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Flubdubs & Mollycoddles. Name calling is a time-honored sport among Americans where their Presidents are concerned. George Washington was called a crook and the "stepfather of his country." It was said of John Adams that "the cloven foot is in plain sight." Jefferson was berated as a mean-spirited hypocrite, Jackson as a murderer and adulterer, Lincoln as a baboon. With rare elegance, Teddy Roosevelt called Woodrow Wilson "a Byzantine logothete* backed by flubdubs and mollycoddles. " When the Depression laid Herbert Hoover low, newspapers were called "Hoover blankets," and a "Hoover flag" was an empty pocket turned inside out.
Johnson has fared worse than most. Black Power Apostle Stokely Carmichael calls him a "hunky," a "buffoon," and a "liar." Stokely's successor as head of the ill-named Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, H. Rap Brown, suggested that the President and Lady Bird ought to be shot. In The Accidental President, liberal Journalist Robert Sherrill described the President as "treacherous, dishonest, manic-aggressive, petty, spoiled." The outrageous play MacBird! called him
. . . this canker . . .
This tyrant whose name alone blisters our tongues . . .
Villain, traitor, cur.
In the Bunker. With so many harpoons filling the air, Johnson prudently stuck to his bunker for much of the year. In 1966, he held 40 formal press conferences; in 1967, only 21. He spent two months at the L.B.J. Ranch last year, and even in Washington made himself scarce for long periods.
Occasionally, Johnson would erupt, recalling the "whirlwind President" of 1964. His popularity rating spurted when he met with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin at the Glassboro summit and impressed him as a man to be reckoned with. Johnson ended one of the long silent spells with his now-famous "new look" press conference, during which he prowled a makeshift stage in the East Room of the White House like a restless tiger, exuding confidence and control. Before an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in December, he lit into the Republican "wooden soldiers of the status quo" who were poleaxing his programs in Congress.
Two weeks ago, he gave a dramatic demonstration of the resources available to an American President and his readiness to put them to use. On less than 24 hours' notice, he assembled an entourage of four jet planes and 300 people and spent the next five days in a dizzying, 26,959-mile circuit of the globe. The original reason for his cyclonic odyssey was to attend services for Australia's Prime Minister Harold Holt. Characteristically, Johnson transformed it into a microcosm of his coming campaign.