Old Stories: The Thirty First of March

Horace Busby Recounts the Political Life and Death of LBJ

The Thirty First of March by Horace Busby is an unusual political memoir. Subtitled An Intimate Portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s Last Days in Office, it begins with Horace Busby as a 24 year old journalist being summoned to Washington D.C. to join the office staff of Congressman Lyndon Johnson from Texas’s 10th Congressional District. It ends with a last phone call on January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon’s Inauguration Day. In between was the fulcrum of the memoir: Johnson’s decision not to seek a second term.

Perhaps more importantly however were two other events. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and, just days after Johnson announced his retirement from politics, the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis.

Busby and Johnson were a close knit political duo in D.C. for 20 years, with Busby serving as an ‘idea’ man and speech writer, first for the Congressman, and later for the Senator, Senate Majority Leader, Vice President and President. It must be one of the most remarkable rides in the history of politics. How it started, Busby tells us. Why it started remains a mystery. Johnson and Busby had never met. They really didn’t share any important friends or even acquaintances. The only link, so far as Busby knows, is that LBJ read the editorials Busby wrote for The University of Texas at Austin school newspaper. Yet, Johnson offers Busby a job in his office, paid out of Johnson’s own pocket, and a room in his home. Those must have been some amazing editorials.

Over time Busby becomes a great confidant of Johnson. After the assassination of Kennedy, Johnson even had Busby sit by his bed in the White House presidential suite while he fell asleep. This is a really amazing detail. A man of Johnson’s long service and experience actually required what he himself termed ‘hand holding’ in order to get to sleep in his first weeks as President. And Busby, or Buzz as he was known, being the decent man he was, sat there, deep into the night waiting for the President to fall asleep. We are all human, all too human.

The book does precisely what it says it will do; it provides an intimate portrait of Lyndon Johnson. Fortunately, Busby is not a psychologist and is not prone like too many to making psychological conjectures. Rather, he writes like a journalist, providing the when, where, why and how of extraordinary events as they occurred.

One interesting story Busby recounts is how Johnson was all set to make his grand announcement at the State of the Union speech in 1968. On January 14th, Johnson calls Busby to the White House and in his pajamas in bed Johnson plays out the entire episode to an astonished Busby. It’s obvious to the reader, and it eventually became obvious to Busby, that Johnson was at his political end, if not his mental end. Johnson like many politicians had an intense desire to be loved, to be the nation’s hero, but instead the political coliseum offers only long knives and rancor, while the media and public look on disdain, always ready with an apt insult. Busby watches the State of the Union speech on television, surprised that it concludes and Johnson does not pull off the melodramatic exit he’s practiced in his bed days earlier. Instead, it’s the last day of March when Johnson, who now has the promise of peace talks from the North Vietnamese in his hand, decides to tell the country that peace talks are ahead, and his time as President is winding down.

The announcement finally earns LBJ a respite from the long knives and the rancor, but four days later, a sniper kills King in Memphis, and all hell breaks loose again.

Assassinations, Kennedy’s and King’s, are the bookends of Johnson’s administration. What a cruel hand LBJ was dealt, and Busby’s memoir of those years provides an intimate look at a man under enormous stress.

The book is not a complete history. Busby did not set out to tell a complete history of Johnson’s career. Instead, through a series of essays about various stages of Johnson’s career, Busby helps us to understand the man beneath the suit and tie, the man whose goal was always to work “for the people.” He no doubt left a huge legacy in his four and half years in office, and this book will give you a good understanding of the man who made so much happen. His ambition for greatness led him and thereby the country to attach itself to ideas, policies and programs that may or may not have worked as expected, but once passed are still around.

The fact that the book was published is itself a small miracle. After Busby’s death his children found the box of papers that their Dad had worked on for many years but never finished. After you read the book, ponder why he never took it himself to a publisher.

The book is free in audible form if you’re an Amazon Prime Member. Used versions are also available, and I was able to find it from the library system. It’s not a long, ponderous read like many political biographies where they must provide every detail and all the machinations of events, large and minute. Busby’s ‘Intimate Portrait’ provides just enough detail to make it interesting. Recommended.