Carpenter, Liz
Liz Carpenter
Biography
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland "Liz" Carpenter (1920-2010), often called the “funniest woman in politics,” was a writer, feminist, former reporter, media advisor, speechwriter, political humorist, and public relations expert. She served Vice President Johnson as his executive assistant and Lady Bird Johnson as her press secretary as well as a Johnson family friend of longstanding. Mrs. Carpenter was the author of Ruffles and Flourishes, an account of her adventure as Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary. She visited Southwest Texas State University to deliver the 1992 LBJ Distinguished Lecture.
Part of the LBJ 100 Oral History Project
In this interview at Liz Carpenter reflects on her relationship with Lyndon Johnson and the years she spent working with him in the White House.
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Full audio is available for this interview. Reading Room access only.
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Transcript
Interview with Liz Carpenter
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: April 8, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas
Interviewee: Elizabeth Sutherland Carpenter, often called the “funniest woman in politics,” is a writer, feminist, former reporter, media advisor, speechwriter, political humorist, and public relations expert. She served Vice President Johnson as his executive assistant and Lady Bird Johnson as her press secretary as well as a Johnson family friend of longstanding. Mrs. Carpenter, author of Ruffles and Flourishes, an account of her adventure as Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary, spoke as one of the Distinguished Lecturers at Texas State University.
THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is April 8, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Liz Carpenter at Austin, Texas.
Well, thank you, Mrs. Carpenter.
CARPENTER: Wonderful. I’ve been to San Marcos many times. San Marcos?
THIBODEAUX: Yes, you’ve been to the university. You were one of our Distinguished Lecturers one year. I remember that. I think it was in 1992, I believe.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: I did have a few questions for you, and I think I’ll kind of start from the top, but I know there’s a couple of stories I want to make sure that we get from you. I have quite a few opinion questions I wanted to ask you, kind of reflection after all these years if you don’t mind.
My first question, the common experience themes that we have at the university for this coming year are civic responsibility and Lyndon Johnson’s legacy. What do you think Lyndon Johnson would want students to understand about civic responsibility?
CARPENTER: To be part of the public life because it’s very gratifying and it’s important that people deal with it.
THIBODEAUX: In a previous interview—and I didn’t want to drag up old interviews because I don’t want to be redundant—but you mentioned two qualities that you thought that Lyndon Johnson had that were very good leadership qualities. Can you reflect on what kind of leadership qualities Johnson had?
CARPENTER: Well, I don’t know what I said, but he identified with people and with small experiences that grew to bigger things. Do you remember what I—
THIBODEAUX: Yes, and it was a long time ago. I believe you talked about—one thing was that—oh, he made you stretch. I always remembered that word, stretch.
CARPENTER: Yeah. He did. He stretched your brain farther than you’d expected to. Stretch it farther than you had in past.
THIBODEAUX: Another quality you mentioned was ideas, that he was always willing to listen to ideas.
CARPENTER: That’s right. He loved new ideas, and he didn’t care where they came from. He was famous on asking Zephyr Wright, the black cook for the Johnsons, her opinion on something.
THIBODEAUX: That’s very interesting. (laughs)
CARPENTER: Yeah. And you know, he got the—felt through to the common touch that way.
THIBODEAUX: So he was able to bring in ideas from a wide variety of sources?
CARPENTER: People.
THIBODEAUX: People.
We’re kind of focusing on Central Texas and Johnson’s legacy here in Central Texas. What do you think is his greatest legacy here in Texas?
CARPENTER: He came from a very small town and a very modest family, and he identified with people who did and he wanted them to know about—when we were working on the LBJ house, he wanted anecdotes from the least of these, and that’s part of it. He valued the opinion of people of modest backgrounds. I can’t think of anything else now, but if you want to prompt me.
THIBODEAUX: Oh sure. And thinking on kind of a larger scale, what is your opinion about Lyndon Johnson’s legacy for the nation?
CARPENTER: It’s easy to say the common touch, but I think the fact that you can rise from nothing to cast an important role in your country if you’re willing to say so.
