When Patriotism & Politics Coincide

Lyndon Johnson had something for everybody--rich and poor, old and young, male and female, union leader and businessman, American and foreigner, Northerner and Southerner, student and sharecropper, cow milker and dog lover.

Republicans might suspect him of demagoguing around, but they couldn't really lay a finger on him. After all, he sought only for America what Americans seek for themselves--a strong nation and the good things of life. He knows what it is to be poor and he hates poverty. He also knows what it is to be wealthy, so he strives for prosperity. "I can't remember a time," says former Republican National Committee Chairman Leonard Hall, "when a President had prosperity and poverty going for him at the same time." But is it demagoguery to pick up a few votes while plugging for progress? And can Lyndon help it if his patriotic purpose just happens to coincide with his political plans?

A Bow to the Family. Again, the week was cyclonic. First, he set out to redeem himself in the eyes of dog fanciers, gently lifting one of his beagles by the ears and explaining to newsmen that it didn't hurt at all. Next, he went after the duffers' vote, replying to a reporter who asked him what his golf handicap was: "I don't have any handicap--I'm all handicap."

In blurred succession, he entertained 65 union leaders at a White House dinner, preached international tolerance to 800 foreign students ("The variety of human experience cannot be contained in a single law or a single system or a single belief"), urged Americans to back the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's fund drive ("We cannot rest in this country until we conquer it"), urged members of the Advertising Council to join him in his war on poverty ("This is a moral challenge that goes to the very roots of our civilization and asks if we are willing to make personal sacrifices for the public good").

Next came time for a bow to a revered institution: the American family. Lyndon ordered picnic tables set up in his backyard, piled them with cookies, stocked them with pitchers of pink punch, called for a press conference and in vited reporters to bring along the wife and kiddies. More than 1,000 turned up. The Marine Band played Merrily We Roll Along, Jingle Bells and America. The children drank the punch, crumbled the cookies, meditatively tore up tufts of the White House lawn and, with a certain amount of nudging from their mothers, laughed politely when Lyndon told them: "I want to prove to you that your fathers are really on the job--sometimes."

The President really said very little at the press conference, but such is his skill that he earned no fewer than five headlines on Page One of the next morning's New York Times. After the conference, he mingled with the mob, gulped down four cups of punch and perspired as though he enjoyed it.

The Pageant. But all this was only a beginning. In the middle of the week, he went on a whirlwind 2,500-mile, two-day, six-state anti-poverty pilgrimage through the Appalachian region. It was a frenzied pageant. Some of the scenes:

> CUMBERLAND, MD.: Lyndon and Daughter Lynda Bird, 20, headed for the office of the Maryland Department of Employment Security to visit with people who were lined up looking for work. There, Johnson spotted Joe Click, 49, a one-legged coal miner who has been unemployed for 13 months, rushed over to him and said: "We're here because we care."

> ATHENS, OHIO: To 8,000 Ohio University students massed beneath huge elm trees on the campus, the President gave a near-perfect summation of his credo: "I know that we live in an age when it is considered correct to play it cool, when it is right to be reserved, when it is not good form to show great faith. But I believe with Emerson that no great work is ever achieved without enthusiasm."

> KNOXVILLE, TENN.: Touring the city's slums, Johnson selected a seedy apartment building at random and went to chat with a weary woman with a babe-in-arms and torn sneakers. He emerged looking grim. At Knoxville's Coliseum, he tore into political critics of his poverty crusade. "Those who oppose us are determined. They have already, last week on the floor of the House of Representatives, called this war on poverty a cruel hoax. I first heard that phrase in the 1936 campaign when they called social security a cruel hoax."

> ROCKY MOUNT, N.C.: The President visited the shabby home of Sharecropper William Marlow, 39, his wife, his mother, and seven children. To prepare for Johnson, they had scrubbed their place for three days. At the request of the White House, an acre of oats was prematurely harvested to provide a landing pad for the Johnson party's helicopters. After Lyndon learned that Marlow, a Navy veteran with a back ailment, subsists on $1,500 a year, the President recalled his own Texas boyhood and how his fingers got sore from milking cows. He asked Mrs. Marlow if her children get enough to eat. She said: "They get about everything they need, but clothes is hard." Johnson asked Marlow about his back. "What you got? A disk?" Said Marlow: "Yes, but these boys do pretty well. They pretty well keep up the place now."

> ATLANTA, GA.: It was 11 p.m. when the President arrived, and he had been going hard for 15 hours. But he was refreshed by a cheering crowd of 5,000 at the airport. He shouted: "I haven't got time to talk, but I've got the strength. I get my strength from your faces." Next morning at a hotel breakfast with state legislators and members of the Georgia congressional delegation, he put away a generous helping of grits and sausage, delivered a tough, plain-talking speech for civil rights: "Because the Constitution requires it, because justice demands it, we must protect the constitutional rights of all our citizens, regardless of race, religion or the color of their skin." Surprisingly, the audience applauded; some even cheered. Cried Lyndon: "I love the people of Georgia." Hundreds of thousands lined the streets to see the President's motorcade pass by, and he stopped no fewer than eight times to talk to them through a brand-new bullhorn. Later, it was back to Washington.

But Lyndon was far from through. Next morning he flew into New York, where he appeared--always talking--at the 50th birthday party of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Amalgamated Clothing Workers, at the dedication of the Venezuelan Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, at a hurriedly scheduled news conference, at a lunch at Roosevelt Raceway, at the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Educational, Civic and Cultural Center on Long Island and, finally, at a Democratic fund-raising dinner in Atlantic City.

His face was ruddy from the sun and his voice was quite hoarse. Yet when a reporter asked if he planned to keep up his brutal travel schedule, Johnson replied: "We believe in giving the people a chance to see us and to hear us, and agree with us and disagree with us, to criticize us, to approve us. We have been in 13 states in the last 13 days. We may not cover that many states in the next 13--but we are not going into seclusion."

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