Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One. He is flanked by his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, left, and Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, right.
Today Robert A. Caro, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, releases his fourth book in The Years of Lyndon Johnson series. The book, The Passage of Power, chronicles Johnson’s career from 1958 until 1964, and his journey from Senate majority leader to vice president to president of the United States.
In the Smithsonian.com, Ron Rosenbaum describes a major theme in Caro’s book:
This mortal struggle [between Johnson and Robert Kennedy] explodes into view over RFK’s attempt to deny Johnson the vice presidential nomination. Caro captures the pathos of LBJ’s sudden loss of power as VP, “neutered” and baited by the Kennedy echelon, powerless after so long wielding power. And the sudden reversal of fortune that makes him once again master on November 22, 1963—and suddenly makes Bobby Kennedy the embittered outsider.
The book covers the assassination of JFK and Johnson’s ascent to the presidency. In a fascinating piece in the New Yorker, Caro documented Johnson’s reactions in the moments after the assassination to his taking the oath of office on Air Force One.
The Miller Center has put together an exhibit of some of the highlights of the Presidential Recordings that took place on November 22, 1963, after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The JFK Assassination Tapes include a selection of calls from Air Force One enroute from Dallas to Washington. The plane was carrying a newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson along with the slain president's body.