The American Dream

(See Cover)

Keep the right man in the right job;

He's the right man for ev'ry one;

He's the man to get things done.

So join the U.S.A.'s tomorrow,

Go with L.B.J. today,

'Cause Johnson is setting the pace,

President Johnson is setting the pace.

A full-throated baritone introduced Johnson Is Setting the Pace in a smoke-fogged Chicago banquet hall full of perspiring Democratic politicians. But Lyndon Baines Johnson, the guest of honor, was already handshaking his way toward an exit. He had more places to go, more things to do, and he certainly meant to go and do them.

What He Did. In the course of a single breathtaking, nerve-shaking, totally implausible week, the 36th President of the U.S. made nearly two dozen speeches, traveled 2,983 miles, held three press conferences, appeared on national television three times, was seen in person by almost a quarter of a million people, shook so many hands that by week's end his right hand was puffed and bleeding.

He received a hug and kiss on the ear from a freckled seven-year-old girl in Chicago, a Life Patron membership in the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Washington, a warning from former President Harry Truman that he "takes too many chances mixing with crowds."

He went to the World's Fair in New York, watched a whiz-bang fireworks display in his honor outside a Chicago hotel, was nearly swamped by a shoulder-deep mob of schoolchildren in South Bend.

He announced the settlement of the U.S.'s 4 1/2-year-old railroad labor dispute, made public U.S.-Soviet moves to cut back production of nuclear-arms materials, told reporters during a tour of the White House Rose Garden that the grape hyacinths there were about the same color as Texas bluebonnets.

He drolly advised former Venezuela President Romulo Betancourt during a White House call that he should be careful during an upcoming cross-country auto trip because "we've got a lot of crazy drivers in this country"; he commanded Democratic congressional leaders at a legislative breakfast to "switch about twelve votes" in the House so that the Administration's once-beaten pay-raise bill could pass; he told a dead-broke Kentuckian on the porch of his shack to "take care of yourself, now"; and he quietly asked New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating during a plane ride to New York if he would please pray for him.

Topping the Others. There seemed to be no end to it, no ceiling on his energy, no limit to his endurance, no issue or individual to whom he would not offer a hayseed's aphorism or a statesman's advice. Ever since he took office five months ago, amid the numbing shock waves of John Kennedy's assassination, he has plunged into the presidency with a headlong velocity. No man in the White House has ever moved faster. Few have managed to brand their personality on the presidency so quickly and so indelibly. Corny as johnnycake, folksy as a country fiddler, persuasive as a television pitchman, he is also both efficient and effective, and he can already count several considerable achievements in his brief Administration.

Unbelievably, his pace increases day after day, and last week topped all the tumbling, tempestuous weeks that had gone before. It began with a compass-setting foreign-policy speech at an Associated Press lunch in Manhattan. Using a prompting device that enabled him to read without seeming to (see diagram, next page), the President eloquently replied to Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who recently insisted that U.S. policies toward Communism in general and Castro Communism in particular were based on "myths."

Said President Johnson: "Communists, using force and intrigue, seek to bring about a Communist-dominated world. Our convictions, our interests, and our life as a nation demand that we resolutely oppose with all of our might that effort to dominate the world. This, and this alone, is the cause of the cold war between us."

Turning to Cuba, Johnson said: "The use of Cuba as a base for subversion and terror is an obstacle to our hopes for the Western Hemisphere. Our first task must be, as it has been, to isolate Cuba from the inter-American system, to frustrate its efforts to destroy free governments, and to expose the weakness of Communism so that all can see."

But the President had more than declarations of principle to offer. The U.S. and Russia, he said, were both cutting back on the production of nuclear-arms materials. "Simultaneously with my announcement now," said Johnson, "Chairman Khrushchev is releasing a statement in Moscow." Khrushchev did, promising that the Soviets would stop construction of two new atomic reactors for plutonium production. In turn, the U.S. is cutting plutonium production by 20% and enriched uranium production by 40%. But President Johnson warned: "This is not disarmament. This is not a declaration of peace."

In fact, the U.S. decided months ago to proceed unilaterally on a plan for mothballing but not dismantling four plutonium reactors, all about ten years old. Still, by the end of this year, the Atomic Energy Commission will activate a new production reactor at Hanford Works, Wash., able to turn out one ton of plutonium (which costs $15,000 per lb.) a year--about as much as three of the older reactors could produce together.

