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Hubert H. Humphrey, Oral History Interview—RFK, 3/30/1970 Administrative Information

Creator: Hubert H. Humphrey Interviewer: Larry J. Hackman Date of Interview: March 30, 1970 Location: D.C. Length: 57 pages

Biographical Note Humphrey was a senator from (1949-1964), a presidential candidate (1960, 1968), and vice president of the (1965-1969). In this interview, he discusses the potential candidates for vice president in 1964, Robert F. Kennedy’s (RFK) 1964 Senate campaign, the 1968 presidential campaign, and RFK’s assassination and its political aftermath, among other issues.

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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.

Suggested Citation Hubert H. Humphrey, recorded interview by Larry J. Hackman, March 30, 1970, (page number), Robert F. Kennedy Oral History Program of the John F. Kennedy Library.

Hubert H. Humphrey—RFK

Table of Contents

Page Topic 2, 17 Vice presidency in 1964 3, 19 Robert F. Kennedy’s (RFK) 1964 Senate campaign 9 Humphrey’s personal relationship with RFK 13 Appointment of Miles W. Lord as a district attorney in Minnesota 15 Civil rights legislation 21 RFK’s and the 28 Lyndon B. Johnson’s relationship with RFK 33 Rumors about RFK planning to run for president in 1968 35 Kerner Commission report 36, 44 1968 presidential campaign 40, 53 RFK’s assassination and its political aftermath 51 1968 Oregon Democratic primary 55 Eugene J. McCarthy

Oral History Interview

with

Hubert H. Humphrey

March 30, 1970 Washington D.C.

By Larry J. Hackman

For the Robert F. Kennedy Oral History Program of the John F. Kennedy Library

HACKMAN: I want to just start off by going back to 1964 and asking you to recall anything you can remember about conversations with Robert Kennedy [Robert F. Kennedy] in the period after the President’s [John F. Kennedy] assassination, whether it’s personal or whether it’s looking forward to his own political future. Do you remember anything in that period—what he should do, might do?

HUMPHREY: The only thing I can recall immediately after President Kennedy’s assassination were some visits with Kenny O’Donnell [Kenneth P. O’Donnell] in which, on one

[-1-] or two occasions, Robert Kennedy was present. But it was primarily conversations of reminiscences and of just a social nature, not dealing particularly with the politics of that time. In 1964 I can recall reading a great deal about the possibility that Robert Kennedy might be considered for the vice presidency and then, of course, we remember that President Johnson [Lyndon B. Johnson] made the statement that no member of his cabinet would be considered by him, the President. This referred not only, of course, to Robert Kennedy, but at the time McNamara [Robert S. McNamara] was also being talked about and Freeman [Orville L. Freeman]. Udall [Stewart L. Udall] had been mentioned. But I believe the presidential announcement was primarily directed towards the possibilities of Robert Kennedy or McNamara. My next recollection in this period is the discussions about Robert Kennedy running for United States senator in . I was never in on those discussions. All I knew about them was just what I had read and what other people had told me.

[-2-]

I recall that many people were concerned as to whether or not he could meet the qualifications of residency, whether or not his family being from Massachusetts, that this would be sort of an immovable object to his candidacy in New York. And of course all of that was reconciled by the fact that he had been born, as I recall, in and that the residency requirements surely did not have the same effect as if you were running for governor. My next recollection of Robert Kennedy in ’64 was campaigning with him, and I recall that quite vividly, going to New York City. Oh, wait a minute. I should say my next recollection was at Atlantic City when he was introduced and the tremendous ovation that he received, and of course the film relating to President Kennedy and the impact that that film had upon the delegates. It was very obvious that Robert Kennedy was popular with the delegates, not only popular in his

[-3-]

own right, but also I think because of the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of his brother, President Kennedy. Following the convention of 1964, when Bobby was moving into the campaign in New York, I had one or two discussions with him that related to that campaign. It was understood that he was running against a rather formidable opponent in Senator Kenneth Keating [Kenneth B. Keating]. Keating was a middle of the roader, had a good deal of support amongst liberal Republicans and some Democrats, so that Bob Kennedy’s campaign was not a foregone conclusion of success. No one could have predicted in the summer of 1964 that the Republicans would be as weak and as divided and as inept as they turned out to be. It was hard to even predict that the Goldwater [Barry M. Goldwater] candidacy could be as weak as it was. President Johnson turned out to be exceedingly popular at that time, in the campaign of ’64. And of course, that popularity at the ballot box had a beneficial effect on all candidates

[-4-]

across the country. I don’t think there’s any doubt but what certain candidates for Congress and Senate were successful in part because of the President’s spectacular, overwhelming victory. But in New York, while President Johnson won I think by about a million and a half votes, I believe that Robert Kennedy won by a little over a half a million votes, so it was perfectly obvious that he had a good, strong political following. I remember a conversation or two with him about his campaign and how he could best forward that campaign at a time when it looked not quite as successful as it turned out to be. He was particularly concerned that he was getting just kids at the time, for him. There was a good deal being made of this in the press, particularly by the Republican press, Republican oriented press, that Robert Kennedy was the hero of for the kids, but not much for the adults. I remember saying to him that that wouldn’t bother me a bit, that young people tended to influence their parents a

[-5-]

good deal more than editorials did. And I said that I thought that there was an easy way to balance it out, and that was just to make sure that a good deal of the photography that took place wherever he could make it, wherever he had any control over it, was to see that pictures were a pretty good cross section of the adult populations. I felt that the message of young people would get through their own grapevine of young people’s enthusiasm and their own contacts. But in substance I didn’t feel that this attack of the opposition upon him would be very effective. I recall Mrs. Humphrey [Muriel Fay Buck Humphrey] and I riding with him one night up to a meeting in Westchester County. And it was a big meeting, and he was very much worried about that. Particularly he was worried about the fact that they would sort of tear at him, so to speak—the youthful enthusiasm of pulling at his clothes and tearing off his coat. And I suggested to him that that could be in a sense mitigated if at certain times he didn’t lend himself to it by standing up

