A Serious Condition

At the holiday weekend, Democratic Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson left the Mayflower hotel apartment of his friend and colleague, Georgia's Democratic Senator Walter George (who was recovering from bronchial trouble), and slipped behind the wheel of his blue Chrysler. He drove alone, through the stifling Washington heat, across the Potomac and 40 miles into Virginia to "Huntlands," the rolling estate of George Brown, Houston contractor and lavish contributor to Johnson's political campaigns. It was a trip from which Lyndon Johnson would return in a few hours--in an ambulance. He had suffered a coronary occlusion; doctors said his condition was serious.

Shortly after he arrived at Huntlands, Johnson complained of indigestion and asked for some baking soda and water. While other guests went swimming, Johnson retired to a couch in an upstairs room. But the pain in his chest grew worse, and a local doctor was called in; he spotted the trouble immediately. An ambulance was called and Johnson was taken to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

In the hospital, Johnson was able to talk to his wife and some top aides. Next morning he read the Sunday papers in his bed and seemed comfortable. But the fact was that Lyndon Johnson, 46, would be unable to lead the Senate for the rest of this session.

The most obvious choice to take over, as Acting Majority Leader, was Kentucky's Senator Earle C. Clements, the Democratic whip, who, like Johnson, has the invaluable knack of staying on good terms with all shades of Democratic Senate factionalism. Clements is a quiet, industrious, somewhat ponderous behind-the-scenes operator--but he has yet to demonstrate that he can fill the big Senate shoes of Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson's assets have been his painstaking care for details and his willingness to spend long hours gliding around the Senate, from chamber to cloakroom to corridor, bringing men of widely varying beliefs together in a new party unity. When Johnson wanted the Senate to move faster in its processes his signal was a finger twirled in the air, in the manner of an airplane mechanic instructing a pilot to "Rev your engines." But as the daily, nerve-shredding pounding of brain and body took its toll, perhaps Lyndon Johnson revved his own engines too often.

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