The Man of the Years has made his appearance on the first issue of the New Year ever since 1927, when TIME first bestowed the title on Charles A. Lindbergh. The merits of our choice are frequently the subject of long and hot debate among readers and even among our own staff. Adding to the discussion about this year's highly controversial Man are certain to be some arguments centering on the cover itself. In his mock-heroic caricature, Artist David Levine depicted the President as King Lear, harassed by two vexatious members of his family, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Congressman Wilbur Mills, and comforted by a third, none other than his Vice President. Artist Levine, working with the editors, first thought of showing L.B.J. as a burdened Job, but he ultimately chose Shakespeare's troubled King as the best metaphor for a man beset with problems--many of which come from within his own party. He did not think in terms of a literal analogy with Lear and his troublesome offspring, but preferred the King partly because "I'm a father myself."

For the cover drawing, Brooklyn-born Levine, 41, worked from photographs and imagination, as he usually does for his caricatures. He looks upon himself as "a painter supported by a hobby--satirical drawings." The first of several New York showings of his paintings was held in 1954; Dwight Eisenhower and the John F. Kennedys were among the purchasers of his works. He turned to caricature in 1960, and in 1966 published a book of cartoons called The Man from M.A.L.I.C.E. His one previous cover for TIME was the Nov. 3 issue's William F. Buckley.

THE process of producing the Man of the Year story makes it necessary for quite a few people to know the identity of the editors' choice. Yet we always try to limit the number, right up to press time, to only those staff members who must know. So the telegrams and cables move to and from TIME'S offices under bland headings and in sealed envelopes. White House Correspondent Hugh Sidey understandably received and sent more of those messages than reporters elsewhere, but many correspondents across the nation were involved.

In New York, the principal staff group assigned to the story--Senior Editor Michael Demarest, Writer Ronald Kriss and Researcher Harriet Heck--worked in an isolated, unmarked suite of offices on the 40th floor of the Time & Life Building, while some other non-TIME tenants near by wondered what mysterious strangers were doing there when everyone else on the floor was on the way home for the evening. For Mike Demarest, it was the third Man of the Year project in a row, since he handled the stories on General William Westmoreland (Jan. 7, 1966) and the Twenty-five and Under generation (Jan. 6, 1967). Writer Kriss had a special qualification for his assignment: he wrote the Man of the Year cover story that appeared Jan. 1, 1965, when the subject was also President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

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