DEMOCRATS: A Man Who Takes His Time

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In their combined 68 years in Congress, Johnson and his staunch old ally, Speaker Sam Rayburn, have racked up a thousand political debts. The lOUs are vividly charted on a large wall map of the U.S. in the Austin headquarters of Larry Jones, a former Texas assistant attorney general, who quit his job three months ago to prepare the Johnson-for-President campaign. The map is covered with red pins in every state and cranny of the nation—each one representing a politician or politicians who can be mustered to the Johnson colors when the trumpet blows.

Colleagues & Artifacts. Some Johnson admirers in the Senate are already working for their candidate without the benefit of a formal announcement of his availability. Bob Byrd was yodeling for Johnson and against Kennedy through his West Virginia mountains last week. "For two years I've been talking, Lyndon up out in my state," says Nevada's Alan Bible. "He'd be a honey of a President," glows Wyoming's Gale McGee. Washington's Warren Magnuson furloughed his able administrative assistant, Irvin Hoff, for a brief forward observer's mission through the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states to seek out the delegates and discover the arcane pockets of potential Johnson strength. Nor are the Johnson enthusiasts restricted to the Senate: two of his closest Washington advisers and firmest supporters are artifacts of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, Dean Acheson and Ben Cohen. "Of all those giant killers running for the presidency," says another Fair Dealer-Wheeler, "Lyndon is the only one who has killed a giant."

Invading New York last January, Johnson got a tender kiss from Anna Rosenberg, onetime Assistant Defense Secretary in the Truman Administration, and a compliment from a Roman Catholic priest: "Now there's a man I like." Philip Graham, president and publisher of the Washington Post, agrees. "There isn't a single reason why Lyndon Johnson should be President of the United States," he says, "except that he's the best man." Not the least of Johnson's admirers is his wife, Lady Bird, who recently finished a cram course in public speaking and is effectively demonstrating the results at a series of ladies' gatherings in Texas (most recently at a Dallas Kaffeeklatsch featuring the "L.B.J. uniform," a $27.80, three-piece, red-white-and-blue dress, topped off with a white sailor hat with Lyndon B. Johnson stitched around the band.