Nation: THE LAST MESSAGE-AND ADIEU

Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.

IT was not Lyndon Johnson who spoke those self-justifying words, but Ulysses S. Grant in his farewell annual message on the State of the Union in 1876. The Grant Administration was pockmarked with scandal and ineptitude, and Grant's standing among scholars of the presidency is no higher now than it was among the people then. Last week Johnson, the 36th President of the U.S., took his own leave of a nation disenchanted with a far-off war and deeply perturbed by its myriad problems at home. His apologia was not abject like Grant's, but his peroration contained a latter-day echo of it. "I hope it may be said a hundred years from now," Johnson told the Congress, "that by working together we helped to make our country more just. That's what I hope. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried."

The outgoing President chose to deliver his final State of the Union message in person; the last President to do so was John Adams in 1800. Lyndon Johnson had a special reason for his decision, which he confessed was "just pure sentimental." He is a child of the Congress, and he was at home again for the last time as President. "Most all of my life as a public official has been spent here in this building," he said. "For 38 years, since I worked in that gallery as a doorkeeper in the House of Representatives, I have known these halls and I have known most of the men pretty well who walked them." The Congress, always generous to its own, responded warmly.

Unfinished Business. Johnson won a 31-minute standing ovation when he strode into the House chamber behind Doorkeeper William ("Fishbait") Miller and stood behind the lectern, nodding and smiling to acknowledge the applause. Then, pleading yet proud, he recited some of his Administration's achievements at home: Medicare, three far-reaching civil rights laws on housing and voting, job programs that have trained 5,000,000, the lowest unemployment in nearly 20 years (3.3%), more than 1,500,000 college students on federal scholarships, Project Head Start for preschool children, support for pupils below college level.

There was also plenty of unfinished business, which Johnson urged the Congress to complete: a draft system based on selection by lot, a licensing and registration law for firearms, and the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which has been pending in the Senate since July.