"Mistakes That I Made"

THE PRESIDENCY

President Johnson's political critics often take the opportunity to point out that he has not always been the civil rights advocate that he is today. In that spirit, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford last week told a press conference that as a Congressman and Senator between 1940 and 1960, Johnson had voted no on 39 out of 50 "meaningful roll-call votes" on rights measures. Thus, Ford charged, he was "a Lyndon-come-lately" who "has traveled a crooked path" to his present position on civil rights.

Next day, at his own press conference, Johnson was asked, in light of the Republican charge, to trace the change in his philosophy on civil rights legislation. His answer was all the more convincing because of its candor. "I am particularly sensitive to the problems of the Negro," Johnson said, "perhaps because I realize after traveling through 44 states and after reading some 20,000 or 30,000 letters a week, or the digests from them, that it's a very acute problem and one that I want to do my best to solve in the limited time that I'm allowed. I did not have that responsibility in the years past, and I did not feel it to the extent that I do today." The country's civil rights problem, the President added, is "an acute one and a dangerous one and one that occupies high priority and one that should challenge every American of whatever party, whatever religion. And I'm going to try to provide all the leadership that I can, notwithstanding the fact that someone may point to a mistake or a hundred mistakes that I made in my past."

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