When Lyndon Johnson seriously considered not seeking the 1964 Democratic nomination for president, he was beset by doubts over whether he could lead the nation and angered by "damn lies" in the press.
"I have a desire to unite the people, and the South is against me, and the North is against me, and the Negroes are against me, and the press doesn't really have an affection for me," Johnson told his press secretary, George Reedy, the day after the Democratic Convention opened in Atlantic City, N.J.Johnson said the nation "ought to have a chance to get the best available. That's who I want my children to have, and I know that I'm not."
His discussions with Reedy and special assistant Walter Jenkins about his doubts about running were among tape-recorded telephone conversations released Friday by the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
"I don't think a white Southerner is a man to unite this nation in his hour," Johnson told Jenkins. "I do not believe I can physically and mentally carry the responsibilities of the bomb and the world and the Negroes and the South and so forth."
In a book published in 1971, Johnson wrote that he initially decided against running for the presidency, which he had assumed when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He even drafted a statement saying he was "absolutely unavailable."
But Johnson changed his mind after his wife, Lady Bird, sent him a note saying to step out "would be wrong for your country, and I can see nothing but a lonely wasteland for your future."