THIBODEAUX: So caring about—
CARPENTER: The least of these. I don’t know a better way to put it than the biblical quotation.
THIBODEAUX: That’s a good point.
Mrs. Johnson spent much of her lifetime just nurturing her husband’s legacy through the library, park and programs, and it seems like they wanted to leave a legacy of civic engagement to get people involved.
CARPENTER: That’s right.
THIBODEAUX: What do you think will be the future of all those institutions now that Mrs. Johnson is gone? Do you think it will continue the same?
CARPENTER: I think that there’re always be somebody in there that—a teacher or a student who is inspired by it and sees that sometimes the schools at the bottom of the heap can touch the human side better.
THIBODEAUX: And you mentioned in your notes that his legacy will always represent care and concern.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm, and there’s generally somebody who cares if everybody else doesn’t, but they’ve got to speak out.
THIBODEAUX: One of the favorite stories in your book, Ruffles and Flourishes, was the story you told about going to the well.
CARPENTER: Oh yeah.
THIBODEAUX: I enjoyed that. So it seems that so many of the people who worked for the Johnsons were willing to go to the well with him. Can you explain this extraordinary closeness and camaraderie of Johnson’s associates that continue even today?
CARPENTER: I think that there’s an identity if you care about people’s well-being, and you will want it to live on through—I don’t know. You want to prod me on?
THIBODEAUX: Your notes said that people believed in LBJ’s desires to serve the nation.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: And through him they got strength and supported his policy goals.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm. Well, he was wanting everybody to rise to their capabilities.
THIBODEAUX: So he touched that chord in everyone.
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: I’ve always been amazed at the reunions and the symposiums that have continued on and so many of his associates that have continued to come to those and share their experiences.
CARPENTER: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: It’s very touching.
CARPENTER: He could put dreams into words that meant something.
THIBODEAUX: He seemed very talented in pulling together a group of talented people.
CARPENTER: That’s right. He tried to help everybody, and he’d give you a boost some way, propelled you.
THIBODEAUX: Always to do better.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: You had mentioned a story—and I was going to ask you about President Johnson’s relationship with Southwest Texas—but you mentioned a story about in a cabinet meeting when people were talking about their alma maters.
CARPENTER: Yes. You know, we inherited a lot of Kennedy’s staff. They were all Harvard or Yale, and they dropped the name of their school all the time. They never failed to mention that they went to Harvard, and LBJ was—he said, “Well, I’m the only one here that went to Southwest Texas State Teachers College,” and he said it with kind of a smirk on his face because he’d come as far or farther than they had. But he didn’t have the advantage of going to Harvard.
THIBODEAUX: So he was kind of the—of the common people that had risen above—
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: That’s a good story.
Speaking of stories, I’ve always been curious about Lyndon Johnson’s use of humor. Do you have any stories?
CARPENTER: I did a lot of looking at his speeches before he gave them, and so I would have him start with a laugh because that made him more of a ham if you hear a response from the audience right away. So I told him that, and I think that he followed it pretty on. He’d write—scribble across a speech draft, “I need a joke.” He’d just call them jokes, “I need a joke for this speech and that one,” and he recognized the value of it even though he didn’t have a natural sense of humor very much. He appreciated it but he didn’t invent it.
THIBODEAUX: But you invented the—was it the Good Humor Group?
CARPENTER: Yeah. And we’d get together once a week generally on Thursday and go over the speeches to come and try to give him some jokes to put in.
THIBODEAUX: I think I heard about your humor group from Bob Hardesty, I think—
CARPENTER: Oh yeah.
THIBODEAUX: —had mentioned it.
CARPENTER: We just were open about saying, “It’s a humor group, so come up with some gags.”
THIBODEAUX: I heard he liked to tell stories.
CARPENTER: He could tell stories about—and they were generally what we’d consider cornball stories. They were out of Johnson City or Stonewall, and when he could apply one, he was really good at it.
