The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4)

by Robert A. Caro

So smoothed over have their feelings been during the intervening decades that in recollections today they bear little resemblance to reality, which was that at the time Lyndon Johnson stepped into office, these men not only disliked and despised him—held him in contempt remarkable in its depth and intensity—but were aware also of what they considered indications of how President Kennedy himself had felt about him, feelings also not at all like those that have come down to us in history; it was a matter of common knowledge around the White House, for instance, that although the Vice President was a member of the group (ExComm, it was called) convened to advise John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vice President had been excluded from the meeting at which the final decision about the American response had been made.