The Wonderfulness of It All

With the fervor of an evangelist smoking out pockets of heathens, Lyndon Johnson in the last week of his campaign for election, went into those states where he thought the race with Barry Goldwater might be close. He roared through Florida, Georgia and South Carolina in the Deep South, through Indiana, Illinois and Kansas in the Midwest, through New Mexico, Utah and California in the West.

Tinsel Dreams. Considering himself assured of victory, Johnson often seemed carried away by the wonderfulness of it all. In San Bernardino, Calif., he made a sentimental journey to the Platt Building, where he operated an elevator as a boy 39 years ago, but his remarks about Goldwater were decidedly unsentimental. It would be awful, he said, if both Barry and Red China had the atomic bomb at the same time.

"I admire a brave man," he went on, "but some people have got more guts than brains." Embroidering his charge that Goldwater would send the U.S. "to hell in a hack" by tearing down programs that have been built up over the past 30 years, he added: "Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one." In Pittsburgh, Lyndon offered 13,000 partisans a storybook view of the future according to L.B.J. "So here's the Great Society," he cried. "It's the time -- and it's going to be soon -- when nobody in this country is poor. It's the time -- and there is no point in waiting -- when every boy or girl can have all the education that boy or girl can put to good use. It's the time when there is a job for everybody who wants to work.

It's the time when every slum is gone from every city in America, and America is beautiful. It's the time when man gains full dominion under God over his own destiny. It's the time of peace on earth and good will among men." In Los Angeles, where tinsel dreams are mass-produced, Lyndon sounded every bit as Utopian. "We are going to have to rebuild our cities," he said. "We are going to have to reshape our mass transit facilities. We have to purify our air and to desalt our oceans. We are going to make all the deserts bloom." Think Positively. Just how would all this be done? Never mind the details, said Lyndon in effect. Just think positively. "All we need to do now," he cried, "is to go around and talk about positive things. About the issues, about peace, about prosperity, about social security, about jobs, about medical care."

But most of the time he wasn't talking about issues. He just rambled on about anything that popped into his mind. Sample quotes: > "Let's always be nice. When your neighbor comes over to your house, and he has been living there alone for a long time and he gets lonesome, and he comes to visit you, even if he does kind of start doing all the talking, you be nice to him and courteous, because everybody is entitled to associate with good company every once in a while." > "Love thy neighbor as thyself; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. No matter how long it may take, no matter how difficult it is, this above all else is the great horizon toward which we march united." >"Let's keep a smile on our face, let's keep faith in our heart, let's keep hope in our vision, let's move on to conquer unknown frontiers." > "I have traveled around the world and I have been in many countries and I have seen the glories of art and architecture. But the most beautiful vision that these eyes ever beheld was that American flag in a foreign land.

Let's see if we can't take a little pride in that flag, and let's see if we can't have a little feeling well up in us, and see if we can't get down on our knees some time during the night and thank God that I am an American." >"We want every boy and girl born under that flag, when he or she discovers America and comes in squealing, we want him to know that he has the right to all the education that he can absorb. If we are going to compete with the Soviet Union, we are not only going to have to have the best heels and the best hearts that we can, but we are going to have to have the best heads. You don't want some boy that went to a red schoolhouse and dropped out in the third grade and went off as a road hand like I did when I ran off to California when I finished school, you don't want him to be in your spaceship with John Glenn orbiting the earth. You want somebody that knows where the buttons are and how to mash them and touch them." Mouth in Motion. He talked, talked, talked. During one day-long period, from Tuesday night to Wednesday night, one newsman estimated that he had talked publicly for eight solid hours.

Much of it was pure corn, or just plain tasteless--as in Los Angeles, when he referred to "the man who watches over us in heaven this afternoon, John Fitzgerald Kennedy." At one point, he had talked so long that Lady Bird sent a note to the podium telling him it was time to stop. In Pittsburgh, people in the back rows began sneaking out halfway through his address. In Milwaukee, Lyndon missed his lunch, made up for it by stopping at William Balsmider's grocery and asking for "a little hunk of baloney" and half a dozen peppermint sticks. He had to borrow $1 from a Secret Service agent to pay for it.

In his breast pocket, close to his heart, he kept a mimeographed consensus of the latest polls, showing him winning 481 electoral votes out of a possible 538. All he needs is 270 to win, but Lyndon wants more than a mere victory, and so he exhorts listeners at every stop to get out "your uncles and aunts and cousins" to vote for him. "I hope nobody in this country wakes up Wednesday morning," he said, "and looks at their wife or their kinfolks around the breakfast table and says, 'Gee, I just wish I'd tried a little harder.' "

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