Effulgent Interlude

THE PRESIDENCY

For all the gnawing uncertainties of the situation in Viet Nam, Washington's least harassed man last week seemed to be Lyndon Johnson. In and out of the White House, the President was trading quips with visitors, tugging elbows, wading into crowds for handshaking and abrazos. The President's prose matched his effulgent mood.

Bailing the Boat. Presenting a gold medal to Teacher of the Year Mona Dayton in the Cabinet Room, Johnson expressed his delight in escaping for the nonce from "battles and soldiers and the bitterness of war," praised the Tucson first-grade teacher for having "taken the great outdoors as her classroom and the great desert as her desk." At an Agriculture Department ceremony honoring cost-cutting employees, Skipper Johnson likened the Administration's campaign against waste to "bailing a boat -- you have to keep at it; there is no time to rest." Mockingly, he scolded the Agriculture men for not equaling the White House's 100% participation in a savings-bond drive: "Maybe I was a little more persuasive with them than I can be with you."

With Congress in recess, among the few items of business to cross the President's desk were the resignations of Federal Communications Commission Chairman E. William Henry and Assistant HEW Secretary Francis Keppel. Memphis Lawyer Henry, who as FCC chief since 1963 has stung A. T. & T. with a still-in-progress study of its rate setup but soft-pedaled his predecessors' criticism of the TV industry, is anxious to return to private practice. In three years at HEW, Keppel made its Office of Education the nation's most innovative force in public education (TIME cover, Oct. 15) but ran into increasing political friction in Washington after he temporarily cut off federal school aid to Chicago and threatened the same for other cities that had been slow to integrate. Henry's resignation was accepted effective May 1, while Keppel's lay for the time being in Johnson's In basket.

Tots Teeth. At week's end, arriving exuberantly in Texas for the Easter holiday, Johnson announced new plans to expand the Great Society. At a bill-signing ceremony to celebrate a two-month extension of the medicare registration deadline--held characteristically at a federally financed home for the aged in San Antonio--Johnson said he would ask Congress next year for "increased insurance benefits, across the board, for 21 million beneficiaries" of social security, plus free dental services under medicare for children up to the age of six.

After some politicking, the Johnsons then accompanied Daughter Luci and Fiance Pat Nugent at a Good Friday service in San Antonio's Roman Catholic San Fernando Cathedral, later flew to the L.B.J. Ranch for a long Easter weekend. There they were joined by Daughter Lynda, looking as radiant as her father and sporting a jeweled gold ring on the third finger of her left hand. A gift from her current beau, Actor George Hamilton, who had also joined the family for the weekend, the ring, White House aides averred, stood for "friendship," not connubial intent.

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