More Blondin, Less Lincoln

Presidents are usually safe in quoting Abe Lincoln, and few have made more use of Honest Abe than Lyndon Johnson. But after New York Daily News Columnist Ted Lewis got through investigating one of L.B.J.'s favorite Lincoln stories last week, Presidents will have to think twice before quoting the Great Emancipator.

For months, reports Lewis, the President had been defending his Viet Nam policies by repeating what Lincoln once said to a group of critics during the Civil War. Likening himself to a French acrobat named Blondin who was famed for crossing Niagara Falls on a tight rope, Lincoln asked: "Suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had to put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across Niagara. Would you shake the cable, or-keep shouting at him, 'Blondin, stand up a little straighter -- Blondin, stoop a little more -- lean a little more to the north -- lean a little more to the south'? No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue and keep your hands off until he was safe over."

That story suited L.B.J. fine, wrote Lewis. "It constituted an almost perfect pitch for a silence-is-golden plea while he continues his effort to win the Viet Nam war with present policies." But the story didn't suit Lewis, whose sleuthing disclosed that Blondin was an imperturbable craftsman. He was a child prodigy on the rope at six. By the time he tackled Niagara at 36, he was able to go across once on stilts, another time with both feet in a sack, once again with a man on his back. On one occasion he sat down on the rope and devoured an omelet.

"Clearly then," writes Lewis, "Blondin was not a man who would be upset by jeers from the bleachers. After all, he knew a damnsight more about the art of tightrope walking than anybody else in the world." If Blondin could calmly eat an omelet high above Niagara's roar, Lewis asked, "why should Johnson--the smartest political acrobat of the 1960s--allow himself to be upset by his Viet policy critics?"

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