[-6-]

on car tops or by making himself quite so available. But on balance…. And I just remembered, as like I’m talking to him now, I said: “Bobby, if the only problem you have is that young people are for you, I think that you are the luckiest man in the world.” I pointed out to him that in my first elections for mayor and senator, that the greatest asset I had were young people in the high schools and the junior high schools and the grade school kids that became enthusiastic supporters of mine. And I remembered how they used to tell their mothers and daddies that they’d met Mr. Humphrey, and how I’d say to them, “Well, you tell your mother and father to meet me down at the corner of 7th and Hennepin or 7th and Nicollet tomorrow,” and how the parents would turn up, which was a way of ascertaining how effective young people are with their parents. I recall our tour through . I’ve never been into anything like it quite in my life. We were in one of these motorcades down 5th Avenue

[-7-]

and cutting across town on one of the cross town streets. And people were just ecstatic! They literally tore at Bobby Kennedy, and I remember women threw shoes in the car. And at the end of the tour there was a girdle or a garter belt or a girdle. I guess it’s part girdle, part garter belt lying on the floor of the car and I said to Bobby, I said, “You’re a magician. How did you do that?” We kind of laughed about it. But they’d get so excited. I’ve never seen such excitement as he generated in that particular tour.

HACKMAN: Can you remember him asking you to go to particular leaders in New York, for instance the liberals, earlier like Dubinsky [] or Rose [] or any of those people?

HUMPHREY: Yes. Yes, I do, now that you mention that. Yes, because the liberal party had some doubts about Bobby early. And and I talked about this, as had David Dubinsky. This is before Lou Stulberg [Louis Stulberg] had taken over. And Dubinsky was very

[-8-]

close to President Johnson. And I think it’s fair to say that President Johnson was for Bobby running in New York. He was not for him for vice president. I’m sure we don’t need to go into the details of that. There’s an awful lot of stuff been written about it. I gather that the relationships there were never as warm and as friendly as both parties could have used, but they were respectful. And the President was in support of Robert Kennedy running for the Senate. But I spoke with Dubinsky about Bob Kennedy. I always felt that Bob Kennedy was much more of a, what I call a guts liberal than some people did. There were always people portraying us, even at that time, as if we were adversaries. I knew that Bobby was a tough fighter. I recall him very well from the days in the 1960 primary. He worked tirelessly and he was hard…. He was just what I’d call a tough politician. He knew what he wanted. He knew how to go after it. He wasn’t unfair. He wasn’t cruel.

[-9-]

He didn’t pull any low blows. But I mean he was a formidable opponent and he was a good organizer. And on the night that I lost that presidential primary I remember he came on up to the hotel to see me. And I went with him back to the Kennedy headquarters, and of course expressed my concession of defeat in that primary. And I always had a feeling that in the administration, in the Kennedy administration, that one of my allies, besides having a good, healthy friendship with President Kennedy, was Bobby. I think he really felt that I was a good senator and that I could deliver for the administration. I don’t think it was so personal. He always treated me cordially. I always like his wife very much, Ethel [Ethel Skakel Kennedy]. I really am very fond of Ethel. And as time went on, from the Kennedy administration up through the time of right up to Bobby’s death, I think that our relationships matured, that they became more friendly. We held each other, I think, in a certain degree of mutual respect. And I just

[-10-]

as well say it now as later. I always felt that if he’d have gotten the nomination, that he would have been elected, and I would have surely supported him. I feel now that with my getting the nomination, had Bobby Kennedy lived, I would have been elected. The reason I say this is I think he had a great stake in the Democratic Party. He was an independent regular. He was a regular Democrat, but with a degree of independence of thought and action and creativity, innovation on his part. But he wouldn’t have been maverick. He was a maverick up to a point, but he always knew where the dividing line was, what the limits were. And it is a fact that during our respective political careers, I think we started to develop a sort of mutual respect. And it’s not admiration so much as respect and also a healthy regard for each other. In that ’64 campaign I saw what a terrific campaigner he was. He was really an effective campaigner. His style was very different, very different even then from his brother’s. He used the rhetorical

[-11-]

question a great deal and made very short speeches. Much of what he had to say was emotion-filled in those campaign speeches rather than substantive, but there was always something of substance if you’d look into it. Bob Kennedy kept what I call the substantive speeches at a minimum. They were well worked out. They were well researched. They were well written. They were well delivered. But if I learned one thing from him, it was that you can’t give too many substantive speeches. He got on the theme, and he’d stick with it. And he’d get a major substantive area that he wanted to discuss, such as a foreign policy area or the housing area or the ghetto area or the Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was able to generate generalities from specifics. Now after ’64 when he came into the Senate, my relationships with him then were primarily social and on legislative fronts.

[-12-]

I think I should say, if you don’t mind just to replay here for a minute, that I recall when he was attorney general that we had one run-in on the appointment of the district attorney in Minnesota, Miles Lord [Miles W. Lord]. Miles Lord today is federal judge in that state, federal district judge. He had doubts as to whether Miles Lord ought to be the district attorney, doubts that were the result of both investigation and comments about Mr. Lord from people that I didn’t hold in too high a regard. And I had recommended Miles Lord to the President. Bob Kennedy came over and talked to me about it and doubted that this appointment should be made. And I was a bit testy I think at the time. Senators are prone to get that way once in a while. And I said to him, “Well, now that’s my recommendation. Now you appoint whomever you wish, but he’ll not be confirmed.” I was the majority then in the Senate. Well, Bob didn’t hesitate a minute. He said, “Well, if you insist upon this, if this is the man you want, that’s the

[-13-]

way it’ll be.” So that ended very quickly. Oh, by the way, I should say I also mentioned to Bob Kennedy then, I said, “You know, the people that have commented about Miles Lord in the file that you show me here are the very same people who were opposed to your brother. They didn’t want your brother for president, and they didn’t want you for attorney general, and they don’t want Miles Lord for district attorney. And the difference is that I campaigned for your brother for president. We carried Minnesota for your brother. And I’m for you for attorney general. And I’m for Miles Lord.” Well, it didn’t take Bobby Kennedy long to add that all up, and he didn’t have a lot “to do” about it. And I mention this, not to remind myself or you of what could have been a distasteful moment, but simply to show that he was a very practical fellow too. Bob Kennedy knew that it was important to get along with the majority whip of the Senate. And he also I think knew what ultimately that this wasn’t a decision that was going

