“I could not get under oath and swear that I know exactly how Kennedy died in Dallas.” — Ben Barnes, who helped advance JFK’s fatal Texas trip

In Texas, there’s nothing in the middle of the road, Jim Hightower famously quipped, but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. But Ben Barnes has spent seven decades disproving him. Elected as a Democratic moderate to the Texas legislature at 21, Speaker of the Texas House at 26, and lieutenant governor at 30, Barnes was LBJ’s premier protégé and has known every president from Kennedy to Trump. Now 87, he has distilled all his centrist wisdom into Get It Done: Seven Decades of Lessons from a Political Legend.

Get It Done is more than just a Texan story. Barnes spent six weeks advancing JFK’s fatal 1963 Dallas trip and breakfasted with the president in Fort Worth on the morning of the assassination. He confesses that the Warren Commission “did not get it entirely correct” and notes that the experienced hunter John Connally, who rode in the Presidential limo, always insisted there were four shots, not three.

Then there’s the equally historic scene at the White House on the day LBJ signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Pen in hand, Johnson looked a dozen young Southern Democrats — Barnes among them — straight in the eye and told them he’d just signed away Dixie. “What I’m doing today is probably going to turn the South Republican for thirty or forty years,” LBJ confessed with astonishing prescience.

The dirty trickster Richard Nixon, meanwhile, ended Barnes’ electoral career. You can hear it on the tapes — Nixon ordering his attorney general, John Mitchell, to “get something on Barnes” before the Texas Democrat got to be governor. Years later, fresh from prison, Mitchell invited Barnes to lunch, apologized over a bowl of spaghetti, then dropped dead on a Washington sidewalk three months later.

Barnes forgave Mitchell. He is less forgiving of the current administration, which he says is hammering the final nail into the coffin of LBJ’s Voting Rights Act. In the recent Texas Senate runoffs, only seven percent of voters showed up. Seven. Barnes remembers, aged three, watching pickup trucks packed with young men rolling toward the recruiting stations the morning after Pearl Harbor. That generation died for the country. This one, the very alive Texan armadillo quipped, could at least vote to protect American democracy.

Five Takeaways

• Four Shots, Not Three — But No Conspiracy. Barnes advanced JFK’s fatal Texas trip. Connally swore there were four shots; Oswald couldn’t have known the route. Barnes won’t swear under oath he knows how Kennedy died.

• The Hostility Began in Los Angeles. The LBJ–Bobby Kennedy feud began when Bobby tried to talk Johnson off the 1960 ticket — and never healed. Ted Kennedy praised LBJ three weeks before his own death.

• “This Will Turn the South Republican.” Signing the Voting Rights Act, LBJ told Southern Democrats — Barnes among them — the South was lost for forty years. Texas is now America’s reddest state.

• Nixon’s Vendetta. It’s on the tapes: “get something on Barnes.” His career ended. John Mitchell later apologized over spaghetti — and died three months later.

• Seven Percent. Trump unprepared, prestige dwindling, NATO non-negotiable — and seven percent turnout in the Texas runoffs. The Pearl Harbor generation died for this country; today’s could at least vote.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy Get It Done: hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-barnes/get-it-done/9781538778135

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: yellow stripes and dead armadillos
00:02:02 Hightower, the left, and one-party Texas
00:03:14 Seven decades a Democrat
00:05:13 Advancing JFK’s fatal Texas trip
00:06:48 What’s your theory? Four shots, not three
00:11:30 What does Dallas teach us?
00:14:17 LBJ and the Warren Commission
00:16:27 The truth serum question: Hoover and the CIA
00:18:06 LBJ and the Kennedys
00:18:42 The hostility began in Los Angeles
00:21:36 Get It Done: LBJ, man of the Senate
00:23:56 The South and civil rights
00:25:29 Bullying Humphrey?
00:26:10 The last sixty days of ’68 — and the case for ego
00:30:02 Nixon: terrible president?
00:31:08 “Get something on Barnes”: the tapes
00:32:06 Watergate, Mitchell’s apology, a bowl of spaghetti
00:34:13 Ann Richards and George W. Bush
00:35:46 Cheney, Iraq, and Connally’s 1980 warning
00:37:27 Is Trump different?
00:40:49 Can Texas turn? The Alamo question
00:41:30 LBJ’s prophecy: “This will turn the South Republican”
00:43:26 Talarico’s chances
00:43:55 Jim Crow’s return? Racism resurfaced
00:47:04 Why public service? The seven percent problem
00:51:42 Thanks and goodbye