Nation: L.B.J.: HURTING GOOD

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The Lyndon Johnson Library at the University of Texas in Austin is already under construction, and when it is completed in early 1970, the former President will have yet another office, with a helipad on the roof. The library office is designed to look as much as possible like the Oval Office in the White House. When the library is finished, about 31 million pages of manuscripts, the most any President has accumulated, will be transferred from storage for cataloguing. Johnson plans to lecture at the university and visit other schools as well, but he will not have a regular course schedule. He confessed: "I didn't want to make any 8 o'clock classes."

Open Options. With his memoirs, lectures and public appearances, Johnson should be busy enough. But few think that he will be satisfied with the role of elder statesman. At 60, he is more than two years younger than Dwight Eisenhower was when he took the oath of office for the first time. Business is a possibility, though the role of hard-driving entrepreneur, according to friends, does not fit in with Johnson's image of an ex-President. L.B.J. has already turned down several offers to join the boards of corporations or foundations. In any case, he has a personal fortune estimated at $20 million, his landholdings total 15,000 acres (including six ranch houses and some Austin real estate), and TV station KTBC, a CBS affiliate which he owns a major share of, nets a profit of $100,000 to $200,000 a year. His other investments, notably in Texas banks, are secret, but probably equally impressive.

Politics will undoubtedly continue to dominate his life, even if he contents himself with the role of a behind-the-scenes power. Will Johnson try for elective office again? John Quincy Adams left the White House and became a Congressman, after all, and Andrew Johnson was elected Senator. No one can be certain, but as Johnson himself said just before leaving Washington: "I don't want to withdraw any of my options. I try always to keep them open." Some things, at least, had changed not at all.