[-14-]

to make or break the government, that this was one that could be made without any difficulty. I visited with him about civil rights legislation, particularly after the Montgomery problems and Martin Luther King [Martin Luther King, Jr.] in Montgomery and Birmingham and at the time of the freedom march [March on Washington] here in Washington. It was then, as you know, that the legislative proposals, some of the legislative proposals for a broad civil rights program were introduced. Bob helped work those out. He came over and met with the leaders in the Congress. We met in the Cabinet Room—that is, the Democratic leaders. And later on, we met with the Republican leaders in order to work out a program of civil rights. At that time his position on civil rights was not nearly as strong as it turned out to be later on. I’d already gotten myself way out on the issue of civil rights, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to maintain that position. But he was in the administration, with his brother having had serious problems in the South anyway in the political campaign

[-15-]

of 1960. And with the administration being a very liberal and progressive administration, he was having trouble with the conservatives. And I think that Bob Kennedy was at that particular time trying to find a middle ground in the field of civil rights. However after we’d talked a few times—I don’t mean just myself, I mean a number of other people—a full package was presented to the Congress of the United States in I think late ’63.

HACKMAN: Right.

HUMPHREY: That was amended, in the Congress, as you know, later on and by action not from the administration, but actually in the House of Representatives to include the equal employment opportunities and to strengthen certain features of it. All during that period of 1963-’64, though, as attorney general, Bob Kennedy was a very effective proponent of the civil rights program and we were able to work with him very closely. There’s no doubt in my mind that he had a very strong leadership role in the

[-16-] administration in fashioning civil rights policies and programs which ultimately became legislative policy as well as executive policy. Well, that’s about that period.

HACKMAN: Okay, let me just ask you one more thing on ’64. After the President had announced that no member of the Cabinet will be chosen vice president do you remember having conversations with O’Donnell, O’Brien [Lawrence F. O’Brien], or ever with Robert Kennedy, indications of whom he hoped would then become vice president?

HUMPHREY: I do recall that. As a matter of fact, I think it was with Kenny. I used to get along with Kenny O’Donnell. I still do, as a matter of fact. I’m very fond of him. And to me he was a perfect presidential appointments secretary and confidant of the president, and I had lots of visits with him. And he indicated to me that Bobby was for me. I didn’t talk directly with Bob about his, but with both Kenny and Larry. But at that time for some reason or other I spent more time with Kenny

[-17-] than I did with Larry. Larry was in the legislative aspect more or less, and Kenny was so close to President Kennedy. And then, as you may recall, Kenny O’Donnell was with Johnson for quite a while after, until the President made some changes there right after the death of President Kennedy. And both Kenny and Larry had indicated to me that Bobby was for me. I think Kenny O’Donnell was closer to Bobby than Larry was even though they both had their relationships. But I always had the feeling that Bobby and Kenny had a closer rapport.

HACKMAN: Do you know if Robert Kennedy ever gave you any help in that period by talking to anyone around the country on your behalf? Was there any indication of that?

HUMPHREY: I don’t know about that, but I know he sure didn’t hurt me. And I think that what I always looked at at that time was if somebody didn’t badmouth you…. Now Bob Kennedy had a lot of friends in the press amongst the columnists, the Washington

[-18-] columnists. And I have a feeling that wherever he was in these social gatherings that a friendly word was passed out. In other words, I know that he was for me over McCarthy [Eugene J. McCarthy], for example. And I have a reason to believe that he was for me over some of the others that were being mentioned at the time. As you know, there was Bob Wagner [Robert Ferdinand Wagner, Jr.] being mentioned and there was…. Oh, gee. I’ve forgotten all of them. But the only man that I think he might have ever had any strong feeling about other than myself would have been Bob McNamara, and then I think that that was more or less cast aside because Bob hadn’t been known as a Democrat as such.

HACKMAN: Going back to that ’64 New York campaign, there were a lot of problems between Ed Weisl [Edwin L. Weisl, Sr.], who was supposedly President Johnson’s man in New York, and the Kennedy people. Did you ever get involved in any of it?

HUMPHREY: Not much. No I didn’t. I remember that Eddie Weisl became the national committeeman from up in

[-19-]

New York, and it was always my view that Eddie never exercised very much influence in that picture up there. But he was a contact man for President Johnson. The President dealt through Eddie Weisl on the New York situation. My contact relating to Bobby Kennedy in New York was primarily with David Dubinsky, and it wasn’t much. It was just simply to the effect that I thought that Bob Kennedy would strengthen the whole ticket. By that time it had been pretty clear that Bob had been friendly to me, that he hadn’t been cutting me. You know, in politics friendship sometimes is gauged by not so much what they do for you as what they don’t do to you. And in the period of ’63 and ’64 Robert Kennedy and were not intimates. I think we were just…. We were associates in government. And because of his position as attorney general and his position with President Kennedy, why of course I was with him from time to time. But after ’64, after his election, I just had a feeling that we did better

[-20-] as two individuals. I used to see him over in the Congress a good deal. And we always had a pleasant, friendly joke between each other. We’d send little notes to each other once in a while. I’m sure some of those notes must be in his records—some little quip that he’d give me or something that I would send him. And I began to sense more about the man, Robert Kennedy, rather than thinking of him in terms of his being a brother to John Kennedy. I began to see Robert Kennedy as a senator and as a public figure, and I began to see him much more in terms of his stand on issues. And he obviously was a liberal, but I think a pragmatic liberal, not one that was filled with a lot of sentimentality, but was a pretty solidly based left-of-center liberal.

HACKMAN: Can you remember in that, let’s say, ’64-’67 period particularly as his criticism of the administration increased both on Vietnam and on some domestic programs, can you remember talking to him about that either on behalf of the President or just at

[-21-]

your own instigation?

