Man Of The Year: Lyndon B. Johnson, The Prudent Progressive

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to this Congress and scare them to death," he said recently, while discussing his 1965 program. Rather, he aims to use his considerable talents of persuasion to get his way, and few U.S. politicians have ever used that talent to better effect than Lyndon Johnson.

"The secret is, Lyndon gives and takes," a fellow Senate Democrat once explained. "If you go along with him, he gives you a little here and there-a dam, or support for a bill." While he was Senate majority leader, Johnson's "treatment" became famous. In cloak room and corridor, in his baronial office or right out on the floor of the chamber, he would go to work on a colleague -squeezing his elbow, draping a huge paw over his shoulder, poking him in the chest, leaning so close as to be practically rubbing noses. On the phone (and he was seldom off it) he was equally effective. Hubert Humphrey once complained that the only way he could resist Johnson's hypnotic persuasiveness was by not answering the phone.

Touching the Nerve. Of course, there is as much legend as fact in this image of Johnson, just as there is in his image as an overpowering arm twister. Johnson has a "treatment" all right, but its effectiveness is due neither to brute force nor to Svengalian hypnosis. Johnson simply is better than anybody else at finding and touching the most sensitive nerve a Congressman has-his own self-interest.

So successfully has Johnson restored communication between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue that 1964's congressional session was the most fruitful in a decade. He got 57.6% of his 217 specific requests, the best batting average since Ike got 64.7% of his 232 requests in 1954. Almost as important, he got it without alienating any sizable factions.

Johnson's method, says veteran Democrat Jim Farley, who managed two of F.D.R.'s campaigns but disapproved of the way his boss handled Congress, "has produced both the harmony and the result that already identify it as the soundest approach in a century and a half." Explains Farley: "He has already bestowed on the Congress the respect and consideration it has not received since Jefferson-and the Congress has fully responded in terms of the great respect it holds for the presidency. We shall have no paralyzing crises such as we experienced in the court fight of 1937 or the purge of uncooperative Congressmen in 1938." Or, he might have added, in Kennedy's last year.

New Pilot. In Lyndon Johnson's eventful presidency, the gravest crisis of all was the first. No Vice President be fore him ever witnessed the assassination of a President; none ever had the presidency thrust upon him in such brutal circumstances. Johnson was shocked and staggered. But even as he sat in an anteroom of Parkland Memorial Hos pital in Texas, he took full command of himself and of the office for which he had been honing his talents all his life.

He advised Assistant White House Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff to withhold news of Kennedy's death until it could be determined whether a "Communist conspiracy"-those were Johnson's words-was involved. With an eye already fixed firmly on the history books, he urged Lady Bird to take notes of everything that happened, had Kilduff scare up a Dictaphone for his swearing in, made sure that newsmen and a