#lbj ranch

Yes...well...kinda...

President Nixon and President Ford both used what was called the "Wilson Desk" instead of the more famous Resolute Desk used by most modern Presidents in the Oval Office.

Nixon was an admirer of Woodrow Wilson and mistakenly believed that the "Wilson Desk" had been used by President Wilson during World War I. It was then believed that instead of Woodrow Wilson, the desk had actually belonged to Henry Wilson, who served two years as Ulysses S. Grant's second-term Vice President before dying in office in 1875.

But, it turns out that the "Wilson Desk" was never used by President OR Vice President Wilson. It was purchased by Garrett A. Hobart, who was William McKinley's first-term Vice President (Vice President Hobart also died in office), and used in the Vice President's Room in the Senate wing of the U.S Capitol. Somewhere along the way, it was erroneously believed that the desk had been used by Presidents McKinley and Wilson, but it now seems that the desk was almost always used by VICE Presidents at the Capitol, beginning with VP Hobart in 1898. Nixon became familiar with the desk because he also used it when he was Vice President under Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). When Lyndon Johnson succeeded Nixon as Vice President, the "Wilson Desk" ended up in Texas at the LBJ Ranch for a while. LBJ may have even used the desk at the LBJ Ranch while he was President. (President Johnson didn't use the "Wilson" OR Resolute desks in the Oval Office during his Presidency -- he used a desk that he had previously used while serving in the Senate, and that desk is now on display at the LBJ Library's replica Oval Office exhibit in Austin.) LBJ's Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey seems to be the first VP since Hobart originally ordered the "Wilson" desk who did not use it during his Vice Presidency. When Nixon was inaugurated as President in 1969, he immediately sought out the "Wilson Desk" for the Oval Office.

"WASHINGTON, June 20, 1959 Lunch at Joe Alsop's. Others present included Stew Alsop and Mrs. [Alice Roosevelt] Longworth. Both Joe and Stew consider Lyndon Johnson a great man and the best candidate the Democrats could nominate in 1960. Joe compares him with Churchill. They both say he is really larger than life-size. Stew thinks that among all the candidates, those with by far the highest IQs are Johnson and [Richard] Nixon. Next he would rate [Hubert H.] Humphrey. He put [Adlai E.] Stevenson and [Nelson] Rockefeller well down on the list.

Stew says the doctors have ordered Johnson not to drink any liquor except between 5 P.M. and 7 P.M. As a result, wherever he is at 5 P.M., he starts pouring it in in enormous quantity and with great rapidity. Stew was once riding in a jeep with him on his Texas ranch, together with Mrs. Johnson in the back seat. Five o'clock came and the Senator hollered to his wife, 'Lady Bird, it's time.'

'I know it's time,' came a voice from the back seat, handing him a ready-made scotch and soda which he downed in one gulp. After three destroyed this way, he drove on fixing his fourth drink in a special holder he has rigged up in the driver's seat. He took about nine [drinks] before 7 P.M. came, but it had little effect on him."

-- New York Times columnist C.L. Sulzberger, writing in his diary about a lunch he had with longtime Washington journalists/insiders Joseph Alsop, Stewart Alsop, and Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, where the discussion focused on then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and other potential candidates in the upcoming 1960 Presidential candidate.

Thank you! I really do appreciate it.

LBJ and George H.W. Bush didn't have a ton of interaction -- Bush's first term in the House of Representatives from Texas was during LBJ's final two years in the White House -- and they were obviously from opposing political parties.

However, they were both Texans and Bush was a rising star in Republican politics, and LBJ certainly took notice of him. Even though Bush had barely served a year in Congress at the time, Richard Nixon seriously considered choosing him as his running mate in 1968. And in 1970, Bush was trying to decide whether or not to give up his seat in the House and make a run for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Bush actually made the trip out the LBJ Ranch where Johnson had retired to after leaving the White House in 1969 to ask for LBJ's advice (despite being from opposing parties). That's when LBJ gave Bush the legendary quote that "The difference between the Senate and the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." Bush did make a bid for the Senate, but instead of facing Ralph Yarborough, who many felt he had a chance of defeating, Bush had to face Lloyd Bentsen, who he lost to pretty decisively.