HUMPHREY: I’ll be very candid with you. I had mixed emotions in that period of time. I was the vice president, and I was very loyal to President Johnson. And of course, anybody that was attacking the President’s programs, it always bothered me. And yet I never did feel that Bob Kennedy was irresponsible in his attacks. I’ve said this publicly before and privately to many. I thought that Bob had a sort of metamorphosis about Vietnam from the days when he first visited Vietnam when his brother was president, to where he took a very strong stand about our position there. And then he began to watch the developments in Vietnam. And I think that rather than Bob Kennedy just saying to himself, “Well, this war is all wrong and we ought to get out in one day,” or that, “I never was for getting in and we ought not to be there.” I think that what Robert Kennedy did was to see a policy in Vietnam grow in intensity—greater participation, involvement by Americans. Began to wonder whether

[-22-]

or not this policy was really the right policy. And slowly but surely by stages he changed. And I don’t think the change was politically motivated. I honestly believe that he began to feel that we were overly committed, that we ought not to be there. He surely believed that we should have been there at one time. There’s no doubt in my mind about that as I read his record and as I recall his utterances. But by ’67 it was quite obvious that he felt, for example, that a coalition government should be established. And you may recall that I took issue with him. I was being a little cute when I said to have a coalition government in . I do think that we should have taken a stand much earlier, as Kennedy recommended, for full elections that would have made possible, through the elective progress, participation of the National Liberation Front. We’ve come around to that position. I never did

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consider Bob Kennedy’s position on Vietnam to be particularly anti. I considered it to be one of concern, of worry. Just as he evolved from a strong position on Vietnam to one of doubt and then of wanting to extricate ourselves, I think that process of extrication increased as time went on, if you get what I mean. I mean there was a kind of de-escalation of involvement and then an escalation of disengagement. I talked to him about this in the Senate from time to time, and I don’t think we really had as much basic disagreement privately as our public utterances would have indicated. I think that…. I don’t believe that Bob Kennedy ever believed that we should just cut the line and get out at once. I think his idea was that it required a political settlement, that you couldn’t win it militarily at least unless we were willing to do a whole lot more which was much more dangerous militarily, and therefore we ought to start to make the kind of arrangements that were necessary

[-24-]

for political settlement and thereby to disengage. That position has been in a sense, I would say, verified or has in a sense come around to be national policy. It did at the final stages of the Johnson administration. I thought that Bob Kennedy made one mistake that was harmful to him, and I think that when you discuss it with some of the people like [Clark M. Clifford] and others that it’ll come out. And that was where he advocated this board or this panel of outsiders to come in and evaluate the situation and make a recommendation and that the government should follow that. I think as a senator that’s understandable because senators, and I’ve been a senator quite a long time, we make independent proposals. But it so diluted executive powers that it was impossible for President Johnson to accept it. And I believe it was looked upon as a political maneuver by the administration rather than a constructive, honorable suggestion. And I recall that it was Mr. Clifford who was asked

[-25-]

by President Johnson to discuss this matter with Robert Kennedy. I was asked what I would do about that, how I reacted. And I said to the President, “I think you would have to tell Bob Kennedy that this is unacceptable,” because it carried a sort of an ultimatum with it at the time, namely that if the President didn’t do it, that he would feel compelled and most likely file to seek the presidency. And it was my view that no president could afford to accept that kind of an ultimatum, that he would have to resist it and take on whatever consequences came from that decision. However, I think it should be noted that as a result of that Robert Kennedy initiative that the President did call in some advisors, and he had this sort of committee of fifteen—I forget the number, I guess about fifteen—that were personal advisers, private advisers. It included in it John McCloy [John Jay McCloy] and it included Omar Bradley [Omar N. Bradley] and [Dean G. Acheson] and at this time McGeorge Bundy was called back in to sort of chair

[-26-]

that. And you had General Taylor [Maxwell D. Taylor]. And you had our…. Oh, gosh, one of the up there in New York, the old fellow that was on the disarmament in Panmunjom.

HACKMAN: Not Arthur Dean [Arthur Hobson Dean]?

HUMPHREY: Arthur Dean, yes. Arthur Dean and many people like that that President Johnson finally turned to as an alternative, I think, to the Bobby Kennedy proposal. But I never felt that…. Well, I did talk with Bob. I’m just trying to…. I can’t remember the specific dates. But from time to time I would visit with him about Vietnam, and I think he was really disappointed that my stand for the administration was as strong as it was. And I was concerned about what I considered to be his shifting position. And now you see one of the advantages of hindsight is as I look back on it, as vice president I was so locked into the administration that I understood that policy very much so, and I was committed to it even though I had doubts. Like, for example, Bob and I both

[-27-] thought about the same thing about bombing pauses. I really did feel that we ought to take more chances on stopping the bombing of the North, which I finally started in my campaign. I was surely deeply concerned about the bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi. I felt that much more could have been done in what we called the pacification program. As vice president I didn’t have very much effect on these views. I presented them from time to time privately to the President, but as a senator I think you have much more clout. One thing I learned about the vice presidency is that you don’t carry much power.

HACKMAN: Can you remember ever talking to him in that period about this personal relationship with President Johnson or talking with the President about his personal relationship with Robert Kennedy ever?

HUMPHREY: Oh yes, I do. I wish I’d have kept a diary. But now I can recall Bobby Kennedy talking to me about his concern that the President

[-28-]

was seeing things in what he said that didn’t mean exactly what the President thought they meant, that he was regretful that there appeared to be this growing spirit of, if not antagonism, at least of suspicion. And I do recall talking to him in the Senate about that. That’s where I generally would see him. The President I think felt that particularly in the latter days as Bobby moved closer to running for the presidency, when there were all these rumors, that Bob Kennedy was taking advantage of him and should have been supporting him; that he, the President, had been very helpful to the Kennedys and that Bob should have been more helpful to the President. There never was a very good relationship despite what some people try to point out. I think it’s fair to say that there was a formal respectful relationship, but I just don’t believe that the two…. They were two different personalities, just so different that it was impossible to make them come together.