THIBODEAUX: I remember reading some of his stories and they were good.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Do you have a particular one that you remember that was your favorite?
CARPENTER: Not at the moment.
THIBODEAUX: That was over forty years ago.
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: That’s hard to remember.
I had always heard too that he had a hard time translating, I think, humor or just being relaxed on television.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Is that something that you knew?
CARPENTER: If he got a response, he reacted to it. It made him a ham, as I mentioned. So it was good if we could get a laugh early in the speech because then it would become a better speech.
THIBODEAUX: I know you started out as executive assistant when President Johnson was vice president.
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: What was your role as executive assistant?
CARPENTER: Everything low and high. But he didn’t hesitate to ask you to do anything and expect you to do it because I think he had been asked that when he was working for [Richard] Kleberg, and so—I can’t remember anything specific. Maybe it’ll come to me.
THIBODEAUX: And then when you became Mrs. Johnson’s press secretary, what was your relationship with the west wing?
CARPENTER: It was good. I’d much rather work for her because she didn’t eat you alive if she didn’t like something. But he would send me speeches to look at before his staff even knew about it. That’s all that comes to me.
THIBODEAUX: So he used you as a sounding board.
CARPENTER: Um hmm. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: So did you interact with his speechwriters?
CARPENTER: Yes. They came to my office to meet with what we called the—what did we call it?
THIBODEAUX: I call it the Good Humor Group. Is that it?
CARPENTER: Yeah, that’s right—the humor committee generally on a Thursday, and everybody liked to be invited. I didn’t invite except selected people that I knew could conjure up a laugh or knew what a laugh was. So they’d come over to my office and sometimes we’d have a drink sitting around my desk.
THIBODEAUX: It’s amazing that after working so hard all day that y’all could make jokes.
CARPENTER: Well, we had to. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: Have a way to deal with the stress of the day?
CARPENTER: Yeah. And one leads to another. I mean, if you’re in a group that’s writing humor, you are better off because somebody’s humor would prod you on.
THIBODEAUX: Like writing the Tonight Show for Jay Leno, sounds like.
CARPENTER: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: It sounds like fun.
CARPENTER: It was. I look back and those were the best days of my life I think.
THIBODEAUX: Jack Valenti called it, “the summertime of our lives,” I believe.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm. Springtime.
THIBODEAUX: “Springtime of our lives,” thank you. I think so many of the people that worked at the White House have the same feeling.
CARPENTER: We did.
THIBODEAUX: So at the White House you had a close relationship with the people you worked with?
CARPENTER: Yeah, I’ll say, (laughs) because, you know, you did what was needed if you could. And I wish I could think of some examples for you.
THIBODEAUX: I also heard that President Johnson didn’t have a chief of staff.
CARPENTER: He was it. There wasn’t any question about it.
THIBODEAUX: And why was that?
CARPENTER: Because he wanted to run things. Everything.
THIBODEAUX: So you were all part of the Lyndon Johnson clan—
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: —and he was in control. (laughs)
CARPENTER: That’s right.
THIBODEAUX: You broke ground I would think as working in the White House being the executive assistant to the vice president at that time. What were Lyndon Johnson’s views of women’s rights? Did he ever express those?
CARPENTER: Yeah. He did in this way. There were beginning to be quite a few good women reporters, and he always played up to the women, you know, like Nancy Dickerson. So he’d say, “What can I do for those girls who’ve been so good to me?” and that’s respect—I mean, some of the girls were top women reporters, and so I said, “Put them in—“ We weren’t allowed in the National Press Club at that time. I said, “Tell the foreign visitors who are coming—have the State Department pass the word that they—” how did I say it then? They needed—I sure wish this were twenty years ago and I had a better memory—but they needed to make them laugh. So when we did pass that on to—as a result, he told the foreign visitors through the State Department that when they went to the Press Club, they should demand that they have a mixed audience even though we were seated in the balcony and not allowed on the floor at that time. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t just told the State Department that they had to put them there. I don’t know. I’m trying to pull out everything I can think of. Not doing a very good job.
