Jack Valenti - Political Career

Political Career

Valenti served as liaison with the news media during the November 22, 1963 visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Dallas, Texas, and Valenti was in the presidential motorcade. Following the assassination of President Kennedy, Valenti was present in the famous photograph of Lyndon Johnson's swearing in aboard Air Force One, and flew with the new president to Washington. He then became the first "special assistant" to Johnson's White House and lived in the White House for the first two months of Johnson's presidency. In 1964, Johnson gave Valenti the responsibility to handle relations with the Republican Congressional leadership, particularly Gerald Ford and Charles Halleck from the House of Representatives, and the Senate's Everett Dirksen.

Valenti "loved LBJ as no serf ever adored his liege," according to The American Spectator. "One old jibe has it that Valenti, a man who has kept the cowboy-bootlicking faith longer than anyone but Lady Bird and Bill Moyers, would have spun LBJ dropping the hydrogen bomb as an 'urban renewal project'." Valenti later called Johnson "the most single dominating human being that I've ever been in contact with" and "the single most intelligent man I've ever known." In 1965, he said: "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president."