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HACKMAN: Could you see from the inside of the administration that particularly the President, but maybe other people, did overreact to Robert Kennedy’s suggestions? Any specifics? One of the things that’s used as an example by the Kennedy people are his housing proposals, tax incentive bills for housing and jobs in ’67, which they feel the administration opposed simply because they were Robert Kennedy’s. Do you remember discussing that with him?

HUMPHREY: Yes, I remember those being discussed and I think what happened was that the administration just felt that its proposals were the right ones and that people ought to get behind those. I think there was a tendency on the part of the President and his cabinet to feel that the proposals that came down from the President and the Secretary of HEW [Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] or HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development], either Housing and Urban Development or Health, Education, and Welfare, were the proposals that people ought to back. I

[-30-]

remember there was considerable feeling by the President and some others in the administration on the hearings that Ribicoff [Abraham A. Ribicoff] and Kennedy held. By the way, I’ve used those hearings in my teaching since. I used all of them. That was compulsory reading because while it is true that they went a lot further in their suggestions than the administration, it’s also true that they sort of dramatized the situation that faced our cities and our country. To put it concisely and directly, I think President Johnson felt that he went as far as he could go and why in the devil was Bobby Kennedy and Abe Ribicoff raising hell and stirring up trouble and giving the administration really no credit. It’s my own view that the administration did go a long way and deserved support, which they did get from Abe and from Bob ultimately—particularly from Bob Kennedy. But looking at it now very candidly, if I were in the Senate at the time, I would have been…. It isn’t a matter of just supporting

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the administration. A senator doesn’t have that obligation per se. He has an obligation to present his own program, to present his own views and then to support administration legislation if it meets the basic requirements of his own views, but hopefully to amend it, to change it, to perfect it. And I think that’s what Kennedy was up to. Also I’m sure that Bob Kennedy being the Senator from New York just had to be aware of the urban problems. I mean after all there was Governor Rockefeller [Nelson A. Rockefeller] up there. There was [John V. Lindsay]. There were always competing forces and they were making big news. And Bob Kennedy was the senator from New York. He had a national following. He was obviously trying to preempt a good deal of the national attention. The President didn’t like it, and I gather that a couple of the Cabinet officers didn’t like it. But, you know, both the President and myself had been senators once for quite a while. We ought to understand that.

HACKMAN: Did you ever talk to him in the early months of ‘68

[-32-]

about the rumors that he was considering running, and ask him what he was going to do?

HUMPHREY: Yes, I did. And in the early months, in January…. I remember sometime—and it seems to me like it was in January, December of ’67 or January ’68, it was before the New Hampshire primary—that I had some visit with him over to the Senate, with Robert Kennedy. And he indicated to me that he wasn’t going to run, that he was torn, that he was very upset because the President wasn’t doing certain things about Vietnam. And now that I think of it, it almost embodied some of the things that he ultimately put out in that proposal about the citizens’ committee to examine Vietnam. Because I recollect one day in the Senate…. Well, he used to come up when I’d preside. We’d visit just a little bit up there in the podium because he oftentimes was kind enough to relieve me from that and to take over for a while. I used to tease him a little bit about that and said, “Well now Bob, you wanted to be vice president.

[-33-]

Now you can see what a glorified job this is. You can see what I saved you from. You ought to be giving me a contribution. You ought to be my staunchest supporter,” and so on. He said, “Well, you know I am, Hubert. I’m always backing you on these things.” We’d always joke a good deal about that. But I remember him saying that he wanted to support the President. But he said he was deeply concerned over the policy in Vietnam, and that he just didn’t see how he could support the administration if these policies were to be pursued, and he was hopeful that the President would change the policies and so on. That’s about the only talk that we had about it and that particular time. Now I had intermediaries that would talk to me. I always had some intermediaries around that would come to me from Bobby that were just friends of his.

HACKMAN: What were they telling you in that period?

HUMPHREY: Oh, I mean this is a little bit later after he had filed, after he had decided to file.

[-34-]

HACKMAN: Do you remember ever discussing with him what the meant? Apparently, this is a major…

HUMPHREY: No, I do not. I do not, but I know that I’d heard that the Tet Offensive had meant to Bobby what it means to me, namely a political catastrophe here at home. And it also meant that the policies in Vietnam, the military policies had been ineffective. And it was the straw that broke his back, so to speak, and it was also the one that broke the administration’s.

HACKMAN: One of the other things that I gather the two of you felt the same on was the Kerner Commission [National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders] report to some degree anyway.

HUMPHREY: Absolutely.

HACKMAN: Do you remember ever discussing that with him?

HUMPHREY: Yes. Yes, I sure do. And we both felt very strongly about the Kerner Commission report. And I talked to him one time about the possibility of getting a separate committee in the Congress to try to follow that up. And I think he had something like that in mind. I’ve forgotten, there was some speech

[-35-] that he made somewhere along the line pointing out that the trouble with these reports was that they came and they went and that there needed to be some follow-up on it. And of course a lot of the things that he was doing in the hearings on the housing and on the cities related to the Kerner Commission report. We were kindred souls down the line on the Kerner Commission. And I don’t think we disagreed on any particular basic policy with the exception of my position in reference to the administration on Vietnam. And on Vietnam we were together on the bombing halts. We were, I think, very much together on the basis of the concern of the spread of the war. I suppose had I been in the Senate, looking from that vantage point, that I would have been frequently joining in on some of that argument.

HACKMAN: I think I’ll skip ahead then to when President Johnson withdraws. And some people have said that you expected in the days following the President’s withdrawal a sort of major shift to Robert Kennedy,

[-36-] expected many more people to go over to him than actually did. Is that so?

HUMPHREY: Yes, I did. That’s true.

HACKMAN: What surprised you? Can you remember particular people or particular states or anything?