"I Pitied Them." The President was in New York again two days later, this time flying through mist and fog to help open the World's Fair (see MODERN LIVING). His security men, expecting massive and bitter civil rights demonstrations, had 2,000 New York policemen and 3,000 Pinkerton guards on hand for extra protection. At the Singer Bowl stadium on the fairgrounds, Johnson sloshed through inch-deep puddles of water, made a short speech to a bedraggled crowd of 10,000, then rode to the U.S. pavilion for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. There, the trouble began.

About 25 seedy, sleazy Congress of Racial Equality demonstrators, some of them appearing to be white beatniks, crowded in near the speakers' platform. When the introductions began, they shouted "Freedom Now" and "Jim Crow Must Go." Police moved in to shove them back, knocked several down. Others dropped limp to the ground and officers dragged them away. As the President spoke, the chant continued. His message was well suited to the unseemly scene.

Said the President: "We do not try to mask our national problems, whatever they may be, under a cloak of secrecy. We do not try to cover up our failures. We freely admit them and bend our energies and toil to meet them. I know of no other great power in the history of the world which so freely admitted its faults and felt it had such a moral duty to correct."

The CORE people continued to yell, and Secret Servicemen stirred uneasily. Johnson cut the ribbon, then stood straight and unsmiling while a Marine band played the national anthem. Secret Service Chief James Rowley removed his hat--but he held it with his left hand and kept his right ominously in his coat pocket. Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman was so unnerved by the disturbance that he forgot to take off his hat until the final few bars of the anthem were played. "This is certainly disgraceful," muttered Harriman. Later, when the President was asked what his reaction was to the noisy demonstrators, he said quietly: "Frankly, one of compassion. I pitied them. They served no good purpose."

"Proud of You Fellows." No sooner had Johnson returned to the White House than an issue of national urgency came before him. He was informed that railway management and labor negotiators were nearing a settlement in their longstanding dispute. For days the President had overseen the efforts of the negotiators, who had set up shop in the Executive Office Building next door to the White House. Johnson used a number of persuasive techniques--including an appeal to the negotiators' patriotism that, to some, grew a little tiresome. Said a weary union vice president when a reporter asked him what had happened during a White House session with Johnson: "Lyndon has a flag in the corner of his office. He picked it up and ran around the room waving it."

At no time did the President make any threats about what he would do if the negotiations failed. He shrewdly left that up to the negotiators' imagination, and the strategy worked. The unions were afraid that Johnson would ask Congress for a compulsory arbitration act, as Kennedy did last summer. The railroads feared seizure, for one thing. They badly want a bill pending in the House to improve their competitive position in hauling coal and grain, and Johnson's support could improve the measure's prospects. Finally, the railroads have pressing tax problems, including the Internal Revenue Service's refusal to allow some $25 million in depreciation credits for tunnels and grading along tracks. J. E. ("Doc") Wolfe, the railroads' chief negotiator, finally got a promise from Johnson that he would arrange a future meeting between railroad management and Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon to look into the "justice" of depreciation tax easements.

The settlement in the rail dispute was brought about by the two expert mediators appointed by the President: George W. Taylor of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, and Theodore Kheel, a Manhattan attorney who successfully mediated New York's newspaper and schoolteacher strikes last year. A few hours after they presented their final proposal (see box), Roy Davidson, head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, rose and said: "On behalf of all the organizations, I wish to say that while there are parts of your proposal that are not to our liking, we unanimously accept it." Now it was up to management, and Doc Wolfe summoned to Washington the presidents of nine railroads, who make up his advisory board.

They met for two hours, disagreed on the terms, and Wolfe phoned Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz to join them in conference. Wirtz called the President, just back from the fair, and Johnson asked that the railroad presidents come to the White House. He met them in the yellow-walled family living room upstairs, told them in his best soft-sell technique: "If you decide not to accept this proposal, I'll consider you responsible persons who had reasons for not doing it. But, I hope you'll find a way to take it."

Johnson and the railroad executives discussed at length the outstanding issues, then the Illinois Central's Wayne Johnston said quietly: "Mr. President, on behalf of the Illinois Central Railroad, I accept the proposal." Walter Tuohy, president of the Chesapeake and Ohio, began to add his assent, but Doc Wolfe interrupted. "Mr. President," he said in a hoarse voice, "on behalf of the carriers, I accept the proposal." The railroad labor dispute was over --after an angry disagreement that over the years went to three presidential fact-finding boards, the Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, and countless times to the brink of a crippling national strike. Johnson called both labor and management into the Cabinet Room, said warmly: "I'm very proud of you fellows. You go home and brag to your wives a little bit. You have something to be proud of."

