Mover of Men

(See Cover)

They don't all love him. An Asheville, N.C., gift-shop owner calls him "a con man with honey in his mouth." A Texas doctor denounces him as "a crook and a liar." A Wisconsin dairy farmer criticizes him for being "too fatherly."

They are awed by his domestic achievements. An Odessa, Texas, housewife says, "What he's done in Congress is miraculous." A Cedar Rapids, Iowa, advertising man says, "I don't care if he does have to tickle some Congressman's toes to get it done--he's quite a man." A Phoenix, Ariz., piano teacher says, "He's got things done that people have needed for years and years."

Most important of all to him and to his nation, a marked majority of his countrymen support his Viet Nam policies. Says a Roanoke, Va., hardware salesman: "It's ticklish and explosive, and he's handling it smart." An Indianapolis school principal says, "He's right in Viet Nam; the strongest nation must act like the strongest." Says a La Mirada, Calif., housewife, "That war's been forced on us, but he's been right."

In Motion. Right or wrong, Lyndon Baines Johnson remains a man in motion. Last week, in the midst of his historic, decision-making sessions on Viet Nam, the President appointed a new Supreme Court Justice, a new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and a new director of the Voice of America. He signed a bill requiring warning labels on cigarette packages, met with a delegation from the A.M.A., discussed with former World Bank President Eugene Black the U.S.'s development program in Southeast Asia, cracked jokes about how he recently outbowled Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, had coffee with a group of newswomen, gave two background briefings to White House reporters, and warmly greeted an explorer scout who had bicycled 2,800 miles from Idaho to shake the presidential hand. Then he flew off to Harry Truman's library in Independence, Mo., to sign the medicare bill, and followed that with a week-end visit to his ranch in Texas.

He is totally preoccupied with the war--and with his pursuit of peace. He sits in his office, fists clenched in front of him to illustrate his aims to aides. "I told McNamara that he's my righthand punch," he says. "I told him to take the power of this country and with it keep our word and our honor and protect the lives of our boys to the maximum extent possible. I told Rusk and Goldberg that they're my lefthand punch, and to try to get us out of the war."

In the air strikes against North Viet Nam, the President insists on the final word on targets, tonnage and timing. He frets over details, asking for information about a specific Viet Cong stronghold and insisting that he be informed of every U.S. troop movement. He sleeps fitfully at night when he knows that U.S. pilots are on their way against the enemy. He often arises in the small hours of the morning to check the White House situation room for cables about rescue operations and about troop casualty lists from Saigon. He stalks through the White House corridors, longingly paraphrasing to aides the World War II order that Franklin Roosevelt gave to General Eisenhower: "Seek out the German army and destroy it." He seems to be saying: If only Viet Nam were that simple.

Five Possibilities. In the series of meetings that preceded his press-conference speech last week, the President presided with monumental patience and a calmness that bordered on the grim. With his long right arm, he would wave at a colleague and ask questions. How do Vietnamese villagers feel? What do they say? You say that our bombings are effective? What do you mean? What are the figures? Let's see them. You say that the South Vietnamese army is "fine"? How do we know? How is their morale? How many deserted last month? How many enlisted?

As the answers came, the President sat with his chin cupped in hand, giving his undivided attention. The discussions ranged over five major U.S. policy possibilities. An all-out war, including the use of nuclear weapons, was discarded immediately, as was a U.S. withdrawal. To the President, the first was too dangerous, the second unthinkable. Letting things go on pretty much as they are, in the vague hope of achieving a stalemate, without substantially increasing the U.S. commitment was offered as a third possibility. But General William Westmoreland, the U.S. field commander, had urgently requested more men, and to turn him down, as the President said, would be like "hearing the call from the Alamo for help and answering that we're not coming."

A headline-making call to arms that would include activating reserve units, along with a dramatic presidential presentation to a joint session of Congress, was the fourth possibility. For several days this approach (dubbed by White House aides the "Fire in the Sky" plan) was the one favored by the President and most of his advisers. But the President had misgivings. He feared that such action might cause the Soviet Union to misunderstand the limited nature of the U.S. aims in Viet Nam. "I think more wars are started through conveying wrong intentions than any other way," he said. Time and again, he expressed his doubts. "I don't want a third world war," he said. "I want to ask more questions. I want more discussion and debate." He asked more questions, and he got more discussion and debate, and he made up his mind. "I've got a little weak spot in my stomach," he said. "The answer is no."

