Tag Archives: John Connally

national news

By all means, release those JFK files

Donald Trump plans — at this moment — to allow the release of files relating to one of the 20th century’s most hideous crimes: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

I hope the president does it. He left himself an out, though, suggesting he might not do so if intelligence agencies determine that it’s too sensitive to national security to release them at this time.

Why do I want the files released? I hope — but don’t necessarily expect — the files to put to rest the ridiculous conspiracy theories that have kicked around since that terrible day in November 1963.

I happen to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I do not believe there was a second gunman; nor do I believe that anyone conspired with Oswald to kill the nation’s president.

Release those files

Will the release of those files kill forever those theories? Oh, probably not. We might be listening to cockamamie theories/baloney for as long as we exist as a nation. As Larry Sabato, political scientist at the University of Virginia, noted today, we’re still debating the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, who was killed at Ford Theater in April 1865.

It’s been 54 years since Oswald killed the president and wounded Texas Gov. John Connally. Thousands of pages of valuable information has been kept under lock and key. They’re supposed to be opened to the public next week.

I hope the president follows through, with the expectation that we can push this terrible event a little farther toward the rear of the shelf.

national news, State news

JFK murder recalls a curious interview

brooks-at-lbj-swearing-in

Take a good look at this picture. You know the moment it has recorded.

Standing behind the grieving Jacqueline Kennedy, just over her right shoulder is a fellow I used to know pretty well. He is U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Beaumont, Texas, and arguably the crustiest, most partisan member of the Texas congressional delegation at that time … or perhaps any time.

Brooks died just a few years ago. He was one of the Democrats who lost his re-election bid in that historic Republican “Contract With America” tide that swept over Congress in 1994.

The previous year, I sat down with Brooks to interview him about the events that occurred in Dallas 30 years earlier. I sought to get into the man’s soul, into his heart. I wanted him to share with his constituents — through this interview to be published in the Beaumont Enterprise — what he felt that day.

Jack was riding in the motorcade that beautiful day in Dallas. It was Nov. 22, 1963. He was riding several vehicles behind the presidential limo that was carrying the Kennedys and Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie.

Rifle shots exploded from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building, hitting the president and Gov. Connally. Their car took off at full speed for Parkland Hospital. The world held its breath when news broke that “shots were fired” at the motorcade.

Then the terrible result flashed around the globe: The president was dead.

I sought to plumb deep into Rep. Brooks’ heart and soul that day.

But I learned something that day about Brooks that I knew intuitively all along. He wasn’t prone to thinking like that. I recall being disappointed at the seeming lack of pathos this man.

Brooks wasn’t the most gracious fellow I’ve ever met. He could be as mean as they come. Perhaps he wasn’t comfortable talking to a media representative about that terrible day.

Surely he knew, I speculated to him out loud, about the immense burden that his mentor and friend — President Lyndon Johnson — was carrying at that moment. Did he sense it? Did he grasp in the moment that the world was watching everyone’s move that day? Brooks didn’t confide much to me during our visit that day.

That interview stands perhaps as the most glaring missed opportunity I experienced during nearly four decades in daily journalism.

Oh, how I sought far more than I got from a veteran Texas politician.

national news, political news

Join the club of former shoo-ins, ‘Jeb!’

Dewey beats Truman

John Ellis “Jeb” Bush is feeling hurt at this moment, more than likely.

The former Florida governor was thought to be a shoo-in for the Republican presidential nomination. Then he ran into some fierce — or ferocious — opposition.

On Saturday night, Jeb suspended his campaign.

He was flush was cash. He had collected more than $100 million for his campaign war chest. He spent a lot of it on TV ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and then South Carolina. He got next to nothing for his investment.

He’s not the first formerly prohibitive favorite to fall on his face, as political science professor John Zeitz notes in a Politico essay.

It’s one of the “epic fails” of presidential campaigning.

The most recent example of such a “fail” is the 1980 campaign of GOP candidate John Connally, the former conservative Democrat who sought the Republican nomination, only to fail to win a single delegate.

Big John also was well-funded. He had a huge name familiarity as a former Texas governor, former Navy secretary and a victim of collateral damage on Nov. 22, 1963, when he took one of the bullets intended for President Kennedy on that horrifying day in Dallas.

We have heard much during this campaign about how “big money” corrupts the electoral process. The infamous Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision of 2010 has become a favorite target of Democrats running for the presidency seeking to roll back the effect of the court ruling that gives corporations virtually unlimited spending authority in these campaigns.

Jeb Bush was well-heeled, all right. It didn’t do him much good.

Rest assured that Bush won’t collect much solace in realizing that other big-name, sure-fire “winners” fell by the wayside.

All he needed, it now appears, was a message.