The Presidency: When Patriotism & Politics Coincide

Lyndon Johnson had something for everybody—rich and poor, old and young, male and female, union leader and businessman, American and foreigner, Northerner and Southerner, student and sharecropper, cow milker and dog lover.

Republicans might suspect him of demagoguing around, but they couldn't really lay a finger on him. After all, he sought only for America what Americans seek for themselves—a strong nation and the good things of life. He knows what it is to be poor and he hates poverty. He also knows what it is to be wealthy, so he strives for prosperity. "I can't remember a time," says former Republican National Committee Chairman Leonard Hall, "when a President had prosperity and poverty going for him at the same time." But is it demagoguery to pick up a few votes while plugging for progress? And can Lyndon help it if his patriotic purpose just happens to coincide with his political plans?

A Bow to the Family. Again, the week was cyclonic. First, he set out to redeem himself in the eyes of dog fanciers, gently lifting one of his beagles by the ears and explaining to newsmen that it didn't hurt at all. Next, he went after the duffers' vote, replying to a reporter who asked him what his golf handicap was: "I don't have any handicap—I'm all handicap."

In blurred succession, he entertained 65 union leaders at a White House dinner, preached international tolerance to 800 foreign students ("The variety of human experience cannot be contained in a single law or a single system or a single belief"), urged Americans to back the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's fund drive ("We cannot rest in this country until we conquer it"), urged members of the Advertising Council to join him in his war on poverty ("This is a moral challenge that goes to the very roots of our civilization and asks if we are willing to make personal sacrifices for the public good").

Next came time for a bow to a revered institution: the American family. Lyndon ordered picnic tables set up in his backyard, piled them with cookies, stocked them with pitchers of pink punch, called for a press conference and in vited reporters to bring along the wife and kiddies. More than 1,000 turned up. The Marine Band played Merrily We Roll Along, Jingle Bells and America. The children drank the punch, crumbled the cookies, meditatively tore up tufts of the White House lawn and, with a certain amount of nudging from their mothers, laughed politely when Lyndon told them: "I want to prove to you that your fathers are really on the job—sometimes."

The President really said very little at the press conference, but such is his skill that he earned no fewer than five headlines on Page One of the next morning's New York Times. After the conference, he mingled with the mob, gulped down four cups of punch and perspired as though he enjoyed it.

The Pageant. But all this was only a beginning. In the middle of the week, he went on a whirlwind 2,500-mile, two-day, six-state anti-poverty pilgrimage through the Appalachian region. It was a frenzied pageant. Some of the scenes: