Sharp Touch with a Wedge

As Republicans fretted and fumed about their party's budget split, a Democrat with a wedge stayed behind the scenes, prying and jimmying for hours on end with the sharpest touch in politics. He was Texas' Lyndon Baines Johnson, 48, majority leader of the U.S. Senate, who has been so successful in exploiting G.O.P. troubles that he has almost hidden his own party's more basic division.

During the early weeks of the $71.8 billion budget brawl, Lyndon kept himself uncommitted, heckled the Republicans from the sidelines while awaiting answers to a budget questionnaire that he had mailed out to 39,000 Texans. The replies, plus an Easter visit home, convinced him that economy sentiment was running strong. He saw a big political issue in the making, and he set his three-point party line:

1) The Republicans are divided on the budget. Again and again, Johnson gleefully pointed to such specimens of Republican budgetary schizophrenia as Treasury Secretary George Humphrey's famed "hair-curling" warning and the businessmen's revolt on the budget.

2) The Democrats are united. Since, in time of peace and prosperity, no Democrat would feel called upon to defend a Republican budget, Johnson found it easy to unite his party against it, meanwhile managing to gloss over the deep Democratic splits between Southerners and civil-rights advocates, conservatives and Fair Dealers.

3) The Democrats are the party of economy. To prove it, Johnson laid down a rule for Senate Democrats: take the House's trimmed-down total on each appropriation bill as a ceiling instead of (as tradition had it) a floor.

Report in Pocket. Everything came together for Lyndon Johnson on the USIA appropriation. First, USIA Chief Arthur Larson was Ike's proteege and a pet whipping boy for Old Guard Republicans because he had written a book, A Republican Looks at His Party, and coined what they considered a personally obnoxious phrase, "Modern Republicanism." That was fine with Lyndon; he could use Larson to point up the Republican split. Second, the USIA's shrill critics in press and Congress had managed to spread the impression that USIA was an international boondoggle. Lyndon could therefore whack safely at USIA to prove that the Democrats are all for economy. Finally--and here came the perfect touch--Johnson came up with the idea of handing over to the State Department (which the House had cut by $47 million) nearly all of the $16 million lopped off the USIA requests. That would prove that Johnson and his Democrats had the country's best interests at heart.

But Lyndon Johnson puts more into his work than mere conniving. He took his plan before the Senate Appropriations Committee, which was unanimous in its approval. It asked Lyndon to write a report. He whipped it out of his pocket --already written. During the Senate debate on USIA, Johnson was on his feet for more than four hours, fencing, flattering, cajoling, finally was upheld by a resounding vote (61 to 15).

Answer in Hand. Johnson's charms, his maneuvering ability and his genius for spotting political trends have given him a total command of the Senate matched by few majority leaders in history. He has long posed as the President's best friend in the Senate. But last week, with Ike's popularity at its lowest, Lyndon Johnson took on the President.

Piqued by Ike's criticism of the Democratic-controlled Congress, Johnson arose on the Senate floor to say: "I make no pretense of being too efficient; but since there are some persons downtown who assume to themselves not only the prerogative of running the executive department but also want to advise the legislative branch of the Government as to what it should do, I intend to answer them, and I shall answer them with a voice they can hear and understand . . . What we need is not a Republican Congress but a Democratic President."

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