How to Rev Up While Resting

As Air Force One hummed Texas-ward at 31,000 ft., the President naturally fell to jawing with reporters about his health. "I feel like I had a baseball right here in my right side,"he said. This time, though, he was content merely to point to the most celebrated scar since Jenkins' Ear.* What's more, allowed Lyndon Johnson, he is unhappy with his strict diet, begun in August (few starches and fats, no liquor) aimed at trimming his weight down to 187 lbs. When he complains about it to Lady Bird, she retorts: "You can't run the country if you can't run yourself."

Warming to the subject of his health, Johnson confided that he had been taking tranquilizers ever since his heart attack ten years ago, but still doesn't sleep much. "I don't work like you do," he told the newsmen. "In 56 of my 57 years I probably haven't gone to sleep before 1 a.m., and I seldom sleep past daylight. If you had been wrestling with Viet Nam and Panama and all those other problems, then had surgery, you'd be weak too."

Churning Circles. The puckered caliche hills and sun-baked pastures of L.B.J. country proved to be a good presidential tonic. The day after he arrived, the President clapped on a rakish red tarn o' shanter (a gift from Daughter Lynda) and invited reporters to the nearby shores of Lake Lyndon B. Johnson. There he climbed into his 310-h.p. speedboat and drove it in wide, churning circles, occasionally revving the engine so high that the boat all but sat on its stern. Next day he entertained 150 members of the Texas Explorers Club, got into his white Lincoln convertible and exuberantly led a tour of the land around the L.B.J. Ranch. Every day he walked between two and four miles. When he was not on the move, the President lounged by the ranch swimming pool, thumbing through extracurricular books (Dean Acheson's memoirs, a biography of Sam Houston) or working on official business.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk spent a night at the ranch, discussed with the President a broad spectrum of foreign relations ranging from the situation in Indonesia to the upcoming visit of German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. There was no urgency in their discussions. For whatever his critics may say about Johnson's foreign policy, the President himself is convinced that his Administration's dealings with friends and foes alike have been even more fruitful than its relations with Congress, and that Rusk, furthermore, is the 20th century's most successful Secretary of State.

Peppery Pronunciamento. The President signed dozens of bills, notably the pork-barrel measure authorizing $1.9 billion for various river and harbor projects, and the $4.3 billion public works bill. After he signed the rivers-and-harbors bill, Johnson issued a peppery pronunciamento warning that he had absolutely no intention of implementing the act's provision that water-resources projects costing under $10 million be authorized by congressional public works committees--a short cut that would bypass the possibility of a presidential veto. Discussing this section, the President declared: "The people of this country did not elect me to this office to preside over its erosion. And I intend to turn over this office with all of its responsibilities and powers intact to the next man who sits in this chair."

Early in the week the President disappointedly watched TV as the Gemini 6 mission fizzled. Three days later, he managed to reinject both hope and drama into the U.S.'s manned-space program by announcing that the next Gemini launching, possibly in early December, would be a doubleheader calling for two manned capsules to rendezvous in space (see SCIENCE). Toward week's end, Daughter Luci Baines, 18, arrived suddenly at the ranch with a strapping, 22-year-old Marquette University graduate named Patrick J. Nugent in tow--accompanied by a flurry of news stories that the couple was there to ask Lyndon's permission to be married. Rumor had it that Lady Bird consented some time ago, but that the President was reluctant to marry off his baby daughter, just starting her freshman year at Washington's Georgetown University School of Nursing.

The removal of the presidential office to Texas for an extended period left a disconcerting vacuum in the capital. "It's a little like New York without traffic," said the New York Times's James Reston. With Congress adjourned, however, Johnson could operate just as efficiently from the L.B.J. Ranch as from the White House. He has at his disposal an elegant and as yet unused office complex in Austin's Federal Building 65 miles away. The ranch is also elaborately equipped for the exigencies of office. The ganglia of government converge there through a supersecure communications system--including a microwave radio-relay tower next to the house, untappable telephone and teletype networks, as well as a daily Jet-Star from Washington to carry pouches packed with official documents.

Thus, despite Johnson's announced resolve to "rest as much as I can," he was clearly revving himself up again. Indeed, as his aides pointed out last week, in Texas the President is spared all the ceremonial obligations that fritter away much of his time in Washington, can thus actually work more fruitfully at the ranch.

* The War of Jenkins' Ear, a four-year battle between England and Spain that began in 1739, was fomented by the testimony in the House of Commons of Merchant Seaman Robert Jenkins. He roused British emotions to fighting pitch with his tale--and the missing member to show for it--of a Spanish party that boarded his brig and wantonly amputated his ear.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.