The policy finally settled on was the less dramatic announcement of an in crease in U.S. troop commitments from the regular armed forces, accompanied by an increase in the draft, but without immediate recourse to the reserves.

Even as he decided against the dramatic move, the necessity of firm action kept forcing itself upon the President. At a meeting of the National Security Council he discussed the fact that a U.S. F-4C jet had been shot down by a Soviet-designed SAM-2 missile west of Hanoi. After two hours of talk about what the U.S. reaction should be, the President turned to General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "How long will it take for us to knock out the SAM bases after I give the order?" Replied Wheeler: "About six or seven hours."

The President gazed around the room. "Is there any other comment?" he asked. No one spoke, and Johnson swung around in his chair to Defense Secretary McNamara. "O.K." he said. "Take 'em out." U.S. jet bombers flew into North Viet Nam, smashed one of the missile sites and damaged another.

For Fewer Theatrics. Seeking a consensus of support for his decisions, the President summoned congressional leaders of both parties to the White House. "I didn't call you down here as Republicans or Democrats," he said. "Those aren't Republican or Democratic boys over there fighting. Those are American boys, and this is an American war."

He explained his plans, then turned to Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen and asked his opinion. "I remember World War I," said Dirksen, "and how Teddy Roosevelt wanted to raise a brigade and go to Europe to fight. President Woodrow Wilson stopped that with one sentence: The business at hand is undramatic.' " Replied Johnson: "That's exactly the way I feel, Everett. The fewer theatrics the better."

Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield pulled out a three-page statement reiterating his doubts about the course of U.S. participation in Viet Nam. But when he had finished reading it, he told Johnson: "I want you to know, Mr. President, that when you make your decision I am going to support it as majority leader. I'm going to support it as a Senator from Montana. I'm going to support it wherever I go and in whatever I say."

The President also sent Air Force One to the Governors' Conference in Minneapolis to bring 49 state executives (Connecticut's John Dempsey was in Ireland) to Washington for an off-the-record briefing. The Governors had passed a resolution approving Johnson's position. Only Republican Mark Hatfield of Oregon and George Romney of Michigan had voted no. Once Lyndon finished with them, only Hatfield remained skeptical. The others all came out talking about their complete confidence in the President's policies.

Frustrated Dreams. One way or another, Viet Nam was devouring the great majority of Johnson's hours. His naps, his swims, even some meals were forgotten in the demands of war. This is bitterly frustrating to Johnson, for he is acutely aware that the battle in Southeast Asia overshadows the domestic record of which he is so proud.

Few Presidents have dreamed as big as Lyndon Johnson. Even during last week's speech about military might in Viet Nam, Johnson could not resist repeating his dream: "Now I am the President. And it is now my opportunity to help every child get an education, to help every Negro and every American citizen have an equal opportunity, to help every family get a decent home, and to help bring healing to the sick and dignity to the old ... That's what I've wanted all my life since I was a little boy."

What he had wanted as a boy, he was beginning to achieve. During one of the war-planning sessions with the Cabinet, he broke off to say: "This is the most productive and most historic legislative week in Washington this century." He ticked off the congressional achievements, not only of the week but of the year (see box). No President has ever done better--not even Lyndon's hero, Franklin Roosevelt, during the fabled "hundred days." Indeed, many of his programs are actually fulfilling some of the New Deal ideas that were generated 30 years ago and have been gathering dust on the legislative shelf ever since.

When it comes to Great Society legislation Johnson is insatiable. So possessed is he by his vision of building a better life for every American that at times he seems ready to scoop up the country in his bare hands and mold it to suit him. In his domestic program, the present is already the past, and Johnson is looking forward to greater achievements in the future. No fewer than a dozen presidential task forces are laboring to come up with creative ideas and constructive approaches to such American problems as transportation, water pollution, education and urban affairs. No matter how much Lyndon gets, he keeps pushing for more.

No Puppet Parliament. Johnson is working with the largest congressional Democratic majority since 1937. Yet it is not a puppet parliament--at least in the sense that the Administration sometimes has to scramble for enough votes for key programs. The President himself is almost always in the forefront of the persuaders. He is intimately aware of the progress of each bill, is posted on how each committee stands. Frequently, after a White House ceremony, he will gently guide a Congressman out of the crowd, whisper in his ear: "Now I want you to get interested in this . . ." It is astounding how often that particular Congressman gets interested in ...

