Thursday, March 19, 1998

The Humphrey tapes

President Lyndon Johnson bugged the phone conversations of his own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, according to a new LBJ biography.

The evidence is compelling. LBJ was deeply suspicious of his vice president. It was a marriage of political inconvenience, and when Humphrey ran for president in his own right, LBJ all but openly sabotaged his campaign.

While no one doubts LBJ was fully capable of wiretapping Humphrey, if he did, it is unlikely that Johnson ever listened to the tapes. He didn't even listen to the vice president in person.

Humphrey was a legendary nonstop talker whose answer to every question was to propose an eight-point, or 10-point or 12-point program, each point elaborated in full and at length.

The image of a talker like Johnson spending hours listening to tapes of a talker like Humphrey is just too ludicrous to hold in the mind.