The Presidency: Another One of Those Weeks

What with wooing and wowing businessmen, preaching to preachers, ringing in Oscar Wilde as a press critic, stamping on poverty, playing proud papa to a queen, and pulling his dogs' ears, Lyndon Johnson had another wingding week.

The only sore spot came in the Rose Garden. The President gave the White House beagles, Him and Her, some candy-coated vitamin pills, then lifted the dogs up onto their haunches by pulling their ears and noted their yapping with apparent pleasure. "It's good for them," he said. "It does them good to let them bark." Assembled in the garden was a 13-man task force organized to promote increased foreign investment in the U.S. Neither they nor the President thought much about the incident.

But dog lovers howled in disagreement, flooded the White House with angry telegrams, letters and phone calls. In New York, an official of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said knowledgeably, "If somebody picked you up by the ears, you'd yelp too." In London, the chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports snapped, "This is a most extraordinary way to treat a dog." In Charleston, W. Va., a dog catcher said to a reporter, "The President did that? You're kidding. If he were in Charleston, I'd run him in." But beagle experts came to Johnson's rescue, said that it was indeed common practice in hunt country to tug the dogs' ears to be sure they are in good voice.

Wish for the Whatnots. The President was at his crowd-pleasing best when he spoke to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington's Constitution Hall. He loosed a flock of his favorite yarns (see box), and got a warm reception even while needling the businessmen: "All of you feel sorry for yourselves now—all of you have a martyr complex, and all of you think you are mistreated." Ticking off his Administration's economic accomplishments, he cried: "I came here this morning because I want you to be a part of this Administration, of this Government, whether you are Democrats, Republicans or whatnots."

Once warmed up, the President put on a display of oratorical gestures that would have made William Jennings Bryan look like a cigar-store Indian. His arms worked like pistons; he pointed up, down and into the audience; he rocked his body back and forth—once leaning so far forward between the microphones that the public-address system lost his voice. He spoke of patriotism, looked around for Old Glory, couldn't locate it, and went on in pantomime, holding high and waving an imaginary flag standard. Repeatedly, he used a sort of breast-stroke-like gesture that has come to be known to newsmen as "parting the waters."

The Poverty Pitch. Applying profit-and-loss logic along with his hand-and flag-waving, Johnson implored the businessmen to join his war on poverty: "The poverty of other people is already a mounting burden. How much? You are now paying $4 billion a year for public assistance. You are now paying $8 billion a year for police and health and fire departments. The costs are high, and they are going higher and higher. Unless you attack the causes of poverty itself, you are going to be shoveling it out to the tax eaters instead of producing and training taxpayers."