Nation: THE RENUNCIATION

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While preparing the bombing-pause speech, he summoned Busby to the White House, again asked his advice about withdrawing. Most of the President's aides were urging him to mount a vigorous campaign against Kennedy and McCarthy. But Busby counseled: "I wish you could do what we talked about in January." Johnson asked him to draft a new statement to that effect. After a restless night, he called Busby in again on the day of the speech and urged him to draft yet another withdrawal statement, emphasizing the need for national unity. While he labored over the announcement in the Treaty Room of the White House, Johnson went to St. Dominic's Roman Catholic Church with Luci and her husband Pat Nugent, afterward stopped at Southwest Washington's Watergate Apartments, where Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his wife Muriel were packing for a trip to Mexico City to sign a Latin American nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Johnson showed Humphrey the two alternative endings to his scheduled speech, told him that he was seriously considering using the second one—the no-run announcement. "I can understand your reasoning," Humphrey told him,"but I wish you wouldn't do it."

In the Dark. Through the rest of the day, Johnson reviewed the decision with his family. Lynda had just returned from the West Coast, where she had seen her husband, Marine Captain Charles Robb, off to Viet Nam. Before he left, Robb had been told that his father-in-law might announce his withdrawal. He levied his little approval, as did Johnson's other son-in-law. Lynda had her doubts. So did Luci, who told friends later: "The saddest thing is that I will be 21 by November, and I won't be able to vote for my father."

Some Johnson aides were in the dark until the last moment. Two days before the speech, Campaign Strategist James Rowe submitted a memorandum advising the President that several Democratic leaders—and a TIME correspondent—had questioned whether he intended to run. At the same time, he advised Johnson that his latest state-by-state survey showed him easily winning renomination on the first ballot. Rowe, Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien and other campaign aides spent most of Sunday charting L.B.J.'s race, unaware of his impending announcement.

Not an Hour or a Day. Only in the closing minutes of his speech, when Johnson raised his hand to his forehead and started reading the words, "Of those to whom much is given, much is asked," was Lady Bird certain that he was going through with it.