De Gaulle on L.B.J.

In a new biography to be published in France next month and in the U.S. in the fall, Charles de Gaulle, quoted in an unguarded moment, delivers his private opinion of Lyndon Johnson. The book, Le General, was written by Pierre Galante, an editor of Paris-Match (and the husband of Olivia de Havilland), who extensively interviewed De Gaulle's relatives and government acquaintances. De Gaulle on Johnson:

"Johnson, he's a cowboy, and that's saying everything. If he had been born in Europe, he wouldn't have stayed but gone to Africa to hunt water buffaloes or to America to search for gold. But born in the land of the ranch and the Colt, he shot his way up to sheriff. He's a legionnaire, a regular army non-com who earns his stripes, one after the other. He makes me think of Bernadotte [the French marshal who became King Charles XIV of Sweden], a sergeant who's been crowned. An efficient man without any style. I rather like Johnson. He doesn't even take the trouble to pretend he's thinking. Roosevelt and Kennedy were masks over the real face of America. Johnson is the very portrait of America. He reveals the country to us as it is, rough and raw. If he didn't exist, we'd have to invent him."

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