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Presidential Segregation. There are good and sufficient reasons to make Lyndon Johnson hesitate about running for President, much as he might covet the job. His health is a major consideration: in 1955 Johnson survived a more serious heart attack than the one that felled President Eisenhower two months later. But Ike is the living proof that a man can serve as President for years after a heart attack. In spite of his crushing work load, Johnson is in good health; his heart is completely healed, and he carries a plastic-enclosed cardiogram in his pocket to prove it.
The problem of geography is more serious. If, in the vicissitudes of politics, he should be nominated and elected this year, Lyndon Johnson would be the first Southerner to become President since Andrew Johnson (no kin) was inaugurated in 1865. And since Andrew Johnson, an excommunicated Tennessean, lost his credentials as a Southerner by remaining loyal to the Union during the Civil War, Lyndon Johnson would in fact be the first bona fide Southerner in the White House in 110 years, since the brief (16 months) administration of Louisiana's Zachary Taylor.* In his efforts to escape the presidential segregation of the Dixie-born, Johnson has done everything short of moving the state of Texas to the Rocky Mountains (in February, for the second successive year, Johnson and his partisans tried and failed to get Texas admitted to the Democratic conference of Western states). In public, Johnson pooh-poohs the notion that a Southerner can't win. "Hell," he snorted recently, "Jack Garner was on a national ticket in 1936, and the Democrats took 'em all except Maine and Vermont." But Franklin Roosevelt was on the topside of that ticket, and times were different. Texas is still Texas, and Johnson is still a son of the South, and even his civil rights bill is not likely to change the label on the L.B.J. package.
Impeccably Liberal. Along with his regional coloration is the legend, well cultivated by Northern liberals, that Johnson's Southern blood is laced with Bourbon conservatism. The legend is untrue and unfair, as a scrutiny of his voting record reveals. Johnson stands ideologically to the right of Kennedy, Symington and Hubert Humphrey—but it is the merest shade to the right. He has always upheld his oil-rich constituents, voting to give the tidelands to the states and steadfastly opposing any attempts to cut oil and natural gas depletion allowances—but no Texas politician in his right mind would do otherwise. In 1958, he opposed a school construction grant, and in 1959 he voted to continue expense account tax deductions. Aside from such minor transgressions, Johnson's votes follow an impeccably liberal legislative path.
Among the milestones:
¶ AGRICULTURE : he has consistently opposed Ezra Benson's flexible price supports, upheld rigid high price supports;
¶ WELFARE : an unwavering demand for more liberal veterans pensions, increased public assistance, greater social security;
¶ DOMESTIC AID: Johnson voted for the Defense Education Act of 1958, actively opposed a cut in the federal scholarship fund the same year;
¶ FOREIGN AID : a perfect Democratic record of support, with an extra dividend for helping restore the cuts made in the House of Representatives;