Page 14—Smoke Signals, Wednesday, January 31, 1973
The Johnson Years
The Paradoxes of Johnson .
. the Man
Lyndon B. Johnson: 1908-1973 (UPI 1972 Photo)
Editor’s note: The 36th Presi
dent of the United States fit no
stereotypes, and perhaps that
was one reason why he lost
touch with the people, or they
with him. This article, the first
of five, examines the paradoxes
of Johnson the man.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Almost from the day he was
born, it seemed, Lyndon Baines
Johnson had the makings of a
president—right alongside those
elements that would contribute
to the breaking of a president.
The story of his life could be
told in such paradox.
Perhaps his wife. Lady Bird,
put it best, years later. Recall
ing her first encounter with the
impetuous young Texan, she
said: “I knew I had met some
thing remarkable, but I didn’t
know quite what.”
MUlions understand now what
she meant.
Remarkable? Indeed. No one
who chanced into that swirling,
magnetic orbit could forget the
experience. Lyndon Baines
Johnson exuded a raw, frontier
kind of strength; physically and
psychologically, he over
whelmed.
Apart from his mentor,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, perhaps
no other public man in fliis cen
tury—not even John F. Kenne
dy, whose elegant ghost
haunted Johnson to the end-
understood so well the sources
of power in the world’s most
powerful capital—or knew, in
LBJ’s idiom, which button to
mash, and how hard, to make
things happen.
That this talent, “the Johnson
treatment,” availed him little
at the end did not diminish its
impressiveness while it worked.
Lady Bird was right on an
other count, too. From the mo
ment he set foot in Washington
in 1931 as a congressional sec
retary to the moment he flew
back to Texas in 1969 after re
linquishing the presidency, no
body really knew quite what
Lyndon Johnson was all about.
He was a study in con
tradictions.
He was from the South, but
no orthodox Southerner; from
Texas, but not the stereotyped
Texan; harsh and domineering
with subordinates, yet capable
of great kindness; a Demo
crat’s Democrat, but no ideo
logue.
He could be eloquent and
moving and persuasive in one
moment, and orate Uke a man
dictating to a stonecutter in the
next.
He could be open, in
gratiating, simple, transparent.
And he could be fiercely secre
tive, offensive, jealous, and
enormously complex.
Johnson whipped through
Congress more civil rights leg
islation than any president in
history. Yet when he left the
presidency, the nation’s racial
divisions were deeper than
ever.
No president spent as much
money and forged as much leg
islation to improve the quality
of education. But at the end,
the students and intellectuals
were shouting for his scalp.
He pulled the country togeth
er when it was stumbling about
in a daze after John Kennedy’s
murder. A year later the people
were shouting “All the way
with LBJ” and he won election
in his own right by the biggest
landslide in history to that
time.
But by 1968 the shouts in
some antiwar quarters had
turned to “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how
many kids did you kill today?”
and his land was plagued by
the greatest divisiveness since
the Civil War.
There probably were more
people out in the country like
him than like his predecessor.
Johnson was purely and ag
gressively American—a true
frontier president in the tradi
tion of Andy Jackson. But in
the final jud^ent of his coun
trymen, it simply was not the
time for a meat-and-potatoes
man.
Nor was it the time for John-
son’s consensus politics—
“There’s got to be some com
mon meeting ground for every
one.” That may well have been
the remedy the nation needed;
it was not what the nation
wanted.
“In a sense,” liberal Demo
crat Daniel P. Moynihan told
Richard Nixon a year later,
Lyndon Johnson “was the first
American president to be top
pled by a mob. No matter that
it was a mob of college profes
sors, millionaires, flower chil
dren, and Radcliffe girls. It
was a mob that by early 1968
had effectively jiiysically sepa
rated the presidency from the
people.”
And it happened to a man
who had told the nation in 1965,
in perhaps his most eloquent
and memorable address:
“I want to be the president
who helped to end hatred
among hi£ fellow men and who
promoted love among the
people of all races and all re
gions and all parties.
“I want to be the president
who helped to end war among
the brothers of this earth.”
It was not to be. The currents
of the 1960s were running
strong, if silent, well before
Lyndon B. Johnson took the
oath on that nightmarish Nov.
22, 1963. And later, reflectively,
he said it simply was not given
to him to lead the country out
of itself.
