The Presidency: Back in the Ring

• Share

Throughout the congressional recess and his own convalescence, Lyndon Johnson remained serenely aloof from partisan politics. When he returned to the ring last week, the President showed that he had lost none of his old élan for upstaging the opposition. Waiting until only a few hours before the G.O.P.'s Ev Dirksen and Gerry Ford were to take to TV with their "little State of the Union" message, Johnson summoned the White House press to witness a series of top-of-the-bill turns deftly calculated to steal front-page space from the Republicans.

For his first act, Lyndon marched in with Sargent Shriver and Jack Hood Vaughn, his nominee to succeed Shriver as head of the Peace Corps (see following story). That ceremony was swiftly followed—all in the White House—by Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach's resume of Johnson-proposed constitutional amendments, Robert McNamara's rundown of defense expenditures, a discussion of tax revision by Treasury Secretary Fowler, and brief appearances by House Speaker McCormack, Senate Majority Leader Mansfield and Vice President Humphrey.

Electronic Mother. Next day, by way of capping the Republicans' TV message, Johnson had Press Secretary Bill Moyers relay the President's "grateful" reaction to Dirksen's support for his Viet Nam policy. As for Ford's criticism that the Great Society was being mismanaged, Moyers allowed blandly that Johnson was "very happy" over Ford's endorsement of "programs which the President has been pursuing."

After unanimous Senate confirmation of Robert C. Weaver as Secretary of the new Housing and Urban Devel opment agency, the President swore in his first Negro Cabinet member in a grandiose East Room ceremony illuminated for TV's benefit by 27 spotlights. Johnson used a huge new electronic lectern with hidden microphones and retractable prompter screens that newsmen dubbed "Mother." (One correspondent asked if it could cook Lyndon's breakfast.) When Weaver had been duly anointed, Johnson produced a surprise by announcing that Lincoln Gordon, 52, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil since 1961, would succeed Peace Corps Director Vaughn as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.

Cards 1 & 2. Johnson also had a batch of special messages and requests for Congress. His first asked for approval of U.S. participation in the new Asian Development Bank. Then he told the House Ways and Means Committee that Congress should pass the Administration's new revenue proposals by March 15, "in order that all our taxpayers will have adequate notice and we can thus secure full compliance." And—with only one pen—he signed the new congressional session's first bill, a measure granting him a week's delay in delivering his economic message.