“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 Texas trip and was at the Fort Worth breakfast on the morning of the assassination. The Warren Commission, he believes, did not get it entirely correct: Connally, a hunter, swore the single-bullet ricochet was a physical impossibility and always counted four shots. Yet Barnes dismantles the grand-plot theories with logistics — Oswald started at the Book Depository thirty days before a motorcade route that wasn’t fixed until six days prior, so he could not have known the president would pass. Ted Kennedy assured him before his death that nothing of importance remains unreleased in the files. Sixty years of phone calls from theorists later, Barnes will not swear under oath that he knows how Kennedy died.

•       The Hostility Began in Los Angeles. The LBJ–Bobby Kennedy feud, in Barnes’s telling, started at the 1960 convention, when Bobby went to Johnson’s hotel room to talk him out of accepting the vice presidency his brother had just offered. The wound never healed — not through the vice presidency, not through the White House years with Bobby as attorney general. The counter-example was Ted Kennedy, who voted for the civil rights bills, kept a genuine affection for Johnson, and told Barnes three weeks before his own death what a great president LBJ had been.

•       “This Will Turn the South Republican.” On the day he signed the Voting Rights Act, Johnson looked a dozen young Southern officeholders — Barnes among them — in the eye and told them the bill would probably turn the South Republican for thirty or forty years, and that they would have to work and tell the story over and over again. The prophecy held: Texas, Barnes says, is now the reddest state in America. And the administration’s new voting legislation, he warns, would be the final nail in the coffin of Johnson’s greatest achievement — making it harder for everyone to vote, and hardest of all for minorities.

•       “Get Something on Barnes”: Nixon’s Vendetta and Mitchell’s Spaghetti. Furious that Barnes had helped Humphrey carry Texas in 1968 — and alarmed that he was outpolling every Democrat in the state — Nixon told John Mitchell to go to Texas and manufacture a scandal before Barnes reached the governor’s mansion. It’s on the tapes, and Barnes keeps copies. His electoral career ended. Years later, out of prison, Mitchell asked him to lunch, apologized over a bowl of spaghetti — “I had time to think in prison” — and died on a Washington sidewalk three months later. Barnes forgave him. The tactics, he notes, are back in fashion.

•       Seven Percent. Trump, Barnes says, never prepared himself for the presidency — no student of history, bored by his intelligence briefings, and surrounded this term by a team without depth. American prestige is dwindling; NATO is non-negotiable; when America coughs, the world catches pneumonia. At home, racism has resurfaced and women’s promotions to the military’s top ranks are reportedly frozen. But his sharpest alarm is the emptiest statistic: seven percent turnout in the recent Texas Senate runoffs. The man who watched pickup trucks of volunteers roll toward the recruiting stations after Pearl Harbor asks only that this generation get involved — before the Republic runs out of birthdays.

About the Guest

Ben Barnes was elected to the Texas legislature at 21, became the youngest Speaker of the Texas House at 26, and the youngest lieutenant governor in Texas history at 30. LBJ’s “premier protégé,” he has spent the subsequent decades as a consultant, fundraiser, and Democratic power broker, helped establish the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and is founder and CEO of the Ben Barnes Group in Austin. His new book, written with David Ritz, is Get It Done: Seven Decades of Lessons from a Political Legend (Grand Central Publishing, July 14, 2026).

References:

•       Get It Done: Seven Decades of Lessons from a Political Legend by Ben Barnes with David Ritz (Grand Central Publishing, July 14, 2026). Doris Kearns Goodwin: “When a gifted storyteller has a great story to tell, the result is magic.”

•       The Warren Commission — the 1964 report whose three-shot conclusion John Connally, a hunter who was wounded in the motorcade, never accepted.

•       Jim Hightower — the Texas populist who actually coined “nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos,” a line usually credited to Ann Richards.