One-Man Show

National security, said Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson to his Democratic caucus, is the issue that will "dominate the Congresses of free men for lifetimes to come." And the man who clearly intends to dominate that issue and the Congress itself in Election Year 1958 is none other than Lyndon Johnson. Last week, as he tirelessly loped through one of the most remarkable performances of a remarkable political career, Johnson stole the show from the other members of the U.S. Senate (50 Democrats, 46 Republicans) and House of Representatives (230 Democrats, 200 Republicans, 5 vacancies) who had gathered to open the 85th Congress, Second Session.

Johnson, chairman of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, began by deciding that the Democratic caucus, usually a cut-and-dried organizational affair, this time would be devoted to national defense. He suggested that Republicans do the same; they did, but by the time they got around to it they had little to do but read the headlines Johnson already had made.

Control of Space. Johnson opened his caucus by announcing that "as a courtesy to the President" there would be no Senate speeches until after the President's State of the Union message. At about that point aides started distributing mimeographed copies of Lyndon Johnson's own State of the Union message, carefully prepared, often eloquent, pointing to faults in the U.S. defense system and proposing programs for action.

"Our national potential exceeds our national performance," said he. "Our science and technology has been, for some time, capable of many of the achievements displayed thus far by Soviet science. That the Soviet achievements are tangible and visible, while ours are not, is a result of policy decisions made within the governments of the respective nations. It is not --as yet, at least--the result of any great relative superiority of one nation's science over the other's. At the root this Congress must--before it does much else--decide which approach is correct . . .

"From the evidence accumulated we do know this: the evaluation of the importance of the control of outer space made by us has not been based primarily on the judgment of men most qualified to make such an appraisal. Our decisions, more often than not, have been made within the framework of the Government's annual budget.* This control has, again and again, appeared and reappeared as the prime limitation upon our scientific advancement . . . What should be our goal? If, out in space, there is the ultimate position--from which total control of the earth may be exercised--then our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position."

Control of Time. Before his statement had burst into print Texan Johnson was on his way again. He seemed everywhere at once: describing a new electric vibrator to Vice President Richard Nixon, eating breakfast with Defense Secretary Neil McElroy and again with Army Secretary Wilber Brucker, holding seven-hour committee sessions, making television films for a Texas network, striding down a corridor tossing off orders to two pretty secretaries who took notes as they scurried after him, slipping into a dinner jacket for a banquet, speaking to the Women's National Press Club and to 1,200 steelworkers in a snowstorm outside the Capitol. Before his subcommittee paraded big-name witnesses, ranging from the Rockefeller Report's Nelson Rockefeller ("Unless present trends are reversed, the world balance of power will shift in favor of the Soviet bloc") to the Navy's snappish, hard-driving Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine ("I think everybody in the military should be doing things as if we were really at war").

Taking a few minutes off between sessions to gulp down a creamed-chicken lunch in his office late in the week. Lyndon Johnson was interrupted by a telephone call from Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, with word that the Army was being authorized to proceed on a top-priority basis with work on a solid-fuel missile to replace the 200-mile, liquid-fuel Redstone rocket. It took just seconds for Johnson to convince McElroy that the announcement should be made by Major General John B. Medaris. scheduled to appear before the Johnson Subcommittee that very afternoon.

Control of Light. As the hearing opened, Vermont's Republican Senator Ralph Flanders got up and started to leave the room. "Senator. Senator," cried Johnson, "where are you going?" Replied Flanders: "Oh, I'll be back in 15 seconds, just 15 seconds." (Thinking the subcommittee session was going to be secret, he had shooed a visiting WAVE out of the room and was going to fetch her back.) "But you can't leave us," said Johnson. "This isn't going to take 15 seconds." It took little more than that: the announcement was moments out of Medaris' mouth when Lyndon Johnson rushed him out into the hall to appear before television.

"Now fellas, let's roll it," said Johnson to the television men, who were still gasping after lugging their heavy gear up the stairs. They protested that one of their number had not yet arrived. "Well," snapped Johnson, "you take it and give it to him." Told that could not be done, Johnson was upset. "Now listen," he growled, "I told you to be ready." He had, in fact, given eight minutes' notice--which was quite a lot for a man whose breakneck energies had already turned the first week of the 85th Congress, Second Session, into a one-man show.

* Amount lopped from the fiscal 1958 defense budget by the 85th Congress, First Session: $2,368,000,000.

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