He referred to his manner,
his style, and said he was hand
icapped by “a general inability
to stimulate, inspire, and unite
all the people of the country,
which I think is an essential
function of the presidency.
“1 have never really believed
that 1 was the man to do that
particular job ... I never real
ly felt that with all of my ex
perience and my training and
whatever expertise 1 had in 35
years of public service, that in
the last analysis the people of
every section would say, ‘You
tell us where to go and we’U
go.’ I just never did believe
that. .. .”
From the beginning, he was
bedeviled by the word “style.”
He was a Texan in a city that
had shed much of its Southern
ness and blended in with the
Elast coast; a city that had
made Jack Kennedy’s Harvard
accent its symbol, that reacted
to the sudden new drawl as to
scratching on a blackboard.
He deemed his critics snobs.
Sam Houston Johnson wrote in
his book “My Brother Lyn
don”: “I’m afraid that any pol
iticians from ttie Deep South of
Southwest (including my broth
er) are frequently damned by
Northern liberals from the mo
ment they open their mouths.
They might be saying and
thinking the same damned
thing as some Harvard-edu
cated congressman from the
East, but they’ll never get
credit for it.
“It’s all-out snobbism against
an accent, a mode of ex
pression, a way of dressing, a
way of eating—against a whole
manner of living. 1 have even
heard my brother’s family ridi
culed because they didn’t have
a fancy French chef in the
White House kitchen, as if eat
ing snails in garlic sauce will
make you more civilized and
human than eating plain meat
and potatoes.”
So Washington gossiped and
giggled about a president who
had a soft-drink button installed
in the Cabinet room and mis
pronounced the name of the
drink; who expressed himself,
privately, in Uie earthiest of
barnyard analogy; who hol
lered down from the White
House balcony to reporters to
come see a real live poet, Carl
Sandburg; who pointed to his
daughter’s loose-fitting dress
and told his visitors it didn’t
mean what they thought; who
pleaded with strike negotiators,
late at night, to get it over with
because “Lady Bird is wait
ing”; who engaged in staff con
ferences from the bathroom;
who tore around the ranch at 90
miles an hour with a beer in
his hand (and no vice president
to succeed him); who hiked up
his shirt to show the world his
new surgical scar.
For Johnson, politics was all
there was. It was work, rest,
recreation. Movies, theater,
games, small talk—they all
bored him. He might go for a
boat ride on the Potomac or on
Lake Lyndon B. Johnson—but
the company, and the talk,
were political.
Wheedling a vote, or trying to
hire a staff man, or coaxing
someone into the adminis
tration, Johnson could turn the
famous treatment on full blast.
His hand pawed at his victim’s
arm as he stood chest to chest,
his face literally on top of the
other man’s, his voice soft and
cajoling, his eyes widening and
scrimching up and occasionally
welling with tears. He devoured
single persons and small
groups and usually got what he
wanted. It worked for decades
with senators, employes, pros
pective appointees, union men,
friends, and even some foes.
But in the end, it wasn’t
enough to persuade a nation.
People In
LONDON (AP) — American
industrialist Howard Hughes
was admitted to Britain for
three months as a visitor even
though he didn’t have a valid
U.S. passport, the House of
Commons has been told.
A spokesman for the Home
Office told Commons the bil
lionaire recluse was admitted
last month without a passport
after satisfying immigration of
ficials “about his nationality,
identity and means.”
Hughes, 68, flew to Britain
from Managua aboard a pri
vate jet after the devastating
December earthquake at the
Nicaraguan capital, where he
had been living. While spokes
men refuse to comment on his
whereabouts, Hughes is report
ed to be living at the Inn on the
Park Hotel near Buckingham
Palace.
News
ROME (AP) — J. Paul Getty
III has been released from jail
and disorderly conduct charges
against the grandson of oil bil-
Uonaire J. Paul Getty have
been dismissed.
Arrested Friday during
clashes between police and left-
ist youths demonstrating
against the Fascist party con
gress, young Getty claimed he
was not a participant, only a
passerby.
He was freed Monday.
Performs Rites
JETMORE, Kan. (AP) - Ga
len Rasmussen, 19, was sworn
in as justice of the peace for
Center Township here Friday
and a few hours later per
formed his first marriage cere
mony.