Most obituaries of Jack Valenti note that he organized a surprise meeting between Pope Paul VI and President Lyndon B. Johnson in Rome on the president’s way back from Vietnam in December 1967.
But it appears Valenti—who died Thursday at 85 from complications of a stroke—also recommended that LBJ enlist the Pope in negotiations to end the war in Vietnam, according to a memo released Friday to The Politico by the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin.
Johnson suggested that Harry Middleton, the former director of the LBJ library, might have evidence of his claim. When reached in Austin Friday, Middleton said he had found an unsigned memorandum to President Johnson believed to be written by Valenti. The LBJ library faxed a copy to The Politico.
Although he wasn’t absolutely certain that the memo was written by Valenti, Middleton said he recognized Roberts’ handwriting on the notation. “I think Juanita knew the horse flesh pretty well and if she thought it was Valenti then it probably was,” he said from his home in Austin.
“The really pointed question is HOW to get this mess to the United Nations without losing face, without giving ground on our basic policies, and finding these same answers for the North Vietnamese.
Robert Dallek, historian and the author of three books on Lyndon Johnson, including “Lyndon B. Johnson” in 2005, said that the memo fits what he understands about the relationship between Johnson and Valenti.
“Valenti told [LBJ] that this war had become a kind of albatross around the administration’s neck and he had to find some way to deal with it, both in terms of the politics and in terms of the international difficulties he was facing and the difficulties he was facing in Vietnam,” Dallek said from his Washington home.
“It fits [Valenti’s] character and fits the fact that he had Johnson’s confidence and that he could tell Johnson that, with Johnson understanding that Valenti only had Johnson’s well-being at heart…Valenti was very loyal to Johnson and Johnson understood that,” Dallek said.
But Harry McPherson, who worked closely with Valenti in the Johnson administration, says Valenti wanted himself out so that he and his wife, Johnson’s secretary Mary Margaret Valenti, could start a family. “He lobbied hard for that job and the first guy he had to lobby with was LBJ, who didn’t want to lose him,” says McPherson, now senior counsel with DLA Piper in Washington.
His persuasiveness with the president was in keeping with the way Valenti operated throughout his nearly 40-year career at the motion picture association, McPherson said.
“The tremendous quality about him both at the White House and [MPAA] was a huge inventiveness, an aliveness to opportunity, to do things, to achieve things, to reach out to people here or there to get them to back what he was seeking or what his boss was seeking,” said McPherson.
It was that ability that made Valenti an important figure in the history of modern lobbying, the rise of which parallels Valenti’s career. “He was there at the very, very beginning,” said Matt Gerson, who worked with Valenti for about a decade at the MPAA.
For Gerson, it was Valenti’s ability to make personal connections on both sides of the aisle that made him successful. The story that sticks out the most to him culminated in the mid-1990s but began in 1974, when former Rep. Henry Hyde was first elected.
Valenti sent the Republican from Illinois, whom he had never met, a personal note of congratulations reading, “I am exultant in your victory”—typical of his 19th century writing style.
Two decades later, Hyde was leading the impeachment trial of President Clinton at the same time that copyright legislation was heading for a judiciary committee hearing. Hyde was chairing the committee and Valenti needed to talk to him.
Jon Leibowitz, a Federal Trade Commissioner, worked with Valenti at the MPAA from 2000 to 2004. He said Valenti’s bipartisan credibility came from the strength of his word. He gave this example: A Democratic House member Valenti had been on friendly terms with for years was challenging an incumbent Republican for a Senate seat. As many lawmakers often did because of Valenti’s Hollywood connections, the candidate asked Valenti to host a fundraiser for him.
Leibowitz said the House member, though disappointed, appreciated the candor. He unseated the Republican regardless and never held the refusal against Valenti.
Jack Valenti was about as liberal as Joe McCarthy. His nefarious Motion Picture Association of America, with its coterie of secret film "raters," has been the Gestapo of the film industry since its founding, and Valenti was definitely its Hitler. Hopefully, now that "Jack the Flack" has finally kicked the bucket, the MPAA will follow him to the grave, and the film industry will no longer have to kowtow to their imbecilic lunatic morality.
I sometimes forget (because the right never does) that Ronald Reagan did never did anything wrong. He was perfect. Perhaps even "Our Lord and Savior." Anyone disagree?
He and FDR are the most overated 20th century presidents, IMO. Their worship by their respective parties have lead directly to the partisan bickering that undermines America.
This is cache, read story here
