Nation: Beyond November

• Share

President Johnson's optimism about the outcome of the election has been dampened only by the cliche warning: "A lot can happen before November."

In fact, a lot is happening. Some 260,000 General Motors workers are on strike. A national dockworkers' strike has been postponed because President Johnson invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. Inland Steel Corp. Chairman Joe Block, the man who broke away from other steelmakers to support John Kennedy during the steel hassle in 1962, was making noises about a price hike (see U.S. BUSINESS). In South Viet Nam, the political and military situation was such that by November there might not be any pieces left for the U.S. to pick up. Secretary of State Dean Rusk last week predicted that the Chinese Communists might explode their first nuclear device "in the near future," warned that within ten years the Chicoms would have the wherewithal to deliver an atomic assault on their enemies. And in New York City, the U.S. Government shamefacedly had to withdraw its case against two top-ranking Soviet spies and send them home scot free.

Bullhorns & Crushes. In a close presidential election, any one of these events might have turned into a decisive political issue. But in 1964, the election does not figure to be close, and it is hard to imagine a crisis of any size or scope that could ruin Johnson's prospects.

No one knows this better than Johnson, but he is taking no chances, and last week he was campaigning as though he actually feared defeat. He whirled through five New England states on a prop-stopping speaking trip, and the wild crowds nearly tore him apart. Everywhere he went, he halted his motorcade, made impromptu speeches through a hand-held bullhorn, bounded out of his car to press the outstretched hands of crushing mobs. At Providence, R.I., he embraced ex-Senator Theodore Francis Green, now 97, invited him to spend the night at the White House for the inauguration.

In Hartford, Conn., in Burlington, Vt., Manchester, N.H., and in Portland, Me., Lyndon exhorted the flailing, roaring mobs to join him in the "Great Society," and followed his speeches again with the bruising foray into the arms of well-wishers. In Baltimore, where he addressed the students and faculty at Johns Hopkins University, he got the same treatment, autographed a baseball and the plaster cast on a youth's broken hand, dandled a tot, made it a point to praise Johns Hopkins President Milton Eisenhower, Ike's brother, as a "distinguished" man who had provided the nation with "wise counsel through the years."

Johnson also was turning his thoughts beyond November. He let it be known that after Election Day, he hopes to go to Europe to confer with top leaders of the Western Alliance and with the NATO Council, which will meet in Paris in December. Moreover, after meeting with France's De Gaulle, West Germany's Erhard, and the British Prime Minister who will emerge after England's Oct. 15 elections, Johnson thinks that a get-together with Nikita Khrushchev might be profitable.

These plans go contrary to Lyndon's earlier statement that he would not leave the U.S. while the vice-presidency was still vacant, but he sees no reason why he should not travel to Europe between Election Day and the Jan. 20 inaugural, even though the question of succession would still be murky.