How to Rev Up While Resting

As Air Force One hummed Texas-ward at 31,000 ft., the President naturally fell to jawing with reporters about his health. "I feel like I had a baseball right here in my right side,"he said. This time, though, he was content merely to point to the most celebrated scar since Jenkins' Ear.* What's more, allowed Lyndon Johnson, he is unhappy with his strict diet, begun in August (few starches and fats, no liquor) aimed at trimming his weight down to 187 lbs. When he complains about it to Lady Bird, she retorts: "You can't run the country if you can't run yourself."

Warming to the subject of his health, Johnson confided that he had been taking tranquilizers ever since his heart attack ten years ago, but still doesn't sleep much. "I don't work like you do," he told the newsmen. "In 56 of my 57 years I probably haven't gone to sleep before 1 a.m., and I seldom sleep past daylight. If you had been wrestling with Viet Nam and Panama and all those other problems, then had surgery, you'd be weak too."

Churning Circles. The puckered caliche hills and sun-baked pastures of L.B.J. country proved to be a good presidential tonic. The day after he arrived, the President clapped on a rakish red tarn o' shanter (a gift from Daughter Lynda) and invited reporters to the nearby shores of Lake Lyndon B. Johnson. There he climbed into his 310-h.p. speedboat and drove it in wide, churning circles, occasionally revving the engine so high that the boat all but sat on its stern. Next day he entertained 150 members of the Texas Explorers Club, got into his white Lincoln convertible and exuberantly led a tour of the land around the L.B.J. Ranch. Every day he walked between two and four miles. When he was not on the move, the President lounged by the ranch swimming pool, thumbing through extracurricular books (Dean Acheson's memoirs, a biography of Sam Houston) or working on official business.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk spent a night at the ranch, discussed with the President a broad spectrum of foreign relations ranging from the situation in Indonesia to the upcoming visit of German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. There was no urgency in their discussions. For whatever his critics may say about Johnson's foreign policy, the President himself is convinced that his Administration's dealings with friends and foes alike have been even more fruitful than its relations with Congress, and that Rusk, furthermore, is the 20th century's most successful Secretary of State.

Peppery Pronunciamento. The President signed dozens of bills, notably the pork-barrel measure authorizing $1.9 billion for various river and harbor projects, and the $4.3 billion public works bill. After he signed the rivers-and-harbors bill, Johnson issued a peppery pronunciamento warning that he had absolutely no intention of implementing the act's provision that water-resources projects costing under $10 million be authorized by congressional public works committees—a short cut that would bypass the possibility of a presidential veto. Discussing this section, the President declared: "The people of this country did not elect me to this office to preside over its erosion. And I intend to turn over this office with all of its responsibilities and powers intact to the next man who sits in this chair."