The Pro

Politics is a game of chance, and Lyndon Johnson, a consummate politician, knows that his chances of becoming the Democratic presidential candidate next year are all but nil. Last week, though, he was out of Texas for the first time this season on a fast, six-day political tour, looking very much like a candidate who is running hard and expects to win.

Johnson's first stop was Morganfield, Ky., for a luncheon huddle with Governor Bert Combs and ex-U.S. Senator Earle Clements. A probable conversational topic: Clements' appointment as Kentucky's commissioner of highways--a strategic spot where Kingmaker Clements can control the Kentucky delegation to next July's Democratic Convention. With the happy assurance that Kentucky's 31 delegate votes are as good as in his pocket, Johnson flew on to the Midwest in his rented red-and-white Beechcraft.

Moving through Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Arizona, Johnson showed an uncanny understanding of his audiences. At a Drake University student Democratic club rally, he sensed the let-out partisanship of his listeners, proceeded to wow them with a wry reference to the Nixon-Rockefeller contest: "The Republicans apparently believe that two's a crowd. They'll give us a choice of a vote for Checkers or a vote for a checkbook." But before a serious, nonpartisan service club luncheon in Des Moines, he picked a careful, solemn path. "I live by the rule that I am first a free man," he said, "then an American, a Senator of the United States, and a Democrat, in that order." Local Republicans and Democrats stood right up and cheered together.

Although Johnson knew very well that many of his turn-away audiences would come out to see a stuffed whale or Nikita Khrushchev or any traveling curiosity, he still savored the tumult and the shouting. In Hutchinson, Kans., he turned up in a hotel room surrounded by local admirers, some wearing "Like That Lyndon" buttons. As the formation of a local "Johnson for President" club was announced to an obbligato of rebel yells, Lyndon, who refuses to announce that he is a candidate, stood at the sidelines, beaming.

While such scenes are obviously pleasing to Johnson, his friends see his real mission as creating a bloc of votes that can influence, if not determine, the Democrats' choice of a candidate. Johnson and his sagacious Texas sidekick, Speaker Sam Rayburn, expect to hold more than 300 delegate votes (mostly Southern) at the convention's all-important first ballot, hope that this will be enough to head off any bolt to Adlai Stevenson. And if, in the course of this power play, Johnson should finesse the nomination for himself, that would be fine. At a press conference in Des Moines last week, Lyndon said: "I am not a candidate and I do not intend to be. I do not say that I would not serve my country if the convention should do the unusual and select someone who isn't a candidate."

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