A Captive of Consensus

THE PRESIDENCY

No 20th century U.S. President, with the possible exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt, has performed with greater political efficacy than Lyndon Johnson. Yet popular approval of the President is at the lowest ebb since Harry Truman's nadir in 1951. Few Chief Execu tives have striven more wholeheartedly to win a national consensus; yet John son is being lambasted from all quarters for all kinds of reasons. Few Presidents, moreover, have been more sensitive to criticism than L.B.J., and few have responded with so little grace.

Ambition, it seems, is both the Texan's strongest trait and his greatest liability, for in his deep desire to be remembered as a great American President, Johnson is not content to let history make its own judgments. In a sense, he may be a victim of what Historian James MacGregor Burns calls the "corruption of consensus." In The Crucible of Leadership, his second volume on the presidential system, Burns elaborates: "No matter how benign a government may be, it will be tempted to manipulate public opinion, to cover up mistakes, and to cast doubt on the patriotism or at least the honesty of outside critics. The more that government represents a consensus, or claims to, the more tempted it may be to succumb to some of these tendencies."

Baffled & Irked. At that, most criticism of the Administration last week was hardly profound. Lobbing back Johnson's own unfortunate term for critics of Viet Nam, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford labeled the President the nation's "No. 1 Nervous Nellie" on the matter of pollster ratings, all but accused him of habitual fibbing to conceal "bad news, blunders or even minor missteps." California's Republican Congressman Bob Wilson hit another delicate issue by questioning the propriety of Luci Johnson's gala wedding plans at a time when "Americans are being sent to fight and possibly die in Southeast Asia." As for the conduct of the war, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield again voiced misgivings. "We have yet," he said, "after extraordinary efforts, to begin to devise a formula for the resolution of the conflict."

Baffled and irked by his critics, Johnson flailed away with defensive, self-serving statements that did little to endear him to the people whose affection he craves. "I am not interested in the image or the appearance," he told a group of state legislators assembled at the White House. "I am interested in accomplishments and achievement. I am interested in the results that we obtain. I am doing my dead level best to provide this country and our people with as good a Government as I am capable of. I am doing the best I can." Then, in an abrupt change of mood, Johnson hymned his Administration's achievements before a meeting of doctors and hospital officials assembled to discuss the advent of Medicare. "We are right inside the Promised Land," he declared. "And we want to be successful."

Bids for Sympathy. Johnson's concern with his image led, nonetheless, to a mawkish display of official grief over the death of Him, the family beagle that was run over last week by a limousine in the White House driveway. Reporters were solemnly informed of daughter Lynda Bird's reaction (she burst tearfully in on a meeting with Congressmen to tell her father), of Lady Bird's reaction ("It makes you feel you have been hit in the stomach with a hard rock"), of Lyndon's reaction ("We are having a sad time at the White House tonight"), and the tearjerking details continued to flow for days.

In still another public bid for understanding, the President saw to it last week that Senate Foreign Relations Chairman J. William Fulbright, one of his most bitter adversaries on the Viet Nam issue, was invited to a White House reception for visiting Austrian businessmen. When Fulbright came up to shake hands, the President beamed warmly, chatted cheerfully with the chairman for a few minutes while cameramen snapped away, then steered Fulbright into his private office for a few more minutes of talk. The White House later leaked broad hints that the two had resolved their pent-up differences--though only a few hours later, Fulbright's committee coldly excised some of the conditions and funds that the President had demanded as essential to his foreign-aid program. In fact, the Arkansas Senator is as far as ever from a reconciliation with his quondam friend and colleague.

Grounds for Pride. The truth appears to be that Johnson, however adept at the arts of suasion and compromise, is ill at ease with persistent, complex issues that are not susceptible to activist solutions. Yet the President has good reason to be gratified. The burst of inflation that dismayed economists early this year, seems to have receded. Indeed, Commerce Secretary John T. Connor predicted last week that "unless there is a drastic change, there will be no new tax in this session of Congress" (though that qualified forecast was later hedged even more by Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler).

More important, there is good reason for optimism about the state of the world. Despite the French-instigated tremors within NATO, Europe not only is more stable than at any time since World War II but is also full of political movement hinting at political innovations to come. In Asia, nine free countries met at Seoul and formed a loose but friendly association that would have been impossible a year ago.

Shifts & Surprises. After all the overheated debate about Johnson's decision to head off a potential Communist takeover in the Dominican Republic last year, this month's peaceful elections in that country have amply vindicated the American intervention. And U.S. troops in Viet Nam are inflicting the kind of losses that no enemy can sustain indefinitely. Moreover, as the President said at a week's end press conference: "By every evidence available to us, the majority of the people of South Viet Nam seem determined to fight for the right to work out their own affairs. They want to go forward with economic reform, greater social justice, and a constitutional government."

However, the President all too often sounds self-pitying or vainglorious when it comes to expounding the substantive successes of his nation and Administration. Faced with "the shifts and surprises of daily affairs," in Churchill's phrase, Lyndon Johnson at times seems less the man "of doctrine and deeply rooted convictions" than the prisoner of circumstances and frustration.

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