The Presidency: Ezra’s Way

The White House was in near bedlam last week as staffers struggled against time to complete arrangements for the President’s Far Eastern swing. If for no other reason, it was an ideal time for Lyndon Johnson to hit the campaign trail, and so he did — with a bang. Displaying all the old evangelistic fervor of his 1964 campaign, the President made a fast-paced overnight foray into Maryland, New York and Delaware, at week’s end prepared for a brief, last-minute appearance in Pennsylvania.

Through it all, he was fiercely partisan, unashamedly folksy — and, for a change, refreshingly natural.

Making a supposedly “nonpolitical” speech before a crowd of 20,000 at Social Security headquarters near Baltimore, the President outlined a cannily timed proposal for across-the-board boosts of “at least 10%” for all 22 million Social Security beneficiaries. Sharing a platform with local party bigwigs (notably absent: Open-Housing Foe George P. Mahoney, Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee), the President chose a curious way to scold the Republicans — by pinning on them the Democratic Party symbol. “Any donkey can kick down a barn,” he said, “but it takes a skilled carpenter to build one. There’s a big donkey population in this country around this time of year.”

“Afraid, Afraid!” Though Johnson dislikes New York and recoils from its politics, he nonetheless flew in to stump for Democratic Challenger Frank O’Connor, whose campaign to unseat Governor Nelson Rockefeller is in trouble. The President, who was criticized last year for withholding support for New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate until the last moment, realized that if he stayed away this time and O’Connor and other Democratic candidates lost, the White House would be blamed. Worse yet perhaps, if O’Connor won, much of the credit would go to Senator Robert Kennedy.

Plunging zealously into Bobby’s bailiwick, the President campaigned with Kennedy at his side, even heralded him as “one of the greatest Senators in all New York history.” But it was Lyndon’s show all the way. In Democrat-heavy Brooklyn, L.B.J. lunged gleefully into the throngs that lined the motorcade route. On Staten Island, he bellowed at 3,000 partisans that Democratic programs—Medicare, antipoverty, education—had been enacted over the opposition of fearful Republicans. “Afraid, afraid, afraid!” chanted Johnson. “Republicans are afraid of their own shadows and afraid of the shadow of progress”—a taunt that prompted Everett Dirksen, the Senate’s Republican leader and Johnson’s sometime congressional ally, to wonder: “Is the President bewildered?”

That night, after a brief appearance at a Columbus Day parade on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Johnson made an eloquent plea for interracial understanding at a Brooklyn gathering of Italian-American businessmen. Reminding his audience that Italian immigrants had once experienced “the raw pain of discrimination” that is felt by Negroes today, L.B.J. added: “I ask those of you who have crossed the river to extend to them a helping hand.”

Eliminating Middlemen. After flying next day to Wilmington, where he was mobbed by a crowd of 70,000, the President returned to Washington for his second formal press conference of the month. Making his announcements briskly, answering barbed questions with even-tempered directness, Johnson also bared a sardonic vein that recalled Harry Truman at his crustiest. Equating his own unpopularity with “prophets of doom” in the press, the President crowed: “I always get refreshed and I gain strength from going out to see the people without going through middlemen.” Pursuing the issue, he told about “Uncle Ezra,” who was once advised by a doctor to give up alcohol in order to improve his hearing. Asked some time later if he had followed the physician’s advice, Ezra said no, explaining: “I like what I drink so much better than what I hear.” As for himself, declared L.B.J., “I like what I see and what I hear so much better than what I read.”

The President did express gratification over one thing he had read: that the Republicans, in effect, were in favor of adopting his Social Security proposals this year rather than next, as the Administration had recommended. Not to be upstaged, Johnson recalled that the G.O.P. had opposed Social Security in the 1930s, added: “We welcome them to the vineyard. We’re glad they have religion.” In fact, said L.B.J., he was perfectly agreeable if Congress wanted to stay on to pass his proposals this session—a notion that Senate leaders of both parties quickly squelched.

Giving & Getting. Next day the President sheathed some of his barbs. Lunching on Capitol Hill with 70 Senators, Johnson expressed pride in “the quality” of “my loyal opposition,” allowed after all that maybe the press had not done so badly by him either. “I’ve not taken the prize about the mean things they said about Presidents,” he told the Senators. “I’ve read the things they said about Jefferson and Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.”

Johnson even acknowledged that he can be difficult to deal with. On his first race for the Senate in 1948, L.B.J. related, a reporter visiting campaign headquarters took note of all the milk-drinking ulcer sufferers on the staff, wondered why Johnson had no ulcers. “Well,” explained Campaign Manager John Connally, now Governor of Texas, “he is just in the business of giving them, not getting them.” Maybe, allowed the President reflectively, it was his turn at last to be on the receiving end.