DEMOCRATS: A Man Who Takes His Time

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Texas stirred with the promise of the season. The roosters greeted the dawn with an ovation, the newborn calves staggered after their mothers into greening pastures. The clear, swift-flowing Pedernales River sparkled under a benign sun, jack rabbits scampered across the country roads, and the bluebonnets spread their rich, bright cloak over the low hills. By midmorning at the L.B.J. Ranch, the winter-paled body of a weary man was slung in a canvas hammock, as the soothing strains of a Strauss waltz were wafted from a hi-fi speaker in a nearby live oak tree. Overhead, at the top of a 60-ft. pole, three flags billowed in the breeze: the Stars and Stripes, the Lone Star of Texas, and a blue standard with five stars and the initials L.B.J., which informed the world that the proprietor was in residence.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, senior Senator from Texas, puissant majority leader of the U.S. Senate, and a leading Democratic aspirant for the U.S. presidency, was taking a well-deserved rest. He had safely escorted the second civil rights bill since Reconstruction (TIME, April 18) through 53 energy-sapping days of stormy debate, and the Senate—his Senate—was in recess for the Easter holidays. But Johnson yielded only his lanky body to the therapy of the sun; his restless mind was as busy as a hummingbird. From the sprawling old ranch house came the clatter of typewriter keys, as a pretty secretary tapped out a just-dictated letter; when Johnson called her through a handy squawk box, the secretary would return, her shorthand notebook and pencil at the ready. From time to time she handed Johnson a convenient extension telephone, with an urgent call from Washington or some other distant spot. Without a telephone at arm's reach, Senator Johnson is as wretched as a squirrel without a tree.

Steadfast Statesman. Above and beyond the clattering typewriters, the telephone calls and his other business-as-usual, there was one momentous personal problem running through Lyndon Johnson's calculating-machine brain. When he arrived in Texas, he told his closest friends and well-wishers that some time during his vacation he would make a final decision on the question of running for the presidency.

Most observers were under the impression that Johnson had made up his mind a year or more ago. He certainly acted like a candidate (a current Senate joke: "Have you heard that Lyndon is writing his bills on stone tablets?"). He hadn't done much campaigning outside of Texas, to be sure, but the first order of business, according to the Johnson master plan, was to stick to his Senate job, building and improving his legislative record and displaying the public image of Lyndon Johnson, the steadfast statesman, while other candidates battled through the primaries. Later, he would campaign on that record and that image—or so the experts said. Meanwhile, the L.B.J. outriders traveled all over the country, feeling out delegates, talking to political leaders, studying the political weather for him. Six months ago a big Johnson-for-President headquarters had been established in a twelve-room suite in Austin by Speaker Sam Rayburn; its 14 employees and volunteer workers (including Elliott Roosevelt Jr., 23) were busy handing out campaign literature and Johnson lapel buttons (a brass cowboy hat embossed with L.B.J.).