Adlai Arguments

Thomas B. Morgan replies: I feel a new respect for Arthur Schlesinger’s tears, but what am I to make of the rest of his letter? My premises that Stevenson would win if Kennedy lost, that McCarthy was no Johnson man, and that the ticket was not immaculately conceived seem amply supported by political history, common sense, and recent interviews with key witnesses, including Schlesinger. Neither the nastiness attributed to Reuther and Rauh nor the belated bow toward McCarthy change anything. And, among other sources, Schlesinger’s own book about Robert Kennedy tells us it is no canard to conclude that the Johnson vice-presidential nomination was “already in the works,” put there—for one—by Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post . After all these years it seems that the tragedy of Johnson still haunts Schlesinger, as it must any man who says he was right to support Kennedy over Stevenson in 1960.