THIBODEAUX: You’re doing great.
CARPENTER: Okay. What else is there?
THIBODEAUX: Well, another opinion question if I can go back to that. Even though times are different, is there any lessons that you think present and future leaders should glean from Johnson’s presidency? And I think you mentioned something about social needs.
CARPENTER: I don’t know now.
THIBODEAUX: In your notes you talked about, “Take care of the nation’s social needs.”
CARPENTER: That’s right. He was very much a common man, I mean, somebody that felt identified with the least of these, and I think that he realized that that was important, and sure enough, people did identify with it. Golly, I’m just letting you down.
THIBODEAUX: You are not.
CARPENTER: I’ll think of it.
THIBODEAUX: You are such a pleasure.
You mentioned that and also you mentioned about serving others.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: So do you think we’ve come away from that?
CARPENTER: A bigger person. I guess that’s what I meant.
THIBODEAUX: There’s been a lot of discussion about President Johnson’s use of power. How do you think President Johnson understood power or used power?
CARPENTER: Oh, he really understood it, and he could use it to help somebody easily. The mention of a name or an event that they might identify with, and it was the common touch always.
THIBODEAUX: You mentioned in your notes that he used it as a tool to get things done. So I think—detractors of President Johnson have accused him of using power as the end.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: But you believe that he used it as a means to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.
CARPENTER: Yeah. He could identify with the common man more easily than a, for instance, a Jack Kennedy could because he had lived with bigger people—Kennedy—big names and Johnson always appreciated—I mean, on guest lists, for instance, he would—when the president of Italy came, we had a lot of fancy Italians on the guest list. But he remembered that his barber had been an Italian and he had him on the guest list, so he tried to pull the common man in to a front row seat on public affairs.
THIBODEAUX: He did that frequently at the ranch?
CARPENTER: Yeah, he sure did. So you had some funny mixes out there.
THIBODEAUX: Do you have any memories of the ranch events out there?
CARPENTER: Oh yeah. It was a good place to let your hair down because it’s just a really country house. Now, one thing is he really was in charge of all the talking. At a dinner party, well, he was talking all the time and nobody else took over the conversation from him. I really noticed that because the day of his death we went up and had lunch with the kind of inner circle and Luci and so forth. I noticed how nobody really—I mean, we were not used to talking, but suddenly there was a burst of stories—old stories people told that they never had had a chance to before because he never gave you the chance. I sure am not putting this very well.
THIBODEAUX: Sounds fine. So he liked to have a lot of people around.
CARPENTER: Oh yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Constantly?
CARPENTER: And hold court.
THIBODEAUX: (laughs) And hold court. Yes, that’s a good description.
I remember in your book you talked about the ranch as like a hundred miles from a fresh head of lettuce.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm. Eighty miles, I think.
THIBODEAUX: Eighty miles.
CARPENTER: But he’d grown up in that country and so he was very much at home there.
THIBODEAUX: Did he visit the ranch frequently?
CARPENTER: Yeah, whenever he could, he would. Of course, he had Air Force One, and whenever he had a weekend, he’d pull whoever he’s working on sometimes for a project, but his family, Lady Bird, and we’d head for the ranch. We’d get there and he was the first one out the door, and he’d get—what was his name? The foreman there—he’d, “Come on, Dale,” Dale Malecheck, and he’d put him in the car and Johnson drove a convertible, and he’d take him around telling him stories but also listening to his stories. He liked to do that. And he’d go down to Cousin Oriole’s house, which was down the road from the ranch, and he’d love to go in and sit with her and hear some corny wisdoms from this country woman.
THIBODEAUX: So he got recharged?
CARPENTER: Um-hmm, wound up again.
THIBODEAUX: So when he was there, was he involved in the operations of the ranch?
CARPENTER: Yeah. He could interfere with them. (laughs)
One time I had been out walking up the airport road of the ranch, and when I got back I said, “I never saw so many cows.” (laughs) And he was disgusted with that term and he said, “There isn’t a cow on the place.” In other words, they were steers or whatever higher-toned animal that it was. Probably I’ll think of everything after you leave, but I’ll make notes and call you up.