Sometimes his praise of Congressmen who have played a major role in getting a key bill through becomes a bit fulsome. He recently told Florida's second-term Congressman Sam Gibbons, House floor manager for a measure that more than doubled the cost of the President's anti-poverty program: "I've been reading the Congressional Record; I don't see how you did it. You did a magnificent job. Your kids will always be proud of you, and your President is mighty proud too."

Under Lyndon's leadership, the U.S. economy is prospering mightily. Unemployment has dropped. The stock market, after a 100-point drop, is recovering its upward drive. Thanks in part to the 1964 tax cut, consumer spending is up. And so are corporate profits.

Johnson has made broad advances on the civil rights front, which, while leaving much still to be solved, have brought some justice and a certain amount of peace to race relations.

What Do You Care? Not an easy man to work with, Johnson at first found it hard to recruit top men for government. But his recent appointments--Arthur Goldberg to the U.N., Thurgood Marshall as Solicitor General, John Gardner as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court--have not only been topnotch, but should make it possible for him to get almost anyone he wants in the future.

Unquestionably, Lyndon Johnson has made the presidency his own. And his record is enviable. Yet he is preoccupied, even obsessed, with the idea of being everyone's President. Thus he is irked and sometimes enraged when he is criticized in the press. After the New York Times began to lambaste him for his policies in Viet Nam, Johnson ordered Vice President Humphrey and U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam Maxwell Taylor to make a special trip to discuss the situation with John Oakes, editorial-page editor of the Times. But the Times continued its criticism. Johnson tried to get other top Administration men to talk to Oakes. Finally, one top official told him: "No, Mr. President, I won't go to the Times. I've got more important things to do right now, and besides, what in hell do you care what the Times says?"

Johnson cares what the Times or almost anyone else says. And he has come in for more than his share of criticism. After he sent bombers into North Viet Nam in retaliation for a Viet Cong attack on Pleiku in which eight Americans died and 100 were wounded, the Times shook its editorial finger: "A solution will not be found by exchanging harder and harder blows." When Johnson ordered regular air strikes against the North, the Times wrote: "The greatest weakness of this reprisal policy against North Viet Nam is that while it is true the Viet Cong gets orders, advice, some arms and men from North Viet Nam, the war is being fought in South Viet Nam."

Pundit Walter Lippmann wrote scornfully of the Johnson Administration's policy of increasing ground troops in Viet Nam: "The bitter truth is that we can search the globe and look in vain for true and active supporters of our policy." Oregon's Democratic Senator Wayne Morse claimed that Johnson's Viet Nam policy was "not a consensus of our people ... it is a consensus among the State Department, Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency and the White House staff." College professors and students cried out that the U.S. should abandon Viet Nam entirely, that Johnson was a warmonger. New York Herald Tribune Columnist Joseph Alsop complained about Lyndon's close personal scrutiny of the details of war: "The President is asking for very bad trouble by trying to act as both field marshal and top sergeant in a war halfway 'round the world, in a country he does not know, with combatants, tactics, terrain and an infinity of other local features which are wholly unfamiliar to him."

Johnson also took some lumps from the foreign press. France's Journal du Dimanche tried to explain him as if he were a zoo: "There is something of the hunting dog in the way of sniffing the air around him, of the bear in the way he greets his guests, of the fox in his manner of watching someone present a problem, of the bird of prey in the way he jumps on an adversary during a debate." And an editor in Nairobi said sourly: "President Johnson's phrases are too sweet. It's as if he has a machine producing perfect statements, but you don't see the man."

The less-than-casual reader in Hanoi or Peking or Moscow might understandably come to believe that President Johnson has no broad-based support for his policies. This could turn into a tragic misreading of U.S. opinion.

A Gallup survey in June, taken well after Johnson sent marines into the Dominican Republic and ordered the first big troop increases in Viet Nam, gave the President a whopping 70% approval. A Harris poll, released last month, indicated that 69% of the people consider Johnson's performance to range between "good" and "excellent." That was up 4% from a May sampling. The Harris poll also indicated that 65% specifically favored his Viet Nam policies--compared to 60% in March, before the real troop increases began. Also, last week, Pollster Sam Lubell reported that nearly 75% of the people he questioned about Viet Nam felt that "we have no other choice but to send in more troops."

