Nation: The Use of Power With a Passion for Peace

• Share

(8 of 8)

Sure enough, in his only venture into domestic politics in recent years, Bundy got gored—but good. Self-confident as ever, he decided to try to untangle the messy brawl for the 1964 Democratic vice-presidential nomination. First he told Lyndon that he thought Bobby Kennedy would make a fine running mate, was naive enough to suggest that the two might work well together. After Lyndon thumbed Bobby down for the job, Bundy called Bobby and urged him to announce that he had voluntarily withdrawn from the running. That only made Bobby mad. "I'm afraid he hasn't been a very good friend," said Bobby later. Now, Bundy wisely sticks to foreign affairs.

Mary Mac & Mary Bill. Bundy routinely works twelve-hour days. He rises at 7:15 or so each morning in his home in Washington's Spring Valley section, bolts his four-minute eggs and coffee, scans the morning papers and chats with Mary (known as "Mary Mac" to distinguish her from another Mrs. Bundy, "Mary Bill"). Occasionally he drops three of his sons off at Washington's St. Albans School; the fourth son entered Groton last year.

By 8:15, Bundy is at his spare, functional desk, whittling down the voluminous overnight traffic of cables, memos, reports. The 9 a.m. meetings with his dozen or so aides move with Bundy-esque brusqueness. A recent exchange:

Aide: I'm not sure this is the right thing to do.

Bundy: The President is.

Aide: I haven't really thought this through yet, but . . .

Bundy: Don't.

One Engine. When the current spate of campus debates and special missions for the President ends, Bundy is determined to retreat from public view. But he is sure to surface again, for his shop is a kind of crisis center, and there has been no shortage of crises in the past 4½ years—from Laos, Cuba and Berlin under Kennedy, to Panama, Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic under Johnson.

Then, as now, Bundy will be acting strictly as the President's man, advising rather than advocating, implementing rather than innovating. So far as his own views are concerned, he tells friends that he has had only "marginal differences" with both Kennedy and Johnson, now finds himself "in strong general agreement" with Lyndon's views. If he were not, he says, he would have quit long ago.

Close as he is to it, Bundy remains awed by the institution of the presidency—no matter who happens to be occupying it at the moment. "This country of ours, which is almost ungovernable, has only one engine," he says. "That is the presidency. If it doesn't go, there's nothing." He is dedicated to the idea of keeping that engine revved up for the sake not only of the U.S. but of all nations. For as Bundy sees it, the U.S. is the only great power in "the full 20th century sense" of the term that is on freedom's side—and without freedom, there is nothing.