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Razzle-Dazzle Predictions. With the virtually solid backing of the South and scattered support in the West, Johnson, at the time of his announcement last week, could count up some 500 first-ballot votes toward the 761 needed to win the nomination—but Jack Kennedy could count well beyond 600. Arithmetically, the gap seemed fairly narrow. Strategically, it was enormous.
All of Johnson's hopes of closing that gap and winning the nomination rested on a faith that characterized his whole approach to the belated race: much of the delegate support for Kennedy sprang not from any real belief in Kennedy as the best possible candidate, but from politicians' normal desire to get with the winner in time to earn rewards or at least avoid punishments. Once the convention saw that Kennedy was not going to run away with the nomination on the first or second ballot, his support would start melting away, and the convention would then turn to Lyndon Johnson as the best qualified candidate—so ran Johnson's hopes. * "I think you're rewarded for what you do, what you produce, and not for kissing babies," he said. "I'll believe this until I'm proven wrong."
As Johnson moved westward toward Los Angeles, he kept trying to fight Kennedy's phenomenal bandwagon propaganda. At his press conference at the Chicago airport, Johnson pounced on Bobby Kennedy's prediction that the outcome would be decided by noon Monday, five hours before the convention's official opening. "This will come as a great surprise to the delegates," rumbled Johnson. "Most of them thought they were going to Los Angeles to confer with their fellow Democrats to help select the next President." In San Francisco, his last stop before Los Angeles, Johnson noted derisively that Kennedy first-ballot delegate claims had backtracked in three weeks from 710 to 600 votes. "California, here I am," thundered Johnson in his speech to a disappointingly small welcoming crowd at the Los Angeles airport. "It doesn't matter how many razzle-dazzle predictions you get. The only thing that's important is who ought to lead this nation." From the faithful 300 welled cries of "You! You!"
Taking Charge. The Los Angeles that Johnson rolled into was shuddering proof that Operation Kennedy had again outrun the wildest guesses of the old pros. From the Kennedy command post on the Biltmore Hotel's eighth floor, the team headed by Jack's brother Bob (the "brash young man," as a New York Times editorial called him) took charge of arriving delegates, newsmen and even the political atmosphere. All week the nation's TV, radio and press were fed on rumors of impending Kennedy gains while the actual gains in delegates could still be counted on one hand.
The sharpest spur in the Kennedy camp's intense drive to put Jack over on the first ballot was the lurking fear that Lyndon Johnson was probably right in his prediction that if Jack failed to win on an early ballot his strength would start to wane. To help ensure a first-ballot victory, Jack Kennedy had offered Adlai Stevenson a chance to be Secretary of State in the Kennedy Administration. Kennedy was furious when Stevenson temporized.*