Little Cathy. Johnson himself was elated, and he meant to share his joy with the nation. It was almost 6:20 p.m., and he decided he wanted to go on national television--right now. He all but ran out of the White House, jumped into a limousine that shot out of the driveway so fast that it sped right past its waiting escort of four motorcycle cops. The policemen caught up, led a wild 50-m.p.h. ride to the Columbia Broadcasting System studios four miles away. During the trip one befuddled officer shouted to another, "Where are we going?"

Within nine minutes the President and his party were at the studio, where bedlam ruled as technicians raced about to set up cameras, microphones and a room for the broadcast. CBS had 20 minutes' notice from the White House, and no one was even certain what the President had to say. Watching the confusion, Johnson quipped to Willard Wirtz: "I guess we got these guys a little upset." At 6:45 p.m. the President went on the air.

Characteristically, he introduced a homely personal touch--a letter from Cathy May Baker, 7, of Park Forest, Ill. She had written weeks before to tell the President that her grandmother wanted to take a train from New York to see Cathy's first Holy Communion, and would President Johnson "please keep the railroads running so that she can come to see me." Full of happy-ending sentiment, Lyndon looked into the cameras and said, "So Cathy's grandmother can now go to see her, and all my fellow Americans can be proud that the railroad management and the railroad brotherhoods came and labored and worked and reasoned together and, in the American way, found the answer."

As it turned out, Cathy's grandma had made the trip by train more than a week before, stayed three days and was already back in New York.

To the Battlefield. And so to bed? Not on anybody's tintype. For even as he was preparing to meet with the railway negotiators after his flight from the fair, Johnson had another idea. He recalled that he had an engagement to fly to Chicago the next afternoon to speak to Mayor Dick Daley, the Democratic boss, and his minions. Why not expand the tour? No sooner said than done.

Johnson called Aide Bill Moyers and instructed him: "Let's go. Let's take that poverty trip we've been talking about." By 5 p.m., while Johnson was upstairs dickering with the railroad presidents, Moyers' office was full of transportation experts, Secret Service agents and advance logistics men laying plans for a major presidential trip--less than 48 hours away--into the depressed-area battlefields of Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. The word went out: Let the kids out of school, let all good unionists get ready to gather, let the placard painters go to work.

Landing at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport the next afternoon, Johnson found Dick Daley waiting for him, along with Illinois' Governor Otto Kerner, Democratic National Committeeman Jake Arvey, dozens of Democratic precinct workers -- and little Cathy Baker. Daley and his boys were not about to let some kid beat them to the President. When Johnson stepped down from the plane, Daley's Democrats rumbled past Cathy, thundered eagerly up to offer Johnson their plump palms. The President shook hands with most of them, finally scooped up Cathy, collected a kiss for preventing the railroad strike. Then he went off to downtown Chicago, where Daley had arranged to deliver 6,000 paying guests to a $100-a-plate party dinner. After dinner there were fireworks outside, complete with displays of a Texas hat, an American flag, the initials "L.B.J." in orange flames, and exploding rockets that scared the daylights out of the Secret Service men.

The President got to bed at 12:45 that night, was up at 5:30 Friday morning for a briefing from Aide Moyers, who had arrived from Washington in the early morning hours, bringing with him the detailed plans for the poverty trip, plus a supply of fresh speeches for the President.

At 9 a.m., a helicopter carrying Lyndon and Lady Bird dropped down outside a South Bend retraining school for unemployed workers. Thousands of children swarmed over the field, crushed in on the Johnsons. Secret Service men beckoned frantically for police reinforcements. Lyndon was stern, admonishing his admirers: "I'm not going to shake hands with you unless you behave yourselves." Several injured children were rushed away in ambulances.

It took the Johnsons 15 minutes to move 150 yards across the field to the school. Inside he talked to the "students"--most of them men who had been jobless since December, when the South Bend Studebaker plant closed, and who were now learning new skills in federally financed classes. Said the President to one man: "We are thinking about the day when we'll have no more unemployment. I'm mighty proud of you. Tell your children that their President sends his best regards."

In the same school were classes for retarded and otherwise disabled children. The Johnsons entered a room where the kids were singing Deep in the Heart of Texas. When they finished, the pianist, a ten-year-old blind boy, immediately began to play another number. "Harry," said his teacher, "you had better wait." But the President thought differently, said, "No, I want to hear him." Harry promptly pounded out Walk Right In.