To add flesh to the bare statistical bones, TIME correspondents last week interviewed several hundred American citizens of all economic levels, in every walk of life, and from many ethnic groups. The findings back up the pollsters--although the equivocations and gradations of judgment could never be squeezed into anyone's table of percentages.

For his policies in Viet Nam, Lyndon got good marks--if for varying reasons. Said Val G. Carithers, a Little Rock, Ark., research scientist: "Johnson is a capable politician who has the ability to use all the wiles of politics to his advantage. He wants everybody to like him and that just can't be done--but in a crisis such as Viet Nam, he is an excellent President to have calling the shots." Airline Pilot Jack McClure of Miami said: "He's doing what needs to be done out there. And I'll bet by 1968 we'll be out of a lot of this hot water which we got into because Eisenhower and Kennedy didn't make themselves clear." And Manhattan Delicatessen Waiter Louis Gertler said confidently: "He's a very good man. He's going to take care of Viet Nam. Give him time. He's holding on, ain't he?"

On the home front, labor leaders like Lyndon, and so, less predictably, do businessmen. W. Millard Barbee, a Durham, N.C.A.F.L.-C.I.O. official says: "I think he's doing one of the best jobs that ever was done by any man in the White House to improve economic conditions for all citizens, as well as for business." Says Charles Francis Adams, board chairman of Raytheon Manufacturing Co. of Waltham, Mass.: "I think Johnson has done well. The problems he has to face are almost insurmountable, but on the whole, I think he has made the right decisions."

Nevertheless, there is frequently a sharp split in opinion about Johnson the Foreign Policymaker and Johnson the Domestic Legislative Engineer. Many people respect him in one role, strongly disagree with him in the other. Says Negro Author Louis Lomax of Los Angeles: "How could he be so right on civil rights, medicare and so forth and so wrong on how to defeat Communism? He is a Norman Thomas at home and a Barry Goldwater abroad." Opposing this view is Dr. Joseph S. Dillard of Columbia, S.C.: "I think he's shown a strong hand in Asian affairs. I like this. But I'm completely against medicare, the anti-poverty program--or at least the way it's being handled--and all of the Government handouts that are in large part unnecessary."

Accomplishment v. Love. Few people love Johnson. Even fewer loathe him. "He's a professional politician," says San Francisco Attorney James Funsten. "People don't have strong personal feelings about him because he is a pro. You just don't love or hate pros just like you don't love or hate your dentist." Johnson generates few political passions. "In his case," says Chicago's John H. Johnson, publisher of Negro magazines, "we have to sacrifice love for accomplishment."

The people are generally unimpressed with Johnson's seemingly patronizing television style. Says Dr. John Knowles of Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital: "He has a tendency to wear his emotions on his shirtsleeves. He becomes a little maudlin. I don't like his soft, pious, ex cathedra tones." Johnson's reputation as a politician's politician has marred his image. "He is a power-oriented egotist who has to have his finger on everything," says Los Angeles Teacher Betty Bluth. "He does too much arm twisting." Murray Greenberg, a Manhattan newsdealer, says: "My personal opinion of L.B.J. is that he don't look true. He looks like he's two-faced." And St. Louis Attorney Eugene Walsh says, "He's big, capable, powerful and maybe there is too much political push--push, push, push, push. He's a bit of a bully."

Always, there are comparisons between Johnson and John Kennedy. By no means does Johnson always come out behind. Honolulu Housewife Jane Fisher says, "Johnson is a mover of men. Kennedy could inspire men, but he couldn't move them." Edward J.

Brunsden, a retired Flint, Mich., auto worker, says of Johnson: "He knows what's going on. He's not a glamour boy like Kennedy was, and I think he has more on the ball." And John Bowen, Durham, N.C., purchasing agent, says, "Listen, the common man identifies with Lyndon, and this is a big change from that smart jet-set image of the Kennedys."

All these are strong opinions expressed about a strong President, in true American style. Lyndon Johnson, who in private expresses equally brusque and pungent comments about friends as well as enemies, can hardly take exception to what the American people say about him. He has a laudable desire to be President of all the people. Yet for a practiced and consummate politician, at times he has a curious compulsion to appear nonpolitical. No matter what the rest of his tenure brings, no matter the final verdict of history, he has so far achieved part of his ambition: the people consider him to be a remarkably effective President.

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