HUMPHREY: Well, I was very interested in where the labor movement would end up and also particularly what some of the politicos would do. I knew that the southerners would not move that way, but I was interested to see how they might go in and in . Those two states particularly were interesting to me because they were right close up here. And when I found that the labor movement didn’t move quickly to Bob Kennedy with the exception of certain members of the UAW [United Automobile Workers of America], and that didn’t include [Walter P. Reuther]—well, I think Walter played a rather neutral, hands-off position during that time—that had some effect on me in terms of what I ought to do. I said after the 1960 campaign

[-37-]

that I never wanted to get into a political battle with the Kennedys again, and I meant that both respectfully and in a sense of just my personal life. I think it’s fair to say that I never enjoyed politics as much as I did as when President Kennedy was in the . I had the best relationship I ever had with anybody in terms of my public life. I just got along beautifully and he understood my needs, and I think I understood his. President Johnson gave me a great opportunity to be vice president, but the relationship between a president and a vice president is always different than it is between a senator and the President. And I just felt that I had both, in a sense, hurt myself and helped myself with the struggle with John Kennedy in 1960. I’d ended up, by challenging him, losing a certain amount of the young people who thought the fact that I had challenged President Kennedy meant that I was really against him, which is not true. The second thing was that I knew I’d helped myself some because

[-38-] it had given me some exposure. And when President Kennedy became president he was very kind and considerate of me and was very helpful to him. I think it was a mutually advantageous relationship. So I decided I didn’t want to ever run against a Kennedy again. You know, I really didn’t. And when it came down to 1968, I just thought, “Gee whiz, now here we go again.” And I had some real doubts about it. I wasn’t afraid. I thought that I had pretty good strength by then because I’d done a lot of work around the country, but I thought it’d get to be one of these acrimonious, difficult battles. It never really did evolve that way. The fact of the matter is that I think that Robert Kennedy went out of his way in that campaign not to attack me as vice president. He could have. I of course was not in any of the primaries. There was only two that I could have gotten into at the time. One was California and the other was . California would have been impossible for me at the

[-39-]

time because I didn’t have the resources and wasn’t organized for it. And South Dakota I didn’t think meant that much, so decided not to go. But I watched very carefully to see whether there’d be a sudden shift to Bobby. Now the fact of the matter is that all the time that Bobby was in the race and McCarthy, I was doing much better. My polls, interesting enough, were the best up into June. I led all the time in these polls. I led over Nixon [Richard M. Nixon], over Rockefeller, over Robert Kennedy, over McCarthy. In every poll I led all across the land. It was after Bobby’s death that everything went to pot. I said it and I meant it that the bullet that shot and killed Bobby Kennedy fatally wounded me. And it’s true. I felt it from the minute it happened. I was in Colorado Springs. I was going to address the Air Force Academy on their commencement the next day. I was in my motel room. I’d been out there on a meeting in and had gone down to Colorado Springs. And

[-40-]

I got that…. One of the men that was traveling with me—I’d gone to bed—came in and said, “Bobby Kennedy has been shot.” And I said, “Now cut it out,” because the had been that day. I said, “Now, listen, there’s a lot of difference between a fellow losing an election (I thought he had lost, you see) and that kind of talk.” I said, “Don’t talk like that around here.” I said, “You know I don’t like that.” And he said, “No.” He said, “Listen. I’m serious. Listen to the radio.” He said, “Get up.” And I had been in bed and asleep and I got up and I couldn’t…. You know, I just was stunned. Everything in politics for me on that night soured. It had already started earlier with the Tet Offensive, with Gene McCarthy telling me in December, 1967 that he was going to run and why, and with the Tet Offensive. The troubles and tribulations the administration went through in those months of January, February, up to March, with Doctor Martin

[-41-]

Luther King’s assassination in April and the President’s pulling out of the race March thirty- first, and then with Bobby Kennedy getting shot, it just seemed like it was too much. I think that my reactions were just like the country’s. It was just more that a guy could take. And as you may recall, I called off my campaign for a month. I look back on that now and wonder if that was a wise decision, but I did it for two reasons. First of all, I thought the public needed a surcease from the activities of politics. It just seemed to me that everything had gone bad, that when you had people shot down in cold blood on the night of their election victory, that was just too much. And secondly, I didn’t have any stomach for it. I just sort of just wanted to regurgitate. I just had it up to…. Just sick of it. I lost momentum, but more importantly I think the whole Democratic Party lost momentum. Right after that our polls slipped drastically. I think that the people really then turned against us. I think

[-42-] they thought that all this violence and everything else was a kind of a byproduct of the way that the country had been operated, the way it had been managed, the way it had been governed. And I was caught up in that. And that’s why I say that no matter what had happened in the convention, had Bobby lived I think there’d have been a Democrat in the White House—I really believe that—even as late as the convention was, even with the trouble outside. I never had any difficulty negotiating any differences with the Kennedy forces. Kenny O’Donnell had come to my home in May of 1968 at our apartment up here. We had breakfast together, and he said he wished I wasn’t going to be in the race, but he understood why I did enter. He said, “You and Bobby don’t have many differences, and it’s too bad that we’ve split it all up.” But he said, “I wish I could talk you out of it.” And I said, “Well, Kenny, we can’t do that.” And he said, “I know that.” But he said, “I want you to know

[-43-] something, that we’re not going to be running against you in this primary.” And he said, “Furthermore, if my man doesn’t make it and he doesn’t come through big in California,” he said, “we’re going to be for you. I’m going to be for you.” And he said, “I think Bobby will be for you.” And I said, “Well, let’s put it this way, Kenny. After the California primary let’s both of us sit down together and let’s get Bobby too. Let’s sit down. Let’s take a look at it.” I said, “I want the Democratic Party to win and I don’t want to go through a bitter battle. If it looks like he’s got it moving, then we’ll have to get in there and help him. If I’ve got it moving, then I’d hope he could get in here and help me.” And that was our understanding. We were going to get together on the fifteenth of June.

HACKMAN: Is that before you announced or after you announced?

HUMPHREY: That was just after I had indicated that I’d….

HACKMAN: Had there been any other meetings of Robert Kennedy people and you, let’s say, during April or earlier

[-44-]

May?

