Whistling Through Dixie

Lyndon Baines Johnson, a loyal son of Texas, holds the second spot on the Democratic ticket for one reason alone: the promise that he might bring the prodigal South back to the party it strayed from in 1952. Last week Johnson gathered up Lady Bird, 35 of his staffers, 30 reporters and 15,000 bright balloons aboard the 13-car L.B.J. Victory Special to fulfill that promise in a meandering, old-fashioned whistle-stop excursion that notched the Bible belt in a dozen places and drove deep into Dixie.

Johnson's campaign had two purposes: 1) to expose him to as many Southern voters as possible, and 2) to goad or lure the reluctant Southern politicians into action behind the national ticket. He was still sensitive that so many thought him a drag on the Democratic ticket, while Henry Cabot Lodge was a gain to the Republicans. Johnson shed all of his pre-convention pretense of being a Westerner, not a Southerner, campaigned as "the grandson of a Confederate soldier" (running, he often added, with a man who. despite his fortune, is "the grandson of a pore Irish immigrant").

Three Themes. From the back platform of his blue-and-grey private car, Johnson stuck to three basic themes:

THE CATHOLIC ISSUE. Time and again Johnson told with all-out vibrato the story of the death, in a World War II bomber explosion, of Jack Kennedy's brother Joe and his copilot, Lieut. Wilford J. Wiley of Fort Worth. Cried Lyndon hoarsely: "When those boys went out to die so that you could live, nobody asked them what church they went to."

RICHARD NIXON. "They say he's mature, and they say he's experienced. But if an inexperienced Governor of New York can take him up in the Waldorf Towers* and turn his platform around 180DEG in one night, think what Khrushchev could do if he got him in the kitchen all day."

CIVIL RIGHTS. Johnson brought the subject up repeatedly, even without provocation, with the flat statement: "Under Jack Kennedy, the Democratic Party will guarantee the constitutional rights of every American, no matter what his race, religion--or what section of the country he comes from." The last qualifying phrase admittedly and deliberately softened the touchy issue for many white Southerners who feel subjected to a certain regional apartheid in other parts of the country.

Off with a Blast. Johnson found the political weather cool in Virginia's Byrd-land (where Senator Byrd is the only eminent Southern Democratic holdout), but it warmed almost immediately when the L.B.J. Special rolled into the Carolinas. At every whistle stop, politicians of every variety, from Senators to sheriffs, from South Carolina's Governor Ernest Rollings to Florida's Representative Bob ("He-Coon") Sikes, clambered happily aboard. There they were warmly and methodically greeted by L.B.J. and Lady Bird, photographed, endorsed, introduced, and ushered off with a blast of The Yellow Rose of Texas. At the end of the trip, Johnson added up 1,247 politicians who had come aboard the L.B.J. Special.

The crowds were variable, but the daily average of 15,000 pleased Johnson. Only once, in Republican Greenville, S.C., was there any open hostility. At a rally in a local park, a disappointingly small crowd of 1,000 booed and displayed impolite placards ("Walter Reuther Speaks Today," "L.B.J., the Counterfeit Confederate"). Lyndon was stung into his sharpest attack on Nixon, and threatened the sign-carrying teenagers: "We're going to tear the masks off the faces of those who hide behind little girls." But mostly Johnson comfortably identified himself with the crowds he met, displaying a native son's sensitivity to local moods. With his aide, Senate Majority Secretary Bobby Baker, he helicoptered to a big barbecue in the mountain hamlet of Rocky Bottom, S.C. After one look at the holiday-minded audience, L.B.J. cast the script aside, drawled: "You just don't know how I'd enjoy sittin' down here and whittlin' with you awhile." His listeners ate it up.

Happy as a Hush Puppy. There were some notable non sequiturs ("What has Dick Nixon ever done for Culpeper?" he asked a dazed Virginia crowd and he observed that the G.O.P. had used the South as a golf course for the past eight years.) There were also a few glimpses of L.B.J. the political pitchman. In Greer, S.C., as the L.B.J. Special clacked away from the depot, Johnson shouted: "Goodbye, Greer. Goodbye." Then in an aside: "Bobby, turn off that Yellow Rose." And finally, as he disappeared down the tracks: "God bless you, Greer. Vote Democratic." By the time he wound up his trip at a big rally in New Orleans, Johnson was as well pleased as a man who has just dined on hush puppies and peach cobbler: his Southern accent and his political instincts were still working, and, at last, L.B.J. was beginning to mean something, if no one knew how much, in the 1960 campaign.

*Actual address of Nelson Rockefeller's apartment is 810 Fifth Avenue.

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