroad legislation.  LBJ lacks the supreme FDR-JFK gift of keeping a great many things in his mind at the same time, remembering them all, and demanding always to know new things.  This is particularly unfortunate in foreign affairs, where he knows little and yet seems disinclined to add to his knowledge as, for example, by talking to foreign visitors.

One senses a certain insecurity in his relations with people, except senators.  He alternates between effusive cordiality and absent and preoccupied indifference.  He apparently dislikes to do business on a face-to-face basis and requires single-page memoranda which he takes back to the Mansion, broods over and decides (or postpones) without discussion with the person who has brought up the problem.  There is no easy access to his office; even [Jack] Valenti, Moyers and [Walter] Jenkins have to request permission before they enter; the old informality of the Kennedy days has gone.

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{Journals, 1952 - 2000.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
THE PENGUIN PRESS
New York
2007}

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