Who Wants Whose Job? Two and a half hours later, Lyndon and Lady Bird arrived in Pittsburgh, headed for the national convention of the League of Women Voters. The ladies howled with laughter when he introduced Lady Bird as "my Secretary of War"; they exploded in giggles when he gagged it up about women in government. Said the President: "We must make more use of the talents of women in order to have a better government. But one lady--Senator Smith--did misunderstand my feeling. I was talking about an echelon below my job."

Then the presidential motorcade headed across town. More than 150,000 people had lined up along the route. Johnson all but took flight in his exuberance. Again and again he ordered his car to stop so that he could climb out and shake hands. People surged into the street. The President's right hand began to bleed, but he kept on shaking. Once he snatched a bullhorn from a cop and bellowed to the delighted crowd, "The one good thing about America is that our ambitions are not too large! They boil down to food, shelter and clothing!"

The caravan inched along. Cops' motorcycles overheated. Lyndon leaped up on the Secret Service's open car. He pulled Lady Bird up with him and cried to the multitude, "Meet the lady of my life!" Again, in front of Holy Angels parish school, he grabbed a bullhorn and, paraphrasing John Kennedy, he shouted to a cluster of kids: "Ask not what we can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

It took 45 minutes to travel 14 blocks to the hall of the United Steelworkers Local 1272. Inside, 300 union members waited. But first Johnson insisted on paying his respects to management. He telephoned Leslie Worthington, president of U.S. Steel, then tried unsuccessfully to reach Roger Blough, U.S. Steel's board chairman. After that he unloosed a spellbinding performance for the steelworkers. Thumping the lectern and waving his arms, he roared his antipoverty theme into the microphone: "I'm here to fight an enemy. I'm here to start that fight and keep up that fight until that enemy is destroyed--and that enemy is unemployment. And his ally is poverty."

When the President's DC-6 left Pittsburgh for Huntington, W. Va., he was more than an hour behind schedule. He ate a hamburger (without onions) in flight, then hurried to waiting helicopters in Huntington for the hop to Inez, Ky. (pop. 600), and Paintsville, Ky. (pop. 4,500). In that area, the unemployment rate is a crippling 37% of the working force.

"Don't Forget Now." In Inez, Lyndon and Lady Bird visited the three-room shack of Tom Fletcher, 38, his wife and eight children. The President squatted on some lumber littering the porch, learned that Fletcher had been out of work for most of two years, that he had earned just $400 last year, that his two oldest children, now 17 and 18, had left school after the fourth grade.

When he left, the President yelled back, "Don't forget now! I want you to keep those kids in school!" Lady Bird waved and called, " 'Bye, chillun."

In Paintsville, the Johnsons dropped in on a vocational school class in beauty culture, and the President quipped, "If you get an expert, send him up to the White House. I've got about six women up there who need their hair done."* He delivered two more speeches in Paintsville--bringing the day's total to well over a dozen. From the steps of the county courthouse, Johnson, who was born in a little frame farm house, cried: "I know something about poverty. I've worked with my hands. I've done everything from shining shoes to working on the roads for a dollar a day."

In Huntington he met for an hour and a half with the Governors of seven Appalachian states--West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia--all Democrats. He got back to Washington at 10:30 p.m., after one of the most extraordinary days ever spent by a U.S. President. But even then he didn't stop. That night he worked on the draft of a legislative message to Congress, asking for a sweeping $1 billion aid program for the beleaguered nine-state Appalachian area.

Not Quite Above Politics. As is customary with all Presidents on such excursions, Johnson insisted that his trip was "nonpolitical." What he would have said had he really been playing politics beggars the imagination. In Chicago he noted that a newspaper had said he was entering "Goldwater country" in the Midwest. Said the President: "This is Democratic country. It is Democratic tonight, and it's going to be Democratic country next November." In Washington a reporter asked if he would mind having Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who has in the past voted Republican, as his vice-presidential running mate. Johnson said: "I've never been a man who believed in guilt by association. But I think Mr. McNamara is a very able and very imaginative and a very great American."

