(4 of 10)
¶ DEFENSE: down the Democratic liberal line for more and better;
¶ SPACE : a longstanding and conspicuously successful effort to needle the Administration into action.
The big union bosses' claim that Johnson is antilabor is not supported by his record; rather he refuses to let labor call his shots. Nor is there any visible ground for the suspicions of Negro leaders—especially in the light of the civil rights bill. Personally, he is as antisegregationist as any Yankee. Johnson's record, if anything, has become more liberal with the years, e.g., he opposed statehood for Alaska and Hawaii in 1954; later he was a vigorous supporter of it.
Among the Johnson credentials there is no foreign-service stripe. He has no firsthand experience in international relations as all of the other globe-trotting candidates, both Democratic and Republican, have. He has never talked chin to chin with Khrushchev in the Kremlin (but recalls the time last summer when President Eisenhower introduced him to Khrushchev and the Russian Premier replied: "I know all about him. I've read his speeches, and I don't like one of them"); he has not spread good will through India, or investigated Africa, or lingered very long on Washington's Embassy Row (fortnight ago he was too busy with his Senate affairs to accept an invitation to the White House dinner for Colombia's visiting President Alberto Lleras Camargo). Johnson's one sortie into full-scale foreign relations was a brief chat with Mexican President (then President-elect) Adolfo López Mateos in Acapulco in 1958.* His lack of firsthand experience in foreign relations is regarded as a serious flaw in the Johnson image. But Johnson holds that his Senate leadership requires him to know more about foreign affairs than any jawing globetrotter.
Swiftly Upward. "When I was born," Johnson likes to say, "my grandpa said, 'There's a U.S. Senator.' My little playmates talked about that I guess. My desire was to become a Senator, not President." Grandfather saw Lyndon into the world in a frame house on the banks of the Pedernales not far from the present L.B.J. Ranch. Both grandfather and father had been aggressive men, one an Indian fighter, both members of the state legislature, and Lyndon grew up in the tall-in-the-saddle traditions of the Texas hill country. At Southwest Texas State Teachers College he was a Big Man on Campus, the star of the debating team.