HUMPHREY: Before I announced? No, not that I recall. Now, wait a minute. I guess you’re right. Kenny, I guess, that was before, just before I announced. That’s right. It was just before, just a week before I announced because I had told him that I was going to announce, and he indicated to me that he wished I wouldn’t and that…. And I always loved Kenny, and I said, “Gee whiz, if I just had you, it’d be so much easier.” And then Larry—the same thing with Larry. I had called Larry and asked him to help me. And Larry told me that he just couldn’t do it, that he felt an obligation to Bobby and that he was going to help him. And he said, “Of course, if Bobby doesn’t make it, I’ll be for you.” I guess that was more or less the relationship that we all had. We were surely friendly about it.

HACKMAN: You know, a number of people have said Robert Kennedy was very surprised when Fred Harris [Fred R. Harris] didn’t support him and came over to you.

[-45-]

HUMPHREY: Yes.

HACKMAN: Did you ever get that indication from the Kennedy people or were there any major doubts in your mind really that Harris…

HUMPHREY: I think that is true. I really think that Bob was somewhat surprised that Fred didn’t support him. I think that Robert Kennedy, Bobby, had always looked upon some of the younger fellows up there as potential allies with him. And I always felt that it was a pretty good stroke on my part to be able to get Harris and Mondale [Walter F. Mondale] in my early days, working with me. I felt that I really, in a sense, took something away at that time from the Kennedy operation, so to speak. But I never heard him ever make any comment and I didn’t get any flak. You generally pick up flak around this city, you know, if there’s really a lot of inside talk. I mean there are so many people talking anyway that somewhere along the line you pick up a rumor that so and so said this or that, and I didn’t hear that

[-46-] about Fred.

HACKMAN: [J. Terry Sanford] is another one who came out for you who the Kennedys seemed to have assumed would support them.

HUMPHREY: Yes. Yes, I think that actually Terry was going to help President Johnson. And I, frankly, was surprised at the time that Terry was willing to come out so openly for me. I asked him and he said sure, he’d be glad to do it. And I was delighted. Of course, I consider Terry Sanford one of the finest men in the country, and if I had to live it all over again, I’d be working much closer with Terry Sanford. I think he’s one of the finest men I’ve ever met in public life or private life.

HACKMAN: You’d mentioned earlier that you didn’t have any real doubts that the South would go to Robert Kennedy. Were there any people at all…

HUMPHREY: No, that would oppose him.

HACKMAN: I mean that would oppose him. Were there any major figures at all that you were worried about

[-47-]

wavering? A number of people have mentioned McKeithen [John Julian McKeithen] in . Does that stand out in your mind as being anything you were particularly worried about?

HUMPHREY: You mean against me?

HACKMAN: Yes.

HUMPHREY: Oh, I figured that John McKeithen, I think, wanted to be vice president, and when I told John at Chicago that that was out, we went through quite an emotional experience there. He told me then that I was the most honest man he’d ever met in politics and the most frank man he’d ever met in politics. And I’d been with John McKeithen, I like John McKeithen. I like him as a personality. I worked very closely with him during the time that he was having trouble, race relations there. And I had helped counsel and advise him. Even on weekends I’d been on the telephone with him even when I’d go out to Minnesota. I was more concerned as to what [John B. Connally, Jr.] was going to do because he was a more powerful man. And I

[-48-] always was a little bit concerned that some of the southern governors would really try to rough me up some, I mean to make it a little difficult for me when the chips were down. I think it’s fair to say here for this oral history that I had a lot of support from a lot of people up to Bobby Kennedy’s death. There was lots of people in the business community, for example, that were violently anti-Bobby. And they were willing to support almost anybody, and we got financial help from some of those people. But as soon as Bobby was gone, that all dropped off immediately. And I never kidded myself at all about this. I knew that’s what that support was about. But, quite frankly, it was support that I needed at that particular time, particular financially. And I always had a feeling too that once that Bobby passed out of the picture that the southern governors—some of the southern governors were going to make it tough for me, and particularly some of the other southern political

[-49-] leaders. In other words, Bobby Kennedy while he was an active candidate was a force to give me strength amongst some of the more conservative members of the Democratic Party. I don’t think Bobby was a bit more liberal than I was, but they got the feeling that he was. And with his assassination, and death I should say, that removed that worry from them and from there they started to shift ground. And some of them went, a lot of them went right on over to [George C. Wallace] or to Nixon or to McCarthy or just didn’t go any place. You began to see it splinter. But I never had much doubt but what I could. But these were even people that thought that President Johnson might run again. You never quite knew what was going to happen, you see, so you had to play it pretty….

HACKMAN: People have tried to assess the impact of Robert Kennedy’s loss in Oregon. And supposedly some of the

[-50-]

politicians around the country had agreed that maybe if he swept all of the primaries, they would listen to him more seriously or something. Can you remember in your phone calls and contacts after the Oregon primary that that had any significant impact on people like Mayor Daley [Richard J. Daley] or the people in Pennsylvania?

HUMPHREY: Mayor Daley never would give me any information. I must say that I’ve never been up against a man or tried to contact a man who gave me less information. He was always friendly, you know, socially. And President Johnson spent an awful lot of time talking to him. And I always had a respect for Mayor Daley. That’s cost me a good deal, I’ve found out, politically. But I still have. I think he’s a good mayor, and I think he tried to do a good job as mayor and is an honest mayor and a heck of a good Democrat. But I never ever felt that Daley was really for me. That’s number one. Number two is he never said much to me about anybody else. I had a feeling he’d have liked to have been

[-51-] for Bobby, but he didn’t dare be because of the President. I think he felt that if he openly came out for Bob Kennedy, that President Johnson would make it difficult for him. And after all, the President has a lot to say about that happens to a city. But after that Oregon primary—it isn’t so much what a person says—there was a feeling that spread in the political circles. You could just kind of feel it that, “Well, by golly, he didn’t do as well as I’d expected.” I think the Oregon primary did hurt somewhat across the country, not in a measurable degree, but I think it diluted the mystique, the aura of power and glory that was there. Of course when the California primary took place with Bobby winning it, I think many people thought that if he was going to win it, he had to win it bigger than he won it, that it was a close fight. That was my point of view that while he won it, he didn’t win it by enough to really be master of the house. In other order, he didn’t win it enough to kill off

[-52-]

McCarthy politically and surely not enough to knock me out because I still had these delegate votes tied up around or at least a goodly number of them even at that time.