In Pittsburgh he struck out at Dick Nixon, who returned two weeks ago from a three-week trip to the Far East for the Pepsi-Cola Co. Said Johnson: "I am having a little trouble finding out exactly who to talk to in the Republican Party. One of my friends that drinks Pepsi-Cola went out to Viet Nam and said we ought to be having a little more war." Earlier, when asked what he thought of Nixon's idea that the U.S. should back an invasion of Communist North Viet Nam, the President retorted: "I assume he spent a good deal of his time out there looking after Pepsi-Cola's interest. I don't know how much real information he got."

Offer to Others. To correct such shortages of information for Nixon--and any other presidential aspirants--Johnson announced that the State Department, Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had been ordered to give full foreign-policy information that would be "helpful."

On the seventh day, the President still wouldn't rest. Saturday morning he was up early--chipper as a chickadee. His appointments schedule was officially clean, but suddenly it got all cluttered up. California's Governor Pat Brown dropped in, wound up meeting J. Frank Dobie, professional Texas tale spinner and a Johnson house guest. Then U.A.W. President Walter Reuther stopped by. And soon Harry Truman walked up the driveway, trailed by a small army of reporters.

Flanked by Truman and Dobie, Johnson summoned 80 reporters into his office for another press conference that ranged from Laos ("We are still disturbed about the situation") to airplanes ("I remain convinced that it will be possible to develop an American supersonic transport which will be economic to operate"). When a newsman asked the President if he was anxious about his safety when he plunged unprotected into street crowds, Johnson said: "I am exercising all the precautions that prudent men, responsible for my safety, recommend. Of course, if I stayed in this room all the time, and it was guarded around by a section of guards, there would be less danger than there is if you go out and address a public meeting. But the President is still going to speak to the people of this country and, necessarily, is going to associate with them."

Far into Saturday night, still full of vigor, the President sat as guest of honor at the 79th annual Gridiron Dinner, guffawed at a satirical show put on by Washington newsmen. In one song they spoofed his poverty war to the tune of Tammany:

Poverty, poverty

It's no good for you and me,

But it's fine politically.

Poverty, poverty.

Find it, feed it.

How we need it--poverty.

The Record. No man, not even Lyndon Johnson, can maintain such a pace indefinitely. But the President's doctors, even while recalling that he suffered a heart attack in 1955, profess themselves to be unworried, say that it is probably better to permit such a man to release his boundless energies than to try to bottle them up.

Although his country-boy demeanor is in sharp contrast to the stylish brilliance of John Kennedy, Johnson has managed to gain the loyalty of the old Kennedy Cabinet, the trust of his top Administration aides and--something Kennedy never really had--the confidence of key men in Congress. Already Johnson's persuasive powers have brought legislative results: an earlier tax cut, a stopgap farm bill, two education bills, a reduced budget. And almost certainly a civil rights bill will be passed this year.

Although many pundits feared that Johnson's greatest weakness would be in foreign affairs, he has dealt competently with crises in Panama, Cyprus and Viet Nam. He fielded a coup in Brazil with certainty, dealt evenhandedly with such sticky people and places as Charles de Gaulle, Nikita Khrushchev, Berlin and Communist China.

He has gained the confidence of businessmen and labor leaders, proudly and often recites statistics to show a national economic upswing. At one of last week's press conferences he said: "I don't know that any of my tactics are responsible for what the economy is doing. I am very happy that United States corporations paid 10% more cash dividends in the first quarter this year than they did a year earlier. I am very happy that wage earners are getting $50 billion more now than they were three years ago. I am very pleased that corporation profits are up 50%. I am very grateful that unemployment is down from 5.8% to 5.4%."

Thoughts in Bed. The time may come when it will be better, both for him and the nation, to sit down and ponder a few problems rather than rush all over talking about them. But until that time does come, Lyndon Johnson is riding a crest, both as the President of the U.S. and as a politician seeking reelection. "Every night when I go to bed," he said recently, "I ask myself: 'What did we do today that we can point to for generations to come, to say that we laid the foundation for a better and more peaceful and more prosperous world?' "

At week's end, Lyndon Johnson stopped moving for a moment to give a TIME reporter his own rationale of the presidency--and an insight into the drive and dedication that carry him on and on and on. "You always have to bear in mind," he said, "that people are the purpose and object of this endeavor, from the biggest corporation president down to the poorest sharecropper. They have a babylike faith in me. It is just like the faith that you have in that pilot that's flying your airplane.

"I want to be worthy of that faith."

*One of the White House women, Daughter Lynda Bird Johnson, 20, announced last week that she had decided to break off her ten-month engagement to Navy Lieut. (j.g.) Bernard Rosenbach.

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