Playing Second Clarinet

After more than six months in the most dispiriting of top U.S. political offices, Hubert Horatio Humphrey appears to be more full of spirit than ever. As salesman for the Great Society, the Vice President of the U.S. roams the countryside with his gift of gab and his sunburst smile; the people seem to love it, and he certainly does.

So, by all accounts, does Lyndon Johnson, the man whom Humphrey promised to love, honor and obey when he took on the vice-presidency. Wherever Johnson cannot be, Humphrey is. Last week that meant a two-day, five-speech swing around the Western U.S. Landing in San Diego, he plunged into a sea of greeting hands. "How are you, young lady?" he bubblingly inquired of a woman who must have been all of 80.

Reporters crowded in, firing questions. What did he think of San Diego's unemployment problem? Said H.H.H., as if he were vice president of the local Chamber of Commerce: "I'd say the prognosis for the patient is very good."

Trying Harder. From San Diego, Humphrey went to Los Angeles for a California Democratic fund-raising dinner. His speech, while lauding President Johnson, fell admirably short of Jack Valenti's fulsome performance. Next day Humphrey was off to Houston for a two-hour inspection of the Manned Spacecraft Center, then up to Oklahoma City, where he attended the Oklahoma Democratic Party's first $ 100-a-plate dinner (hamburgers and cole slaw) and delivered a ringing, one-hour sermon on the glories of the Great Society. He was back in Washington for only twelve hours before Johnson dispatched him to London as the top American in the official cortege bringing home the body of Adlai Stevenson.

As Vice President, Humphrey has managed to share at least part of L.B.J.'s spotlight--a feat not unlike a clarinet player getting rave notices while playing in Benny Goodman's band. How does Humphrey do it? He is willing to perform any task, no matter how large or how small, that Johnson requests of him, and he is unabashedly devoted to his boss. "I became Vice President be cause he made me Vice President," Humphrey recently told a reporter. "As a matter of fact, I've always had a helping hand from Lyndon Johnson." Hubert feels that "if I can be a friendly adviser, if from time to time I can lift some little burden from him, even though it may not amount to much, I think that would be a real contribution." If Humphrey has totally reduced himself to the role of friendly adviser, he has not done so without a sense of humor. He has picked up the familiar Avis Rent a Car slogan. "I try harder," he says. "I have to. I'm only No. 2."

All the Way. As No. 2 there are, of course, frustrations. Recently, when a friend criticized Humphrey for making a say-nothing sort of speech, Hubert merely shrugged and said: "What can I do?" He submits his speeches for clearance by the White House, and some have been eviscerated. Last April, when Hubert suggested in public that the Johnson Administration would seek an increase in the $1.25-an-hour minimum wage, the President commented testily: "I see by the papers I have a minimum-wage program." But when Johnson's labor message got to Congress a request for a wage hike was conspicuously absent. When Humphrey recently returned from Paris after a cordial 80-minute conversation with Charles de Gaulle, which seemed like a considerable diplomatic achievement, word from the White House was that the Humphrey-De Gaulle talk didn't amount to anything.

Hubert remains completely loyal. "You're not going to get any bright ideas from Hubert Humphrey," he says. "If I have some ideas, I give them to Lyndon Johnson. There's no Humphrey program, just the Johnson program. There are no Humphrey people, just Johnson people. And I'm one of them." Which is about all any President can ask of a Vice President.

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