The Candidates: Top Man’s Tones

President Johnson has above all been his own best cheerleader. “Get in your cars and come to the speakin’,” he implores the streetside crowds that flock to see him. “You don’t have to dress.

Just bring your children and dogs, any thing you have with you. It won’t take long. You’ll be back in time to put the kids to bed.” He invites everybody to the Inauguration. He tells them to “put this in your noggin.” When hecklers jeered him last week, Lyndon said, “Now you folks come on and be happy, come on and be happy!”

Buster Browns & the Pedernales. He is the master of the homily. In St. Louis he drawled: “I do want you to know, since I was a little boy that went to the post office in a general store the first time and put on my first pair of Buster Brown shoes that were made here in St. Louis, I have always had great faith in the people of Missouri. I know they are going to do their duty, and I know when they do their duty on November the third that I am going to get a telephone call down at my little ranch on the banks of the Pedernales saying, ‘Everything went all right in St. Louis and Missouri today.’ “

There are, of course, the statesmanly moments. Eschewing eyeglasses, Lyndon put on contact lenses and, in a toneless, reflective television appearance, told the country that the events in Communist China and Moscow were “large and full of meaning,” but “they do not change our basic policy.” Later in the week, he told newsmen that “divisions and suspicions among our people will only open the doors for those adversaries who seek to divide us and to weaken our leadership. There must be no misunderstanding of America’s purpose and there must be no miscalculation of America’s will.”

Economy-Size Aspirin. Johnson also talks about “these people”-meaning Goldwater & Co. Said he in Akron: “We must constantly be deliberate, prudent and restrained. Before we shoot from the hip, as Mr. Rayburn, the great political leader, used to say, the three most important words in the English language for everyone are ‘Just a minute.’ ” From the way “these people” talk, the President declared in southern Illinois, “all that we need to do is to snap our fingers and ancient disputes that have gone on for centuries will be instantly settled. Well, I wish there was some giant economy-size aspirin tablet that would work on international headaches. But there just isn’t.”

It was precisely because of “these people,” said Johnson, that many Republicans are going to vote Democratic. “It is not backlash,” he said. “That is gone. It is not frontlash. It is the smearlash. Because when people get desperate they get dangerous, and when they get dangerous they are not cautious. And when they get to fearing and doubting and smearing-why, even some of their own people don’t want to go along with them.”