THE WASHINGTON SCENE PRESIDENT’S PUBLIC “IMAGE” BECOMES A NATIONAL CRISIS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30803, 15 July 1965, Page 14

THE WASHINGTON SCENE PRESIDENT’S PUBLIC “IMAGE” BECOMES A NATIONAL CRISIS

<Bu MAVRICE ADAMS in New York.) [Reprinted from the "Sydney Morning Herald" by arrangement.)

Next to the worrisome war in Vietnam, the attention of the American Press—and of the White House —during the last few days has been focused on another national worry—President Johnson’s public “image." This is now assuming all the facets of a national crisis.

To the uninitiated in the intangible forces and public relations subtleties that influence American political life, the current concern with the President’s image may be mystifying and downright silly. But not to the man occupying the White House—and this has been true also of many a President since George Washington—nor to the Press which avidly records, interprets and comments on the whims and moods and styles of its national leader.

However, because President Johnson is so sensitive to criticism, and because the national press, in turn, is so resentful of his preoccupation with the slightest unfavourable comment bearing on his public image, the situation has now assumed national importance. The issue, simply stated, is “what kind of man is Lyndon Baines Johnson?” From the spate of articles, comments, editorials, books and opinions, and from the rash of Johnson jokes now making the rounds of Washington. the President emerges as an impulsive man of strong contrasts given to corny sentimentality and violent outbursts of rage. Impression Disliked Whether true or not, the fact is that it represents the current public impression of the President, and the President does not like it one bit. Yet only a few weeks ago the President was pictured as being “10 feet tall” by the chief Washington correspondent of the “New York Times,” who added, “There is nothing in the capital that can look down on him except the Washington monument.” But these days, when reading about the President one comes across such words as “temper.” “anger,” “peculiarity," “terrorisation.” “snappish,” “domineering,” and so on. The critical chorus voices many complaints, namely, to quote the “Wall Street Journal,” “that the President drives people too hard, is too high-handed and arrogant, does not really want argument and an independent point of view; that he is too preoccupied with his popular image, is too sensitive to criticism, spends too much of his time answering attacks he should ignore; that he tends to whine over his troubles and blame others for his mistakes; that when things go truly wrong he frequently turns nasty.” Vain Exercise Possibly in an attempt to balance the distorted picture, one of the President’s closest assistants, Mr Jack Valenti, delivered a speech in Boston the other day on “The Real Lyndon Johnson.” Unfortunately for the President, the speech had the opposite effect. Mr Valenti’s valiant but vain exercise at hero-worship aroused more derision and surfaced a new series of horror stories about the way the President treats his personal staff members.

The President’s popular image, said Mr Valenti, “misses the full spirit of the man. ... He is a sensitive man, a cultivated man, a warm-hearted and extraordinary man.” And he concluded his speech by saying, "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my President. For 1 know he lives and thinks and works to make sure that for all America, and indeed the growing body of the free world, the morning shall always come.” The harshest comment on this public outpouring of affection came from the pen of one of America’s sharpest cartoonists, Her block. Appearing in the “Washington Post” and widely reproduced since then, the cartoon was titled “Happy days on the old plantation." It depicted three cringing White House staff members, bare to the waist and with their backs deeply slashed. Walking away is the President, bullwhip in hand. Below the picture, in irony, are quoted several of Mr Valenti’s most opulent observations. Mr Valenti’s eulogistic defence of the President was also believed to be a rebuttal of the rather unflattering portrait of Mr Johnson contained in a book just published. “The Making of the President—l 964.” The author is Theodore H. White, who four years ago was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his “The Making of the President—l96o.” The latest book opens with the assassination of President Kennedy, and in describing the anguished flight from Dallas to Washington minutes after President Johnson took the oath of office, Mr White goes on to say; “One might well try to envision him on this trip, for there is something essentially Johnsonian about it. Of all men in public life, Lyndon Johnson is one of the most friendless. Those who come in contact with him are accepted generally as cronies, or partners, or supplicants, or men he can use—as servants. But of real friends he has few, for, above all else, he lacks the capacity for ‘arousing warmth. Of all the things to which Kennedy was born and which Johnson lacked—wealth background, elegance—Johnson probably envied Kennedy most his capacity for arousing love and friendship.” “Courted” the Press

Mr White also tells how the President, on the same trip, “courted” the White House

press correspondents travelling with him. “He told them.” Mr White writes, “that he was going to make big men out of all of them, they were gonna get along fine together: if they played ball with him he'd play ball with them—and he didn't expect to see it in the papers if they saw him with one drink too many under his belt.” This recurring comparison with the late President is what irks Mr Johnson most, for Mr Johnson invariably comes out far behind. “He obviously lacks the straightforward warmth of an Eisenhower or the wit and grace that won hearts for John F. Kennedy,” wrote the “Wall Street Journal” on Tuesday, adding: “Along with admirable qualities of intelligence, experience and dedication, Mr Johnson possesses some less attractive attributes." The Kennedy Shadow On the same subject an with the same inference, th. “New York Herald Tribune' said the previous day: “Mr Johnson always has been acutely conscious of the shadow of Kennedy gracefulness which falls across his shoulders. He doesn't like that shadow and his answer to it always has been to point the flashlight of substantive accomplishment ahead and say, in effect, ‘This is the real, solid way. Follow me.’” All this naturally has President Johnson deeply worried. These days, reports “Life" magazine in this week's issue, the President “is withdrawn and sombre.” The magazine adds, “He is worried about the apparently unbridgeable gap between him and the nation's intellectuals and about the ridicule directed against him on campuses. He is casting about for some new approach to his frayed press relations. As the Johnson mood goes, so goes that of the Government. A downswing in the President’s morale is reflected in a similar downswing in the morale of parts of his Federal machine.”