A Long Way from Spring

THE PRESIDENCY

At the height of the Communists' savage Viet Nam offensive, Lyndon Johnson's low-key performance was a cool effort to mask one of the most trying weeks of a crisis-ridden presidency. Amid all the tumult around him, Johnson still found time to chat amiably with West Berlin Mayor Klaus Schuetze, make yet another plea for a 10% income tax surcharge, and present the Heart of the Year Award to Actress Patricia Neal, who suffered three near-fatal strokes three years ago.

After news of the enemy attacks reached Washington, Johnson kept constant alert, pouncing on more than 25 reports that were rushed to him through the evening and night. At 5 a.m., he was up for a briefing in the basement Situation Room of the White House. Before breakfast, he was on the phone twice to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. "He has a mental alarm clock," said Presidential Press Secretary George Christian. "He's working like a dog, keeping tabs on everything."

No Dienbienphu. During the week the President spoke, in person or by phone, with at least 100 Senators and Representatives. There was a two-hour breakfast meeting at the White House for congressional leaders. In a concentrated effort to line up bipartisan support, Johnson summoned Republican Leaders Everett Dirksen and Gerald Ford to a lengthy White House briefing and dispatched an aide to former President Eisenhower's winter home in Indian Wells, Calif. Diplomatic and military experts such as General Matthew Ridgway, Henry Cabot Lodge and Maxwell Taylor were asked for advice.

In a rainbow display of his kaleidoscopic personality, Johnson was by turns wryly humorous, cautious, defensive, patriotic and pugnacious. "I don't want any damned Dienbienphu," he warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a White House discussion of Khe Sanh, cross-examining them at great length about the wisdom of defending the isolated outpost. In an extraordinary gesture, apparently designed to alert everyone to the gravity of the situation, Johnson then made each Chief sign a paper stating that he believed Khe Sanh could be defended.

Shifting from the role of tough prosecutor to circuit-riding preacher, he went to the annual presidential prayer breakfast, where he said: "We cannot know what the morrow will bring. We can know that to meet its challenges and to withstand its assaults, America never stands taller than when her people get to their knees." Then he added: "I can, and I do, tell you that in these long nights your President prays." Thanks to Johnson's restrained approach, what might have been at least a mini-crisis--the collision of the U.S. destroyer Rowan and a Russian merchantman in the Sea of Japan, 95 miles off South Korea--was treated as if it were a two-car collision on Route 66 and stirred little concern.

Luci & Lynda Bird. For all the troubles swirling about him, Johnson was still quick to bristle at charges that his Great Society is being sacrificed to foreign crisis. "It's just a bunch of blarney," he declared. "When I hear this argument that we can't protect freedom in Europe, Asia, or our own hemisphere and still meet our domestic problems, I think this is a phony argument. It's just like saying I can't take care of Luci because I have Lynda Bird."

Only once did the President so much as hint publicly at discouragement or fatigue. "The nights are very long," he said at the prayer breakfast, comparing the nation's problems to Washington's wintry weather. "The winds are very chill. Our spirits grow weary and restive as the springtime of man seems farther and farther away."

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