William
Stuart Symington was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on 26th June,
1901. Soon afterwards the family moved to Baltimore,
Maryland. In 1918 he joined the U.S. Army
and by they time he left he had reached the rank of second lieutenant.
After
graduating from Yale University Symington
he briefly became a newspaper reporter in Baltimore.
Later he worked as an iron moulder in Rochester (1923-26). After studying
mechanical and electrical engineering by correspondence course he
became an executive with a steel company. In 1938 he moved to St.
Louis to become president of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing
Company.
A
member of the Democratic
Party,
in 1947, Harry S. Truman appointed Symington
as his Assistant Secretary of War for Air. This was followed by holding
the posts of Secretary of the Air Force (1947-1950), chairman of the
National Security Resources Board (1950-51) and Reconstruction Finance
Corporation Administrator (1951-52).
In
1952 Symington was elected to the Senate. He became a respected political
figure and in 1960 attempted to win the party's presidential nomination.
John
F. Kennedy
won the nomination and decided to make Symington his running-mate.
When Clark
Clifford brought him the news, Symington accepted the post but
said: "I bet you a hundred dollars that no matter what he says,
Jack will not make me his running mate. He will have to pick Lyndon".
In
the background Philip
Graham and
Joseph Alsop were attempting to persuade
John
F. Kennedy to
appoint Lyndon
B. Johnson instead.
Despite the objection of Robert Kennedy
and other leading advisers, Kennedy decided to replace Symington with
Johnson.
Symington
served in the Senate until his resignation on 27th December, 1976.
He lived in New Canaan, Connecticut until his death on 14th December,
1988.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Katharine
Graham, Personal History (1997)
Phil and I flew to California
early, five days before the Democratic Convention was to open on July
11. I was already committed to Kennedy. Phil remained loyal to Johnson
until he lost the bid for the nomination, but he was entirely realistic,
and he, too, admired JFK...
Phil called
on Bobby Kennedy and got from him confidential figures on his brother's
strength, numbers that showed JFK very close to the number of votes
needed to win the nomination close enough so that the Pennsylvania
delegation, or a big chunk of it, could put him over. On Monday, Pennsylvania
caucused and announced that the state delegation would give sixty-four
of its eighty-one votes to Kennedy, which made Phil and the Post reporters
write that it would be Kennedy on the first ballot.
At that point,
Phil got together with Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of Lyndon Johnson
as Kennedy's running mate. Joe persuaded Phil to accompany him to
urge Kennedy to offer the vice-presidency to Johnson. Joe had all
the secret passwords, and the two men got through to Evelyn Lincoln,
Kennedy's secretary, in a room next to his dreary double bedroom and
living room. They took a seat on one of the beds and nervously talked
out who would say what, while they observed what Joe termed "the
antechambers of history." Joe decided he would introduce the
subject and Phil should make the pitch.
When they
were then taken to the living room to see JFK, Joe opened with, "We've
come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen
to you, and Symington is far too shallow a puddle for the United States
to dive into. Furthermore, what are you going to do about Lyndon Johnson?
He's much too big a man to leave up in the Senate." Then Phil
spoke "shrewdly and eloquently," according to Joe - pointing
out all the obvious things that Johnson could add to the ticket and
noting that not having Johnson on the ticket would certainly be trouble.
Kennedy immediately
agreed, "so immediately as to leave me doubting the easy triumph,"
Phil noted in a memo afterwards. "So I restated the matter urging
him not to count on Johnson's turning it down, but to offer the VPship
so persuasively as to win Johnson over." Kennedy was decisive
in saying that was his intention, pointing out that Johnson could
help not only in the South but elsewhere in the country.
Phil told
the Post's reporters they could write that "the word in L.A.
is that Kennedy will offer the Vice-Presidency to Lyndon Johnson."
(2)
Pierre
Salinger, With Kennedy (1966)
Following the nomination
and selection of Johnson as the vice-presidential candidate Thursday
night, I returned to the office and was immediately called by a number
of newspaper men who were checking on a story by John S. Knight, publisher
of the Knight Newspapers, which purported that Johnson had forced
Kennedy to select him as the vice-presidential candidate.
Earlier that day I had
gone to Bob Kennedy's room which was across from mine in the Biltmore
Hotel. Ken O'Donnell was there and after I came in they were discussing
the possibilities for Vice President. Bob Kennedy asked me to compute
the number of electoral votes in New England and in the "solid
South." I asked him if he was seriously thinking of Johnson and
he said he was. He said Senator Kennedy was going over to see Johnson
at 10 a.m. Ken O'Donnell violently protested about Johnson's being
on the ticket and I joined Ken in this argument. Both of us felt that
Senator Stuart Symington would make a better candidate but Senator
Johnson seemed to be on Bob's mind. I remembered all of this later
that night when I saw the news report about Johnson forcing himself
on the ticket.
I called Bob Kennedy that
night to check the Knight story. Bob said it was absolutely untrue.
From my conversation with him, however, I gathered that the selection
of Johnson had not been accomplished in the manner that the papers
had reported it had. I got the distinct feeling that, at best, Senator
Kennedy had been surprised when he asked Senator Johnson to run for
Vice-President and Johnson accepted...
A day or two after the
convention, I asked JFK for the answer to that question. He gave me
many of the facts of the foregoing memo, then suddenly stopped and
said: "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as
well that it won't be."
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