Intuition's Reward

THE PRESIDENCY

"Get back!" the President shouted to Secret Service men restraining the multitude of Mexicans. "Get off that side of the car!" The crowd surged forward, and once again Lyndon Johnson was in his true element, in high gear and high spirits, greeting and meeting the crowds in Mexico City on his first visit to a foreign capital in the 29 months since he became Chief Executive.*

His visit was quick, intuitively right and rewarding. The decision to go south of the border was made during a restless week at the L.B.J. ranch, where Johnson, fretful over the uncertainties of Viet Nam, was persuaded to make the trip. The President has always been partial toward Mexico--Mexican-Americans in his congressional district had in fact given him most constant support--and the Mexicans responded in kind. Some 25,000 greeted the President, Lady Bird, Lynda and Luci at the airport, and enthusiastic shouting crowds of more than 1,000,000--the polite official estimate was twice that many--lined the 9 1/2-mile motorcade route to Mexican President Diaz Ordaz's residence in Chapultepec Park. The procession was often forced to crawl, and Secret Service agents, already tired by the rarefied (7,800 ft.) atmosphere, dropped back in relays for rejuvenating whiffs of oxygen from their own cars.

Sweet Sounds. Johnson, standing with Diaz Ordaz throughout the 2 1/2-hour ride, fairly floated in the tumult, holding his hands above his head like a victorious prizefighter or making an "O.K." sign with circled thumb and forefinger. "I've never seen anything like this anywhere," he exulted from the steps of Los Pinos, home of Mexican Presidents. "I've always known the Mexican people were generous, stimulating people, but I never saw such inspiration and stimulation as in those faces. I think it was the most wonderful reception I have ever had anywhere in the world." Later, while L.B.J. conferred with Diaz Ordaz, Lady Bird took the opportunity to visit the new National Museum of Anthropology (TIME, June 25), one of the most magnificent museums of its kind in the world.

Mexico's oles sounded all the sweeter in view of Washington's assumption that U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic had tarnished Johnson's image south of the border, that he could never hope to gain the affection and instinctive trust that Latin Americans awarded President Kennedy. With scant advance notice, Johnson drew crowds only slightly smaller than those Kennedy received on a long-planned visit in 1962. "Who said we couldn't go to Latin America?" demanded Johnson. "Who said the Dominican Republic disgraced us?"

Bright Promise. Though it lasted only 24 1/2 hours and had no pressing diplomatic purpose--relations between the U.S. and Mexico have rarely been so warm as they are now--the visit raised bright hope for renewed inter-American solidarity in the Johnson presidency. Dedicating a statue of Abraham Lincoln, a $150,000 gift from the American people, Johnson enunciated eight principles of cooperation and respect for hemisphere relations and offered to take part in a Latino summit conference to revivify the Alliance for Progress.

"We of this hemisphere," he said, "are engaged in a vast social revolution touching the lives of millions of people on two continents. Like Lincoln's, this is a test of whether freedom can work. It is a test of whether men, through liberty, can overcome the weight of the past and lift from their brothers the blight of hunger, the blindness of ignorance, and the burden of disease."

Back in Texas at week's end, Johnson quickly moved to back up his promises, let it be known that he and his wife may be making more southern trips, and ordered U.S. ambassadors in South America to begin the laborious task of reshaping the Alliance. To fill a vacant embassy in Rio de Janeiro he named John W. Tuthill, 55, U.S. representative to the European Common Market since 1962. And how did he feel about the trip? "To say he was pleased," understated Press Secretary Bill Moyers, "is an understatement."

*His only other trip out of the U.S. was to Vancouver, B.C., in September 1964 for a ceremony marking ratification of a Columbia River-development treaty with Canada.

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