The Presidency: On His Mind

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THE PRESIDENCY

Introducing Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to 108 U.S. Olympic medal winners at a White House luncheon, President Johnson described him as a onetime "star guard on the baseball team" at the University of Arizona. An aide later issued a correction, said the President had really meant football. Actually, Udall was a basketball guard, and a good one.

If the President seemed preoccupied, it was because he had weightier matters on his mind, as he demonstrated in a pair of major speeches last week.

At Georgetown University's 175th memorial convocation, Johnson dealt with the problems of NATO. "The Atlantic Alliance," he said, "is not in the midst of crisis, as some alarm-mongers would have you believe. But it is in the midst of change ... To change patterns of thought or the shape of institutions is never very easy. Today's discussion and debate, the flow of ideas and proposals, is proof of coming change and a spur to continuing action.

"We have a common interest in the defense of the West. For 20 years the atomic might of the United States has been the decisive guard of freedom. Ours remains the largest strength, and ours a most awesome obligation. But we realize the reasonable interest and concerns of other allies—those who have nuclear weapons of their own and those who do not. We seek ways to bind the Alliance even more strongly together by sharing the tasks of defense through collective action and meeting the honorable concerns of all."

In his second speech, to the Business Council, the President warned commercial bankers against raising their lending rates as a result of the Federal Reserve Board's recent increase in the discount rate.

Many a banker around the U.S. found cause for consternation in the President's outlook. They had been convinced throughout the campaign that Lyndon Johnson was a man who harbored a real sympathy for men of business and motives of profit. But what Johnson said took almost instant effect as one of the banks he had most immediately in mind reversed a lending rate hike (see U.S. BUSINESS).

Last week the President also:

> Had two small, wartlike growths removed from his right hand with an electric needle by a pair of Washington dermatologists in his White House bedroom. Press Secretary George Reedy said later that the growths were merely thickenings of the skin caused by overexposure to the sun and that there was "no suspicion of malignancy."

> Dug up a shovel of earth at groundbreaking ceremonies for Washington's $46 million John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Construction will get under way next summer.

> Spoke by White House telephone for commissioning ceremonies at Newport News, Va., for the Nuclear Submarine Sam Rayburn.