While LBJ and George H.W. Bush didn't know each that well -- mainly because of the age difference and where they were at in their respective careers at that time -- LBJ did serve in the Senate (as Senate Majority Leader) with Bush's father, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut. And when asked in 2006 about his thoughts about LBJ by historian and longtime LBJ Library director Mark K. Updegrove, George H.W. Bush said:

"My view is that he was a good man -- very good to me. My father served in the Senate with him and knew him, I'm sure, far better than I did, and he respected Lyndon. And I [asked him], "Why do you respect Lyndon?" And he said, "His word is good. He would tell us, 'There's going to be a vote at 3:30 pm for this bill, and here's the way it's going to work. It's going to come up, and there's going to be this amendment, and it's going to be voted on...' And dad said you could put it in the bank. You could make your plans, do what you needed to do, and know exactly [what would happen.] Just the fact that a guy like my dad, from the other side of the aisle -- felt that way about him -- I've never forgotten that."

In Jon Meacham's masterful biography of George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), he notes that Bush approached LBJ at a party in 1967 before the wedding of LBJ's daughter Lynda and told him, "Mr. President, I just want you to know that I may not agree with you but you can count on me to never attack you personally." LBJ responded: "George, Mrs. Johnson and I raise cattle and we have learned to look at the stock. We say, 'Who's the daddy?' We know you're all right."

But I think my favorite story about LBJ and George H.W. Bush -- and one that illustrates why I think LBJ might have had a soft spot for Bush despite being from different parties and different generations -- is told by George W. Bush in his 2014 book, 41: A Portrait of My Father (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO). Writing about LBJ's decision not to seek re-election in 1968, Richard Nixon's eventual victory over LBJ's Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, and Nixon's inauguration on January 20, 1969, George W. Bush writes:

"An hour later, LBJ departed the nation's capital, where he had been a fixture since his election to Congress in 1937. He left with few friends. Out of both respect and sympathy, Dad decided to go to Andrews Air Force Base to see off the former President. Amid the large crowd, a few other Congressmen showed up, including LBJ's longtime friend Jake Pickle, but Dad was the only Republican. When Lady Bird Johnson's press secretary, Liz Carpenter, noticed Dad standing in the crowd, she pointed him out to the outgoing President. LBJ walked over, shook his hand, and said, "George, I'm grateful that you're here. Come visit me and Lady Bird at the ranch sometime."

George W. Bush then notes that George H.W. Bush took LBJ up on the offer a few months later and tells the "chicken salad/chicken shit" story.

In Meacham's biography of George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power, he goes into a little more detail about how touched LBJ was by Bush's gesture at Andrews Air Force Base as LBJ was leaving Washington:

It's been a tough week to be an American, so here's something to think about for Independence Day.

When Lyndon B. Johnson was President, he was so determined to do as much as possible in the time that he had that, according to Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (who was also a personal aide to LBJ in his final years in office and retirement), his swimming pool at the LBJ Ranch in Texas "was strangely equipped with special rafts for a telephone, a notepad, and a pencil; if the President thought of someone he wanted to call or something important he wanted to record, he could float over to the various rafts that held the necessary equipment."

Notice that she used the plural "rafts" -- as in there were more than one of these rafts in the small pool at his ranch in the rural Texas Hill Country. And, while most business obviously wasn't done in the swimming pool, some of it was, and it was part of the way LBJ operated as a political genius. A political genius who helped leave behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Head Start and school breakfast programs, Job Corps, PBS, NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, Fair Packaging and Labeling for things you shop for and Truth-In-Lending laws, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (which included the Fair Housing Act, Indian Civil Rights Act, and codified federal hate crime laws), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (which eliminated racially discriminatory immigration policies), the first Clean Air Act (arguable the most important environmental protection law in American history), and much, much, much more including...oh, what was it? Oh yeah: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid.

On May 8th of each year of Lyndon B. Johnson's Presidency, LBJ made sure that he made a phone call to the house at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence, Missouri, where former President Harry S. Truman was living in retirement and celebrating another birthday. Truman would always insist that President Johnson had far more important things to do with his time than call a retired old Missouri politician, and LBJ would insist that he couldn't think of anything more important to do with his time than take a moment to thank Harry Truman for his service to the country.

Truman celebrated 88 birthdays before he died on December 26, 1972, nearly four years after Johnson had left the White House and retired to his ranch in Texas. At the time of Truman's death, LBJ was also a very sick man, but he refused to listen to doctors who urged him not to make the trip to Truman's funeral in Missouri.

When an ailing Lyndon Johnson bowed his head while paying respect before Truman's casket on December 27, 1972, it was the last time many Americans saw LBJ alive. Lyndon Johnson died less than a month later, on January 22, 1973, and was buried in the family graveyard at the LBJ Ranch in Texas almost one month to the day after he stood next to Harry S. Truman's flag-draped casket in Missouri.