Dr. Johnson, His Own Boswell

When Lyndon Johnson retreats to his Texas ranch and his reflections next January, he will carry with him the most exhaustive record of a presidency ever compiled. As grist for a planned treatise on his life in politics of from three to four volumes, he has a lode of documents that already overflows 8,000 filing-cabinet drawers. Perhaps because he has always been mistrustful of how others may interpret his stewardship, Johnson has been a kind of auto-Bos-well, chronicling virtually his every waking minute in the White House.

Squirreled away in the Executive Office Building are Johnson's letters, memos, speeches, citations, directives and doodles. There are transcripts of thousands of his telephone calls, notes taken by aides at secret parleys, notations of every visitor logged in and out of his office, even timetables of presidential repasts, catnaps and dips in the White House pool.

Treasured Footage. Almost every night in her sitting room, Lady Bird dutifully augments her husband's historical hoard by dictating her own Johnsoniana to what she calls a talking machine.

There are miles of films of L.B.J. in action given by television networks and more than 500,000 pictures of the President snapped by ubiquitous White House Photographer Yoichi Okamoto and two assistants. Mrs. Johnson has preserved home movies of him campaigning for Congress in 1937, and there is treasured footage shot by her husband as a World War II Navy lieutenant commander aboard the Flying Fortress Swoose when it crash-landed in Australia in 1942. This plethora of memorabilia and trivia, together with hundreds of official gifts from visiting dignitaries, will be housed in a special Johnson library at the University of Texas in Austin. L.B.J. also aims to help set up an institute of public affairs at the school, aided by foundation grants, emphasizing a redefinition of the nature of the U.S. presidency.

Dr. Johnson--he has 35 honorary doctorates--has yet to delineate his future role at the university. However, despite campus peace demonstrations and anti-Administration rallies, the prospect of learning government's inner workings from the maestro has already excited students. "I'd jump at the chance to have the President as a professor," says Senior Annette Bingham, a government major. "His experience in government would be invaluable to almost any student," allows Junior Larry Upshaw, who opposes Johnson on Viet Nam. The sentiment, however, is not universal. "If Lyndon Johnson came here to teach government," snirted a coed studying political science, I'd change my major to journalism.

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