The Presidency: Protecting the Flank

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they wouldn't believe Johnson if he told them that next month was November."

90% v. 90%. Johnson suffers, too, from a kind of generational gap that yawns wider every time Bobby Kennedy addresses a crowd. It is not simply a matter of age. As a kind of latter-day Andrew Jackson in an era that looks for a more patrician patina on its politicians, he strikes many as plain corny or simply crude. Last week, for example, while en route to Manila, the wife of an allied Prime Minister had just confided to her seat mate that she preferred bacon even to caviar when the President leaned over, speared one of her two rashers and devoured it. Then he ordered another portion —for himself.

Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak quote a White House aide as saying that "90% of what he does is right, and 90% of the way he does it is wrong." Johnson's pettiness and peevishness, his displays of deceit and conceit have been so frequently documented that what was once a nebulous attitude of indifference on the public's part has crystallized into active dislike.

As Johnson's problems with the economy, the war and civil rights have deepened, so has public mistrust of the man. "He is an egotistical, maniacal, triple-plated son of a bitch, that's what he is," growls a Coloradan in an irrational but not atypical reaction to the man. "Johnson said we could have both guns and butter," says a Los Angeles housewife. "But he didn't say how much the butter was going to cost." Yet on the issue that has inspired more nationwide and worldwide antagonism toward L.B.J. than any other—Viet Nam—a Congressional Quarterly survey shows 58.5% of the House and Senate behind the President. And the latest Harris poll reveals that overall public support of Johnson's prosecution of the war is running as high as 2 to 1.

No. 7. Against this curious background of support for his policies and distaste for his personality, the President went to Asia. He had two broad objectives in mind. One was to show Hanoi that, where Viet Nam was concerned, it had to cope not only with "this Dictator Johnson with the long nose," as the President himself put it, but with half a dozen Asian nations as well. The other was to help cultivate the fragile shoots of regional cooperation that are beginning to poke through Asia's stony political soil, in which enmity has always flourished far more readily than amity.

"This is not an American show," the President told the National Security Council on the eve of his departure. In Manila he went out of his way to avoid the limelight—even though he was clearly the main attraction for the mobs. "We are not even No. 2," he kept reminding aides during the seven-nation meeting on Viet Nam. "We are No. 7." In public appearances, he squeezed no arms, slapped no backs. During a picture-taking session before the Philippine House of Representatives, he carefully stood a couple of steps below his Asian colleagues so as not to tower over them.

A 20% Man. "He's a 20% man on this trip," said an aide. "He's going to listen 80%, talk the rest." When the conference opened, he did even better than that: he went the first eight hours without saying an official word. Only at the end of the day did Johnson finally do some talking.