Johnson's Image Abroad

By Old World standards, John F. Kennedy was a hard act to follow. He was all grace and incisive confidence; by his very youth he seemed to bolster European faith in that vigorous young world power across the Atlantic. And by Old World standards, Lyndon Johnson was hardly the man to replace him: he was an American politician in the most pejorative sense of the word. In the six months since Lyndon Johnson took office, how has he fared in the European press?

Marks of Greatness. Surprisingly, Britain's Fleet Street seems to have lost its newspaper heart to the new President. Whether from relief because the death of Kennedy proved a survivable U.S. tragedy, or whether British newspapers took their cues from a favorable U.S. press, they have been extravagant in their praise. Kennedy was only three weeks dead when the London Sunday Telegraph predicted that "Kennedy's name in the history books may well appear as little more than a footnote in the massive chapter on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson."

Headlines all over London have reflected similar approval: PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POPULARITY BOOMS (the Guardian), PERSUASIVE--AT A FURIOUS PACE (the Financial Times), FINE START BY LYNDON JOHNSON (the Daily Herald). "The Johnson era is certain to be one piled high with difficulty," said the Times of London. "But there is a good chance that it will bear the marks of greatness too."

No Radiance. Across the English Channel, however, the Johnson image is still contesting unsuccessfully with unfamiliarity, indifference, and fond remembrances of the man he replaced. In Paris, where Johnson is dimly remembered as the Kennedy emissary who paid France a grinning visit in 1961 and distributed ballpoint pens, the press has not yet tried to take the measure of the new President. Most papers have kept a slightly mystified and slightly hostile silence, as if they did not understand the newcomer and hardly cared. "A homogeneous mixture of merits and cunning," cabled the Washington correspondent of Le Monde in a recent attempt to translate Johnson into Gallic terms. In L'Express, Editorial Cartoonist Tim was even blunter.

He showed a long Johnsonian arm, labeled Douanes (tariffs), jabbing at the beak of Charles de Gaulle (see cut).

West German correspondents in Washington have found Johnson both boring and unfathomable. "He is so 100% American and so Texan," said one, "that we simply cannot understand him." Hamburg's Die Welt, a newspaper with national circulation, recently weighed Johnson on the scales of statesmanship and found him wanting: "Admittedly the new President is no radiant political figure. That role has been taken over by De Gaulle."

Still in Eclipse. In Italy, Johnson's image is still eclipsed by Kennedy's. Publications seem more interested in noting that there is an Italian in the White House--Milan's Epoca magazine recently ran a lengthy profile on Johnson Aide Jack Valenti--than in sizing up the White House's tallest tenant.

And where the press has tried to appraise Johnson, the treatment has generally been superficial and routine. "Johnson is not an intellectual nor a philosopher nor an innovator," said Vita magazine in a cover story on the President. But then Vita paid Johnson a grudging compliment: "He has, however, an unequaled capacity and ability to resolve, one at a time, the little problems of daily life."

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