THIBODEAUX: That would be wonderful. I would appreciate it.
You mentioned in a 1993 interview that there had been eight hundred works on Lyndon Johnson, and I was wondering, do you think that there’s still a story to tell?
CARPENTER: Yeah, because people from different generations and periods of time will see things he did differently, and it’s going to come as a surprise to a lot of them that he talks about windmills and branding cattle and terms that you don’t hear from a public figure anymore.
THIBODEAUX: I think they’ll be surprised about how much he did for the environment.
CARPENTER: Um hmm. He would always give Lady Bird credit, and he helped put a lot of her—that it wouldn’t have occurred to him, like to beautify the entrance to a town. And she inspired a lot of that, but he would say, “Lady Bird says,” and go into it. You know, I’m wondering if I have some speeches that I made that have these stories in them, fresh.
THIBODEAUX: I bet you do.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm. I’ll look for that.
THIBODEAUX: That would be fabulous. And I think we talked about Texas State University.
CARPENTER: Um-hmm.
THIBODEAUX: How would you describe his relationship with the university?
CARPENTER: Well, he was the first person in his family that had ever gone to college, and this is the most modest unassuming school and yet here he was. He liked to brag about it though he was kind of—started out being a little ashamed of the fact that he hadn’t gone to Harvard or Yale. He used to tell stories and he liked to—as he rose in his job and if he was called on to speak or if he called on himself to speak, he would kind of glory in the fact that he was the only one that had gone to such a lowly school but look where he’d gotten.
THIBODEAUX: If there’s one thing that you would like people to know about Lyndon Johnson that people don’t know or may have a misperception about, what would it be, do you think?
CARPENTER: I think he had a heart in every sense of the word, and he used it for other people. It sounds cornball, but he would—if there was somebody that—and also he picked brains. He’d get on the phone and get a hold of somebody who was maybe the janitor in Johnson City and he could remember things they said and it was—you know, I’m just no good at this now. I’m going to have to go through this later. I’ve lived with it now so much that the things that he said don’t seem so strange.
THIBODEAUX: Just a part of your life.
CARPENTER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Well, I don’t want to tax you. Are you about ready to stop for the day?
Oh, there’s one question I wanted to ask you before we stop. Can you explain Johnson’s relationship with the Democratic Party here in Texas? Was he a strong part of it?
CARPENTER: He was so much ahead of them in terms of—I mean, he was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal because it had cared about people. And the Democratic Party here was made up of people who gave a lot of money. I mean, there was a time when there wasn’t much of a Republican Party and so the democrats—he used the term, yellow dog democrat, a lot. By that he meant anybody but a—
THIBODEAUX: That expression, he’d vote for a yellow dog before he’d vote for a republican. (laughs)
CARPENTER: Yeah. He’d vote for a yellow dog democrat before he’d vote—and republicans were just—you know, they were identified with the Depression.
THIBODEAUX: Party politics was interesting during Johnson’s time.
CARPENTER: Um hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Was there really a strong split between conservative democrats and then the emerging liberal?
CARPENTER: Yeah, but he’d pull them along a lot. Some of those people he just—because he was who he was, he could do that. Golly. There’s not much up here anymore.
THIBODEAUX: I think our time is up anyway. I was told about forty-five minutes.
CARPENTER: I’m worn out.
THIBODEAUX: Yes. I really appreciate everything.
CARPENTER: I’m glad you do. I wish I could’ve done a better job, but things will come to me. But if you’ve read my book, I used it when it was fresh.
THIBODEAUX: You know, I enjoyed your book more than anything I’ve read because your book told more about the White House and the Johnsons on a day-to-day basis than anything I have read so far.
CARPENTER: Really?
THIBODEAUX: Um-hmm.
CARPENTER: I’m so glad.
THIBODEAUX: So it was very wonderful to read. And I really appreciate you taking the time.
CARPENTER: Sure.
(End of interview)