On the Trail

THE PRESIDENCY

More than sludge and cities was on Lyndon Johnson's mind as he went campaigning last week. He covered five states in three days and, as he told 65,000 people in Buffalo's Niagara Square on his first stop, "before the leaves begin to turn brown, we'll be in many more, looking and listening, and even talking from time to time." Even talking? Johnson did little else, delivering eight full-dress speeches defending his record, exhorting Americans to support him in Viet Nam, promising ever greater rewards from the Great Society.

The tour, covering New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine and extending up to New Brunswick, took shape two weeks ago, when the President agreed to meet Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson on Campobello Island in the Bay of Fundy for a cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Park. Johnson saw a chance to pan some votes before meeting Pearson and, though his trip was solemnly billed as nonpolitical, his itinerary carried him through five congressional districts where freshman Democrats are threatened.

Firsthand Look. To lend the trip suitable nonpartisan trappings, the President corralled three Republican Congressmen to join his party of 100, picked up others along the way. In Buffalo, he also met New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and they both took a look at sewage-contaminated water. In Syracuse, the crowd of 100,000 in Columbus Square listened to Johnson's review of the cities' plight, but really stirred only when New York's Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Jacob K. Javits arrived. Bobby evoked shrieks, was still shaking hands as the President climbed back into his limousine. Johnson spent the night at the Nevele Country Club, a resort on the fringe of the Borscht Belt in the Catskills.

Whizzing through New England next day, the President touched on every issue that promises to figure heavily in the fall elections except inflation. At the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, where he picked up a Doctor of Civil Laws degree (his 32nd honorary degree), it was civil rights. Before the Navy League in Manchester, N.H., it was Viet Nam. The U.S. will stop bombing North Viet Nam, he said, if Hanoi quits sending troops south. But it is "the men in Hanoi," he added, "who hold the passkey to peace." At Battery Park in Burlington, Vt, with the crystal waters of Lake Champlain for a backdrop, his subject was conservation.

Conference at Campobello. Johnson finally called it a day after a speech in Lewiston, Me., then boarded the Northampton, a seaborne command post crammed with communications gear, in Portland for an overnight cruise. From the ship's deck, he was to helicopter to meet Pearson at Campobello, F.D.R.'s summer retreat. Johnson and Pearson planned to confer privately for an hour, touching on such topics as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Viet Nam, where Canada is one of three nations on the International Control Commission, then to lay the cornerstone for a reception center in front of the red house where F.D.R. summered.

For Lyndon Johnson, who has promised to stump in all 50 states before November, the dizzying trip was just the beginning of a long campaign trail. White House aides expect him to take off this week in the opposite direction, for Idaho and New Mexico.

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