HACKMAN: What kind of understanding did you feel you had particularly with the UAW people, well particularly Reuther?

HUMPHREY: Just a hands-off understanding, waiting till after the primaries. I think Reuther was caught between a friendly relationship with me and a friendly relationship with Kennedy and also a desire to hold the party together and hold his own ranks together. I think that had Bobby won big in California that the Reuther people would have most likely shifted to him.

HACKMAN: Can you remember phone calls that night in Colorado Springs or wherever you were in Colorado?

HUMPHREY: Yes, I sure do.

HACKMAN: Indications back from people around the country?

HUMPHREY: No, I remember primarily only one thing that night, about the tragedy. And I was uninterested

[-53-]

in political calls. I was trying to get an airplane to get a surgeon out to Bobby’s hospital, out to the hospital for him. I never even consulted the President of the United States. I had the Secretary of the Air Force there and the Chief of Operations of the Air Force, and I just asked them to get the plane out of . I had them get a plane up there and pick up a doctor. I talked with Teddy [Edward M. Kennedy] and I talked with— yeah, it was Teddy that I had visited with—and with Ethel. And they wanted to get this specialist, and I arranged to get the plane and get him picked up and get him on out to California and arranged to get a plane to pick up the family. There were some people later on that thought that I ought not to have been quite so precipitous, that I should have cleared all that with the White House. But my own view was that something had to be done at once. But I don’t recall any calls that night about that because I really think people’s attention was off from it so quickly as to the results of the

[-54-]

election. There were lots of Monday morning quarterbacks a couple of weeks after that.

HACKMAN: Let me ask you about one other area and that’s your conversations with Senator McCarthy. You said you talked to him December when he decided to run. But particularly after President Johnson withdraws, can you remember…

HUMPHREY: He was very much upset with Bobby entering, as you know, which is a matter of public record. He felt that if Bobby felt so strongly about Vietnam, that he should have entered before. I’ve always felt that was the difference between Gene and Bobby—that Bob was, as I say, a rather independent regular. It’s a kind of mixed metaphor here. But Bobby didn’t want to challenge the President of the United States if it looked as if he was going to make some kind of modification. McCarthy was more willing to be a maverick, more willing to just go on his own. He was more of a loner. Gene told me in December of 1967 that he had lost real interest in the Senate, that

[-55-]

he disagreed with the President’s policy in Vietnam. He said he had not reason to believe he could make any impact particularly, but he thought it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Now, he maybe felt stronger than that himself, but he didn’t say it to me. We sat over in the vice president’s office one night and talked about it. And he said that he was going to move around the country, and he was going to file in the New Hampshire primary, that he didn’t expect to do very well, but he might do better in light of the disenchantment of the public with Vietnam. I think Gene, it’s fair to say, was quite bitter towards Bobby after Bob filed, feeling that if Bob Kennedy felt strongly about Vietnam, that Bob should have put his support behind Gene and consolidated the support.

HACKMAN: Did he ever give you any indication as to whether he might pull out and when, under what circumstances?

HUMPHREY: For me? You mean or with Bobby?

[-56-]

HACKMAN: Whether McCarthy would pull out and whoever he would be for.

HUMPHREY: No. Never ever. Not a bit. The only thing he ever told me was in a meeting that we had around the first of , at my apartment when it became quite obvious that McCarthy wasn’t going to get enough votes at the convention or it looked like he wouldn’t. I said, “Gene, now look, you know that if you get the nomination, I’ll back you. I’m a Democrat. If McGovern [George S. McGovern] gets the nomination, which I don’t expect he will, but if he did, I would back him. And whoever gets that nomination, unless he’s a or a lunatic, I’m going to back him.” I said, “I feel strongly on the race question…”

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[-57-] Hubert H. Humphrey Oral History Transcript – RFK Name Index

A Kennedy, Robert F., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, Acheson, Dean G., 26 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, B 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 15, 41, 42 Bradley, Omar N., 26 Bundy, McGeorge, 26 L

C Lindsay, John V., 32 Lord, Miles W., 13, 14 Clifford, Clark M., 25 Connally, John B., Jr., 48 M

D McCarthy, Eugene J., 19, 40, 41, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57 McCloy, John Jay, 26 Daley, Richard J., 51 McGovern, George S., 57 Dean, Arthur Hobson, 27 McKeithen, John Julian, 48 Dubinsky, David, 8, 9, 20 McNamara, Robert S., 2, 19 Mondale, Walter F., 46 F N Freeman, Orville L., 2 Nixon, Richard M., 40, 50 G O Goldwater, Barry M., 4 O’Brien, Lawrence F., 17, 18, 45 O’Donnell, Kenneth P., 1, 17, 18, 43, 44, 45 H

Harris, Fred R., 45, 46, 47 R Humphrey, Muriel Fay Buck, 6 Reuther, Walter P., 37, 53 Ribicoff, Abraham A., 31 J Rockefeller, Nelson A., 32, 40 Rose, Alex, 8 Johnson, Lyndon B., 2, 4, 5, 9, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56 S

Sanford, J. Terry, 47 K Stulberg, Louis, 8

Keating, Kenneth B., 4 Kennedy, Edward M., 54 T Kennedy, Ethel Skakel, 10, 54 Kennedy, John F., 1, 3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, Taylor, Maxwell D., 27 18, 20, 21, 22, 38, 39 Terry, J. Terry, 47 Tyler, Gus, 8

U

Udall, Stewart L., 2

W

Wagner, Robert Ferdinand, Jr., 19 Wallace, George C., 50 Weisl, Edwin L., Sr., 19, 20