Spirit of St. Louis

THE PRESIDENCY

Last week President Johnson named U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Fulton Freeman as the new Ambassador to Mexico; issued an executive order banning employment discrimination be cause of age in businesses with federal contracts; wished a busy Lady Bird Happy Valentine's Day via the mobile telephone in her White House limousine, and did a lot of dancing.

A Ragtime Two-Step. The light-footedness took place at two White House parties, the annual diplomatic corps reception, and a state dinner for Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Regardless of what the musicians played, samba, cha-cha-cha, Dixieland or waltz, Lyndon kept in time with a simple two-step.

He was best, said some of his partners, to Alexander's Ragtime Band.

When the President offered his arm to U.P.I. Reporter Helen Thomas, she wrote in a first-person, "I-danced-with-the-President" story, she was so flustered that she blurted: " 'Mr. President, the chandeliers are bright tonight.' " This was a reference to Johnson's drive to cut down on the White House light bill. "He didn't smile," said Reporter Thomas. "I guess it was the wrong thing to say."

In Buster Browns. The President also last week flew to St. Louis to open that city's celebration of its 200th birthday. From the airport he moved in a heavily guarded motorcade to the Mississippi river front to view a partially completed $10 million, 630-ft.-high steel arch that is rising in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, a National Park Service project.

At St. Louis University, Johnson told a crowd of 7,000 that he had been aware of St. Louis' importance "since I wore my first pair of Buster Brown shoes," a reference to the city's shoe manufacturing complex, and announced that he had appointed the St. Louis Cardinals' retired Star Stan Musial to be the new director of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Musial, 43, succeeds Oklahoma Football Coach Charles B. ("Bud") Wilkinson, who resigned to run for the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma as a Republican.

That night, at a dinner attended by 2,100, Johnson nearly struck out with the town's baseball fans. His prepared text said: "St. Louis is--as your old saying goes--first in many things and no longer last in the American League." Of course, St. LoUis has not been in the American League at all since the old Browns left for Baltimore after the 1953 season. Presidential aides there fore issued a correction changing the text to read, "No longer last in the National League." But that was not much of an improvement, since the Cardinals, as every fan knows, won nine pennants and six World Series between 1926 and 1946 and haven't finished last since 1918. By this time, the statement was so mixed up that Lyndon wisely deleted it from his speech.

On a loftier plane, Johnson praised the "new spirit of St. Louis," which meant progress instead of urban decay. "But it is not enough to build healthier local communities," the President pointed out. "America's larger task now is to help build a healthier world community. We cannot secure the success of freedom around the world if it is not secure for all citizens in our cities." As Johnson talked, St. Louis cops rounded up 86 civil rights demonstrators who had started to march toward the hotel where he was speaking.

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