Saturday, August 4, 2012

management

"Invaluable" is a weird word.  It means really really valuable.  But it kind of sounds like it means NOT-valuable.
Like the word "ingratitude" means the person is Not grateful.
But "invaluable" means they're Super-valuable.

People who learn English as a second language say it's the hardest one, and maybe I believe them, except for Chinese.

[excerpt, Flawed Giant:  Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961 - 1973]--------------
"I can't afford to have my Vice President, who knows every reporter in Washington, going around saying we're all screwed up, so we're going to keep him happy," JFK told White House aide Kenneth O'Donnell.

...Kennedy...did not wish to provoke him into becoming a covert opponent, as John Nance Garner, FDR's first Vice President, had been....

[President Kennedy] had genuine regard for Johnson as a "political operator"....He viewed him as someone who, despite the limitations of the vice presidency, could contribute to the national well-being in foreign and domestic affairs and, by so doing, make Kennedy a more effective President.

JFK gave some careful thought to Johnson's role in the administration.  He did not want him managing its legislative program and creating the impression that the President was following the lead of his Vice President, a more experienced legislator.  Kennedy was happy to have Johnson gather intelligence on what senators and representatives were thinking, but he had no intention of allowing him to become the point man or administration leader on major bills.  Besides, he understood that Johnson no longer had the means he used as Majority Leader to drive bills through the Senate.  Instead, he wanted Johnson to head a new Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (CEEO), chair the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and represent the United States on trips abroad.

Kennedy knew that civil rights was going to be a major issue during the next four years.  The campaign in the fifties by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference against racial segregation made civil rights a compelling question for JFK's administration.  He doubted, however, that a cautious Congress dominated by southern Democrats would be favorably disposed to a bill assuring black Americans the right to vote and access to public facilities across the South. 

Consequently, he planned to rely on executive action as an immediate device for advancing black equality.  He wanted the CEEO to combat discriminatory hiring practices in the federal government and by private businesses with federal contracts.  Lyndon Johnson was to be one of the principal figures implementing this strategy.  As a southern moderate who had led a major civil rights law through the Congress in 1957 and believed the national well-being required equal treatment for blacks, Johnson could be invaluable in advancing a rational response to a highly charged issue and preventing southern alienation from the administration.

--------------------------------------------
...Kennedy insisted that his staff treat Johnson with the same respect they would have wanted shown him were their positions reversed.  "You are dealing with a very insecure, sensitive man with a huge ego," JFK told O'Donnell.  "I want you literally to kiss his fanny from one end of Washington to the other." 

Kennedy also asked Angier Biddle Duke, White House Chief of Protocol, to take care of the Johnsons.  "'I want you to...see that they're not ignored, not only when you see them but at all other occasions.'"  Kennedy explained that everyone in the administration eventually would be so busy they would forget about Johnson, and he wanted Duke "to remember."  And so during White House photo sessions, when Lyndon "would always hang in the back as if he felt he was unwanted," Duke "would say in a loud voice, 'Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President,' and then the president would look around and say, 'Where's Lyndon?  Where's Lyndon?'  Johnson liked that, and he'd come up front."

[I can imagine that, with JFK's particular Boston accent:  "Way-ahz Lyndon?  Way-ahz Lyndon?"...]

New York Times columnist Arthur Krock remembered Kennedy's "often" expressing concern about Lyndon, saying, "'I've got to keep him happy somehow.'"  'To appease Johnson, who would descend on him with personal complaints, Kennedy worked out a routine with O'Donnell.  JFK would first hear Lyndon out, and then call in O'Donnell for a tongue-lashing about Johnson's problem.  Johnson would then "go away somewhat happier."  Johnson told Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he "had been treated better than any other Vice President in history and knew it."
--------------------------- [end excerpt]

{Flawed Giant:  Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961 - 1973.
Robert Dallek.  Copyright, 1998.  Oxford University Press, New York, New York.}

-30-


No comments:

Post a Comment