‘Trash talking’ is the way it goes…in politics

Did the 38th U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican, “play too many games of football without wearing a helmet,” as the 36th U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, once suggested…or might it have been jealousy over the fact that Johnson didn’t play football?

As Minority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965-73, Ford often clashed with Johnson, who occupied the White House from 1963-69.

Ford opposed almost all of Johnson’s domestic legislative agenda, including the “Great Society” programs that the Democrats said were designed “to end poverty, reduce crime, abolish inequality and improve the environment.”

Ford and the Republicans, however, were highly critical of what they believed to be “excessive governmental involvement in all aspects of society.”

Johnson lashed out, saying: “Jerry Ford can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” (Johnson actually used bleeped-out words to that effect.)

Ford chose the high road. Although Ford, a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., was a star performer on the University of Michigan football team in the early 1930s, he had talents and interests in other sports.

Perhaps just to irk Johnson, Ford sounded a lot like baseball legend Yogi Berra when he said: “I love sports. Whenever I can, I always watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio.” And he offered this self-assessment: “I know I am getting better at golf because I am hitting fewer spectators.”

Baseball historian and author Curt Smith said succinctly: For President Johnson, “politics was his only game.” Growing up in rural Texas, Johnson worked on the family farm; he had no time for sports.

Johnson graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University) in Sam Marcos, where he was a member of the debate team and an editor of the student newspaper.

He went to Washington, D.C., as an aide to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg of Corpus Christi in 1931.

On a trip back to Texas in 1934, Johnson met Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor, a recent University of Texas graduate. They married three months later.

U.S. Rep. Sam Rayburn of Texas helped engineer Johnson’s appointment in 1935 as the Texas director of the National Youth Administration, a federal youth-employment program that was a pet project of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When Rep. James Paul “Buck” Buchanan of Texas died in 1937, Johnson, at age 28, threw his cowboy hat in the ring and hitched his wagon to Roosevelt’s sweeping social policies.

Johnson coasted to an easy victory to enter Congress, and he was re-elected to the House in 1938 and 1940. Another door of opportunity opened, when U.S. Sen. Morris Sheppard of Texas died in 1941.

About 30 candidates filed in an open, special election. It was a wild and wooly, Texas-style campaign. In the end, Johnson came in second, losing by 1,311 votes to W. Lee “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy” O’Daniel, who was the Lone Star state’s popular sitting governor.

Was the final tally influenced by Pappy’s skill at “passing the ballot box?”

Pappy O’Daniel was a maverick within Texas politics…unconventional and unpredictable. He was an entrepreneur with a flair for entertainment, a Fort Worth flour mill salesman who hosted a popular radio show that featured western swing bands.

“Passing the biscuits” to recover from the Great Depression was the slogan that O’Daniel used to win the governorship in 1938.

Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson, a Texas historian and author, said: “Pappy O’Daniel was a great salesman. His approach to politics was to give it a lot of hucksterism and music and fill the airspace with himself.”

Johnson would have another shot at moving up to the Senate in 1948. The outcome would come down to the discovery of what the elections officials found…when they reopened “Ballot Box 13” in Alice, Texas.

We’ll have to take a peek inside to solve this dagnabbit-it-all mystery.