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Youngest Ringmaster. For all the Texas trappings and the legends of his vanity, Lyndon Johnson could offer his partisans an image that had a special, tested quality about it. In the Democratic campaign of 1960, which, unprecedentedly, is preempted by Senators (except for ex-Governor Adlai Stevenson), Johnson is the dean of the school of legislative experience. A Southerner by tradition, he has been a national figure in action; from the time he became ringmaster of the demoralized Democratic minorities at the age of 44 (the youngest in history), he has demonstrated a genuine talent for bringing together the far-flung factions of his party into a workable, effective legislative machine. During his regime, Democrats have increased their congressional majorities in each election since 1954, despite their drastic loss of the presidency in 1956.
Johnson, too, has a special claim on a reputation for national responsibility. He has served longer with a President of the opposite party than any majority leader in history. Under less reasonable, less determined leadership, the Senate's record of achievement since 1954 might have been a veto-studded nightmare for the Republicans, a fiasco for the Democrats, a major setback for the nation. "There is room in America for partisanship," says Johnson in the theme of his campaign. "There is not room in America for division. The challenge of our times is to unite our nation."
Who Can Do It? Despite his evident assets and all the activity on his behalf, Johnson has not made a final, irrevocable commitment to run. For weeks he has been moody, uncommunicative. His old hail-fellow familiarity with the press, his eagerness to confide his triumphs of backroom bargaining and artful maneuvering, was gone. Part of it was Johnson's new, statesmanlike posture. But part was the anguish of debate and doubt in the Elsinore of his mind. The possibility of being defeated by Jack Kennedy, Stuart Symington or any other Democratic candidate at the July convention, or by Dick Nixon or any other Republican in the November election, makes him wince. Johnson has deliberately postponed the final decision, too, because he is convinced that once a Senator succumbs to presidential fever, he loses much of his stature and usefulness in the Senate (a case in point: Georgia's Richard Russell, Johnson's own political godfather in the Senate, who, since his unsuccessful try for the Democratic nomination in 1952, has never regained the eminence he once had as a Senate leader).
Another reason for Lyndon Johnson's doubts is a genuine humility and respect for the American presidency as seen close hand from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Said a close friend of Johnson's recently: "He knows he's got a heart big enough to be President. He knows he's got guts enough to be President, but he wonders whether he has intelligence and ability enough to be President—and wonders if any man does. He's seen them all—those who have had it and those who are trying for the job. To his mind none of them are big enough for the job." Johnson's awe for the highest office explains in large measure the cordial working relationship he has with President Eisenhower—reciprocated in Ike's judgment of him as the "best Democrat in the Senate."