Lyndon's Low

THE PRESIDENCY

"If I got to believing all the things that had been written about me," Lyn don Johnson told an aide last week, "I would pack my suitcase and go home."

What is being written -- and said -- is that unless there is a decided upturn in his fortunes before November 1968, Johnson may have to pack that suit case. Between unrest over urban upheaval, the war and the need to raise taxes, the President's popularity has shriveled almost to the vanishing point.

One Gallup poll last week found that 53% of the electorate think the Republicans have a good chance of winning the presidency in 1968. Another Gallup report and the Louis Harris poll agreed that the percentage of Americans who approve of Johnson's conduct in office is down to 39%, the lowest figure any President has scored in the Gallup sampling since Harry Truman's 31% in 1952. For Johnson, the popularity tumble was rapid. After his June meeting at Glassboro with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, he enjoyed a 52% approval rating according to Gallup, 58% according to Harris.

The swift change indicates the fickle nature of popularity. The figures by themselves prove little 15 months before Election Day, but they are a symptom of Johnson's deep political troubles. The wars, Asian and urban, and such of their echoes as higher taxes, are not likely to disappear soon, and Congress shows little willingness to ease the Administration's difficulties. Top Democrats are openly perturbed. "I can't say things have been worse," says one National Committee official. Michigan's state party chairman, Zolton Ferency, predicts a Johnson defeat next year if Viet Nam and racial violence "are still with us and being badly handled by the President."

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