The last few weeks had reminded the Vice-President that he had once been the ring master of the Senate. Apart from the fact that there was an election in November that he did not believe any Democrat could possibly win; he was a man back in his natural element at the heart of the Administration.
The President had gone back to doing what he did best: being John Fitzgerald Kennedy, dragging Jackie around the Union as if he had made up his mind to run again in November. Back in the District of Columbia Bob McNamara was planning the reconstruction of the Capitol and the long-term reshaping of the US military machine. Here in Philadelphia Lyndon Baines Johnson called the shots.
The President had asked him to oversee the removal of the House of Representatives and the Federal Government to Philadelphia, and to turn his mind to the great national reconstruction which ought to have been the Administrations number one priority this time last year.
Better late than never.
The man who had been the most influential American after Eisenhower in the late 1950s had known better than to simply sign up to this ‘new deal’ within the Administration. Big projects simply were not doable in the US system without command of the necessary ‘levers’. Levers for example, like the Moon Project which far too many people who really ought to have known better still regarded as theatre rather than a sensible way to expend huge amounts of federal dollars. Exactly the same people whose support LBJ most needed to overcome and to over-ride Congressional and Senatorial inertia, and to redirect substantial commercial and industrial assets to the massive reconstruction schemes for bomb-ravaged Seattle, Chicago, Buffalo, South Boston and Houston, were exactly the same people who also badly wanted a piece of other big projects like the Moon Program which he had firmly secured in his back pocket. Politics was about leverage and nobody ever got anything worthwhile done if he was not prepared to get his hands dirty.
Lyndon Baines Johnson had always accepted this precept because he had actually gone into politics to change things for the better. Standing next to the Kennedy brothers he cut a weathered, grizzled figure, a man whose time had come and all but gone by the time he was sworn in as Vice-President. Few people suspected that his was the one practical political mind within the Administration actually focused on the dark underbelly of the American dream; the poverty and the bigotry which blighted great swathes of the south and the industrial cities of the north, the abomination of the anti-Diluvium Jim Crow Laws and the taint of sleaze which seemed to afflict every level of government. While it was true that in the idle sinecure of the Vice-Presidency he had had a lot of time to think about such things, it had troubled him for many years that despite the unprecedented post-war boom of the late 1940s and the 1950s, prosperity had singularly failed to reach, or ‘trickle down’ to so many Americans.
That in the modern age the most scientifically advanced and economically successful country on the planet had no safety net for its old, its sick and its unemployed was a national disgrace. Why was it that in the land of the free anybody who talked about the government taking responsibility — any responsibility at all — for the health and wellbeing of poor Americans was ridiculed as a closet socialist? Now more than ever there was much great work to be done; and yes, if he had to get his hands dirty in righting those wrongs that were within his power to right, so be it.
In December Jack Kennedy had told him he did not intend to stand for re-election. That was pure baloney and he had told the younger man as much. It was inconceivable that JFK’s name would not be listed on the ballot when the New Hampshire Primary came around in less than six weeks time…
Johnson realized he had been woolgathering.
“Tell me about the status of the Atlantic Fleet again?” He asked, sitting back in his chair.
The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral David Lamar McDonald stirred. He guessed that the Vice-President had been taking a brief time out from the conference’s deliberations ahead of confronting the most problematic item on the agenda. He took a moment to organise his thoughts and replayed a conversation he had had with Johnson a week ago in his rooms at City Hall.
There had been ten fleet carriers in service at the time of the October War including five of the eight huge modern Kitty Hawk and Constellation Class ships. In addition, the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise had just finished working up and was about to join the fleet. The arbitrary ‘peace dividend’ mothballing of over two-thirds of the surface fleet had left the Navy with three operational carrier battle groups. The Kitty Hawk was not likely to be fit for sea again for at least two months; the Independence was currently in the Indian Ocean heading home for a six month refit; and the Enterprise was working up in the North Atlantic — assimilating a new command team subsequent to the summary removal of her previous flag officer, most of his staff and several key members of the nuclear-powered carrier’s operations team — in the aftermath of the ‘Dreadnought Incident’ in which aircraft flying off the nuclear powered carrier had attacked the British submarine and ended up accidentally sinking the USS Scorpion.
The reactivation of other recently mothballed major surface assets had not started; nor would it for some weeks and none of the other de-commissioned big carriers could be returned to service before the autumn at the earliest. The only part of the fleet which had not been completely hamstrung by the ‘Peace Dividend’ exercise was the Submarine Division. It had got away with mothballing all its conventional, old-fashioned diesel-electric boats, halting the ballistic missile submarine building program, and by making superficial adjustments to the scheduled rate at which it was building the next generation of nuclear-powered hunter killers.
‘We can send the Enterprise and her escorts to the Mediterranean,’ the Chief of Naval Operations had stated unequivocally. However, he had immediately added an important caveat. ‘Enterprise is not fully combat ready. Her command team has not had time to bed in and most of her original air group was rotated after the events of last month.’
‘Can she fight?’ The Vice-President had inquired.
‘Yes, sir. She can fight.’
‘What else can we send?’
‘Three, maybe four SSNs can be warned for departure or diverted to the Mediterranean in the next forty-eight hours.’ McDonald was not a man who went in for hand wringing. ‘As to the surface fleet,’ he had informed the Vice-President, ‘the way so many ships were taken out of service and so many key personnel were sent ashore in so short a period has damaged the esprit de corps of the whole service, sir. That’s going to make it hard to reverse the cutback programs still in effect. Before we can get parts of the Fleet back to sea we need to stop the ongoing mothballing. Another issue is that a lot of officers have resigned their commissions. Some by way of a protest, I suppose. But others because they are afraid they’ll get caught in the FBI’s dragnet. If you want the Navy back at sea as fast as possible somebody is going to have to call off the witch hunt. Either way, we’re eighteen months to two years away from restoring the Fleet to its pre-war fighting strength.’
McDonald did not think that the Vice-President had forgotten a single word of that week old conversation, notwithstanding, he paraphrased it anew.
“The leading elements of the Enterprise Battle Group are preparing to sail as we speak, sir.”