Nation: Operation Big Daddy

The first White House dinner of the 1967 social season was an old-fashioned love feast, and the hyperbole was as calorie-laden as the chocolate souffle. Noting that his three guests of honor had "each suffered the venomous abuse that often attends public life," Lyndon Johnson defended them as "adventurers, pioneers and statesmen who have blazed the trail of human dignity." Replying in kind, Vice President Hubert Humphrey likened Johnson to Franklin Roosevelt, House Speaker John McCormack toasted him as "a man bigger than life," and Chief Justice Earl Warren psalmed the joys of...

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