With a Good Cough

THE PRESIDENCY

Barely 30 minutes off the operating table, the nation's least patient patient signaled for a pen and scrawled a message to his doctors on the back of a medical form: "Tell me something." The surgeons obediently described the operations to remove a polyp from his throat and repair an abdominal hernia, but their fill-in was far too sketchy for Lyndon Johnson. "Tell me all that took place," he commanded in a second note. Thus began what will doubtless rate as the most exposed convalescence in presidential history.

As if determined to prove that it takes more than "a little stitchin' " to slow down a Johnson, the President maintained almost as arduous a schedule as if he were back in the White House. About the only difference was his sparing use of the telephone and--initially, at least--of his voice. "I don't have volume," he complained.

Lights Out. The President was supposed to get in shape for his surgery with a restful hunker-down on the L.B.J. Ranch. Instead, he punctuated his ten-day stay there with five press conferences and a ceaseless stream of announcements, the most notable being that he plans to visit Europe and Latin America early in 1967. Back in Washington, he whittled down a stack of paper work. "Look at that desk!" he told Lady Bird and White House Aide Bill Moyers on the eve of the operation. "That's cleaner than it's been in three years." He corrected himself. "No, that's the desk I had in the Senate. It's cleaner than it's been in 15 years."

At the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., outside Washington, Johnson's quarters were equally shipshape. On the walls of his three-bedroom suite, the same one he had occupied after his gall-bladder surgery 57 weeks earlier, hung paintings of his birthplace, boyhood home and ranch, along with framed quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Harold Macmillan and the Roman consul Paulus, all upholding the axiom--one that is not writ large in Lyndon Johnson's copybook--that a leader who wastes too much time on his critics has little time left for leadership. Across Wisconsin Avenue, the lights were out and the Venetian blinds lowered to a uniform level in the National Institutes of Health buildings; last year the wasting candlepower and higgledy-piggledy blinds had troubled Johnson when he looked out of his window at night.

After five hours' sleep, the President was wheeled into surgery. The operation proceeded smoothly (see following story) and at 7:20 a.m. Moyers was able to phone a reassuring report to Vice President Hubert Humphrey at the Harbour Square Apartments in southwest Washington. (By agreement with Johnson, Humphrey was authorized to exercise the full powers of the presidency if an emergency arose while Johnson was incapacitated.) Johnson began emerging from the anesthetic less than 15 minutes after surgery, and after a 40-minute nap the President was back in the cockpit.

So Who's Fat? Wielding his felt-tipped pen like a scepter, Johnson started scrawling directives to Lady Bird. "Bring me some tea" was one; during the next few days he guzzled gallons of warm liquids and sucked ice cubes to soothe his sore throat. Another order: "Turn on the TV." For practically all his waking hours at Bethesda, he was tuned in to a three-channel TV console and two radio stations--and seemed to absorb everything they aired. At one point, a telecaster said L.B.J. was wearing silk pajamas. Another felt-penned directive. Within minutes the press corps was solemnly informed that the presidential pajamas were made of cotton. (Texas papers, please note.)

Three hours after he left surgery, Johnson summoned reporters to his bedside. He gave the impression of a man already back on the job, with a folder conspicuously marked "Action File" on his lap and papers strewn about his bed. The President coughed but hastened to assure everyone that it meant nothing. "It's good to cough," he scribbled on a spiral pad. "Gets up the phlegm." A reporter turned to Lady Bird, asked if she had ever seen her husband thus speechless before. "No," she smiled, "and we are going to make the most of it."

Not for long. Lyndon came back on audio with a weak croak, and soon was as irrepressibly garrulous as ever--and as busy. He read reports, took more than 100 steps, and conferred with platoons of top officials. The doctors were amazed. His condition "couldn't be better," said the Mayo Clinic's Dr. James C. Cain, the Johnsons' family physician, but he did confess that the presidential pace "perturbed" him. Sighed Cain: "He is a hard man to slow down." Another matter of concern for the medics was the President's weight. His doctors want him to stay around 200. He had left for the ranch at 212 lbs. and, though supposed to slim down there, went into surgery at the same weight.

Johnson showed his sensitivity on the adipose issue after a newsman asked the doctors whether they would try "to get him to stay off tapioca and starches" in order to keep his weight down. When reporters gathered around his bed, the President protested that 212 "is not a bad weight" for a 58-year-old man who stands 6 ft. 3 in. tall. He pulled up a pajama leg. "That is not a fat leg," he said. He rolled up a sleeve. "That is not a fat arm."

Johnson sounded downright hurt by the unprovoked attack on tapioca pudding, a bland, glutinous concoction that most palates reject soon after infancy --if not before. "Tapioca," he intoned, "has less calories than any other dessert that you can get, and it has great advantages when it is made with skim milk and Sucaryl [a low-calorie sweetener]." It is also very "filling" but has only ) 09 calories per heaping cup--half the amount, by his measure, in a comparable serving of ice cream.

Beat with a Bat. Having slept fewer than six hours on his first night after surgery, the President was up early the next morning to play host to Dwight Eisenhower. He renewed a request to Ike, made as recently as last month, that the former President go on a good will mission to Asia and other parts of the world--including Viet Nam--next spring. Moyers emphasized that "there was no specific proposal, no specific date, no specific itinerary" for the trip. But, he said, there was "considerable interest on both sides."

Johnson capped his day with a 32nd-wedding-anniversary party. "Every man thinks he has the best wife in the world," he said, "but I know I have. The best thing is that she reared two daughters just like her, just as sweet and competent." Aware that he was supposed to conserve his voice for four or five weeks, he said, "I wouldn't want anybody to know I made a speech--I'm prohibited from making public speeches." Then he went right on speechifying.

Studying a two-tiered cake with 32 HAPPY YEARS written in chocolate icing, he grinned: "It's pretty, but I think I will have to have tapioca." With that, he ordered up a serving and spoonfed samples to everyone within reach. Asked how he was feeling, he said he had pains in his side, throat, right arm and legs. "I am sore," he allowed, "as if 1 were beat with a baseball bat."

Polishing & Paring. Nonetheless, his tapioca-assisted recovery was so rapid that physicians decided to release their cyclonic convalescent from Bethesda after only three days. At week's end, the President flew to Texas, having cleared his Washington calendar by postponing scheduled state visits by Morocco's King Hassan II and Turkey's President Cevdet Sunay. Johnson planned to spend most of December in the Texas sun, polishing up his 1967 State of the Union message, paring down the 1968 budget, pondering his spring travel plans, and perhaps perusing the opinion polls.* Lyndon Johnson may also find time to convalesce.

* The latest, a post-election survey of presidential preferences by Lou Harris, showed him trailing Michigan's G.O.P. Governor George Romney 54% to 46%. No other Republican came close; against Richard Nixon, Chuck Percy, and Nelson Rockefeller, it was L.B.J. who enjoyed the 54-46 edge.

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