WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN in an Affecting Memoir, a Dying John Connally Mused About the Kennedy Assassination

MEMOIR WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN In an affecting memoir, a dying John Connally mused about the Kennedy assassination John Connally played out his life on the national stage, but family to extract fragments of the bullet that tore through never quite in the center spotlight. He helped elect Eisenhower, Connally's chest that bleak November day. Their aim was to Kennedy and Johnson, yet saW his own presidential ambitions settle once and for all the perennial question of whether fizzle. Last week Democrats and Republicans alike gathered in Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in Dallas. Instead, the Austin, Texas, to mourn the passing of Connally, who was dead request only unsettled Connally's kin. "It's an appalling at 76. A three-term Texas Governor and Democrat turned attempt to capitalize on Governor Connally's death to gain Republican who served as Richard Nixon's Treasury Secretary, publicity for worn-out theories," said Julian Read, a family Connally nonetheless will be best remembered as the man who spokesman. sat in front of John Kennedy in a Dallas motorcade on the Shortly before he died, Connally finished his memoirs, In afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963. As burial preparations were under History's Shadow. In the following excerpts from the book, he way, FBI officials sought permission from the Connally ponders the what ifs and what might have beens. F NOTHING ELSE, I HAVE BE- come an expert on fate, pos- sibly bad judgment, too. I I helped elect three Presi- dents, watched from inches away the murder of one of them, experienced the bloody madness of war, lost a beloved daughter, was tried and acquitted on a criminal charge, went broke, watched my wife Nellie defeat breast cancer, and endured. I have witnessed more history than any school can teach. But I have kept a secret from the public at large. That John Connally changed forever on Nov. 22,1963. In the weeks after the assassination, the weeks spent in Parkland Hospital, my tempera- "I would have run for ment changed. John Kennedy's death gave me a different per- a fourth and even spective on life, its frailties and its meaning. It made me impa- a fin h term as tient with trivia and egos and self-aggrandizement. The fires The former Governor at his ranch in 1979: "I have Governor of Texas, if of ambition had been considera- witnessed more history than any school can teach." bly banked by the tragedy. Not for no other reason out of personal fear but out of a new presidential succession. If Kennedy had awareness, I no longer had any irresistible lived, Lyndon Johnson would have run than to set a record." desire to subject myself or my family to a again in the second spot on the ticket, and continuing political career. Today I have he would never have been elected Presi- no regrets that there was never a Presi- dent. By 1968, his health and age—and the dent Connally. diminishing effect of eight years as Vice My guess is that Jack Kennedy would President—would have eliminated him. have withdrawn American troops from It is a sad but compelling assignment The intriguing question relates to Rob- Vietnam shortly into his second term. Al- to imagine how the world would be today ert Kennedy. He could have been nominat- though he did hesitate to raise the ante, he if John Fitzgerald Kennedy had lived. ed to succeed his brother and would have was less charmed by the generals than Would the world be vastly different? Dif- been elected. But while this country may Johnson and less susceptible to their pres- ferent, yes, but perhaps not vastly so. The lust after royalty and might not have been sures. I believe he had already concluded world, I feel sure, would still be as danger- troubled by the idea of a dynasty, I believe that the war was unwinnable and had ous and unstable a place. Bobby Kennedy might have been. I think found his pitch: we wanted to help, but in I don't doubt for a moment that Kenne- he would have wisely resisted the kind of the end the sons of South Vietnam had to dy would have been re-elected in 1964. rock stardom that was building around fight for their own country. The major changes would have been in the the brothers. He could easily have waited If Kennedy had lived, I assume my own management of the Vietnam War and the four years or eight. attitude would not have changed, and it is In History's Shadow, to be published by Hyperion in November 44 Copyright 0 1993 by John Connally with Mickey Herskowitz from conceivable I might have presumed to run Senator from Texas, who had gained enor- I cannot say that I think about the as- for President myself in 1968. My political mous respect across the country as the sassination every day, but I don't miss by ambitions would almost certainly have running mate of Michael Dukakis. He won much. There is an endless stream of let- taken on more steam. If not the presiden- praise despite the defeat of the ticket and ters, and questions from students, occa- cy, I would have run for a fourth and even the campaign strategy of Dukakis, which sionally from strangers and even friends. a fifth term as Governor of Texas, if for no was virtually beyond comprehension. Richard Nixon has asked people around other reason than to set a record. That Well before the 1992 campaign began, me about that day in Dallas, but never put goal is one I now regard as ignoble, but I sent word to Senator Bentsen that I a question to me directly. there is a time in your life when records thought Bush would slip, and on three sep- The long-term effects of my injuries matter. arate occasions I urged him to announce have been mixed. I have a slight rigidity in his candidacy. Like many Democrats, at the right wrist. I am now plagued by a pul- I am often asked if I regard my switch- the height of the Desert Storm celebra- monary fibrosis, which results in a short- ing parties as a mistake. In terms of mak- tions, he thought they needed to worry ness of breath whenever I undertake any ing a difference, of changing the country about retaining control of the Senate. physical exertion. My doctors attribute or even the Republican Party, I have to say Through the summer of '92, as Bush's this condition to the assassin's bullet that that it did not. Some of my friends still en- popularity shrank and the Clinton cam- ripped through my lung. tertain themselves by speculating that I paign gathered momentum, I wondered As I neared the end of this book, I could have been elected President as a many times what might be going through returned to the Warren Report to verify Democrat. I do not subscribe to this theory Lloyd Bentsen's mind. a passage of my testimony. And a feel- for reasons that by now need no repeating. With the possible exception of the ing of awe welled up inside me. So One excuse works as well as another, but, race by Dukakis, the Bush campaign in much was changed, so much destroyed, in my time, the Democrats were not going 1992 was probably the weakest, dumb- in so few ticks of time. I looked up from to nominate a Texas conserva- tive. In politics, something is always wrong: the year, the oppo- nent, the issues. Think of how few people actually run for Presi- dent; only one gets elected every fourth year. For most, it is like a romance that is never in sync; one of the parties is always free when the other is married. In any event, my switching had nothing to do with presidential ambition. At the time, in 1973, I was just a wild card. I was too long a Democrat, too soon a Republican, to hold any such lofty ideas. But it long ago be-. came clear to Nellie and me that we were at least as comfortable among our old friends as our new ones. "I think you have to be born into the Republican Party," said Nellie, "before they will ac- cept you at something other than ",lohn Kennedy's entry level." In 1979, the year before I ran death gave me a for President, I spoke at Republi- can fund raisers in 46 cities. I The Kennedys and Connallys on Nov. 22, 1963: "I don't different perspective campaigned once for Ronald doubt for a moment he would have been re-elected." Reagan and supported him on life, its frailties twice, but I conclude with regret that in 12 est and most out-of-touch campaign years Reagan and Bush turned the clock waged in modern times. My own view is and its meaning." back and wasted their separate mandates that it was worse than the Dukakis ef- to improve our society in a profound and fort because Bush was an incumbent lasting way. President and had every conceivable In the summer of 1991, as a result of advantage. my desk and through the windows of Desert Storm, the popularity of George I think I have the capacity to be objec- my office I could see the roofs of a tree- Bush remained at an all-time high. I was tive in looking at a political operation, but I shaded neighborhood in Houston.

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