WOMEN: Tea Party Task Force

The cabin of their chartered Convair was carefully stocked with smelling salts and tranquilizers, the engines were checked and the tanks were topped off. The travelers were ready to go. Then someone realized that they had not alerted the pilot. That little matter attended to, Lyndon Johnson’s wife Lady Bird, Jack Kennedy’s sister Eunice, and Bobby Kennedy’s wife Ethel left Washington last week and headed West on the first all-female foray of the presidential campaign. Disturbed by reports of Texas’ growing unhappiness with Lyndon Johnson for supporting the liberal civil rights plank in the Democratic platform, the ladies were determined to corral the female vote and save the Lone Star State for their party.

Airborne Advice. They had a clutch of Texas Congressmen’s wives for company and one male: Warren Woodward, manager of Lady Bird’s TV station in Austin. “Woody can find anything from lost luggage to a masseur,” explained Lady Bird. “I call him my vice president in charge of strange activities.” But there was no doubt about who was running the road show. All the way West. Lady Bird exercised her soft Southern drawl delivering feline vignettes on the people the girls would meet. (“She’s never been a friend and never will be, but I hope she will work for the Democratic Party.”) And all the way. outspoken Eunice Shriver and casual, quick-witted Ethel Kennedy quietly took notes. By the time they landed, the campaigners were well briefed.

Performing with the enthusiasm of oldtime, touring vaudevillians, they swung across the state—Houston. Dallas, Wichita Falls, El Paso, Odessa—unwilted by 100° heat, shook as many as 2,500 hands a day, made their pitch at morning “coffees,” afternoon teas and press conferences. Lady Bird explained Lyndon with wifely conviction: “Lyndon is the same man as before. He has never been embraced by extreme liberals or extreme conservatives.” Ethel got an admiring gasp when she was introduced as the mother of seven children. Eunice drew sober attention with a summary of her brother’s war record, his qualifications for the presidency (“It would take more than Jimmy Hoffa to scare my brother”), and took on the job of outlining Sister-in-Law Jackie’s qualifications for First Lady: “She’s 31, speaks five languages, is very much interested in children. She would make the White House a gay and pleasant place. There would be life and laughter.”

Constant Energy. By the time the tour was finished, the girls had handled integrated tea party or segregated breakfast with equal aplomb. They had spoken their piece for people who distrusted Catholics (“The Catholic Church,” said Eunice, “does not influence Jack in any way except a religious way”), people who were worried about the oil-depletion allowance, who resented Lyndon Johnson’s second place on the ticket. Their energy was a source of constant consternation to everyone who tried to keep up with them. They had hardly arrived at the L.B.J. Ranch for a rest before the Kennedy girls had picked teams for water polo, run through a touch-football game and corralled survivors for a tug of war. By dinnertime they were ready with a skit spoofing the lines they had fluffed along the way. A lone male reporter, almost dismembered during the tug of war, sighed dolefully about the campaign ahead: “If these are the women, what can the men be like?”