For months his critics had grown ever more vocal—and more violent. His popularity rating had plummeted so steadily that he remarked to an aide:
"I may wind up with 1% before it's over with." Yet, whether from hurt feelings or because of his old hankering for consensus politics, the President remained curiously subdued and remote from the fray.
Last week saw the emergence of "the real Johnson" — as his friends put it.
Shedding the never-too-convincing guise of folksy preacher and avuncular counselor, he appeared before the TV cameras in the role he knows best—that of the combative, spontaneous, self-assured politician. At the same time Lyndon Johnson came across as an executive ready and willing at last to assert his leadership.
The week had not begun auspiciously. Seeking spiritual solace at Bruton Parish in Colonial Williamsburg, the historic Virginia town restored to Revolutionary-era authenticity by the Rockefeller family, Johnson heard a sermon on Viet Nam instead. "There is rather general consensus that what we are doing in Viet Nam is wrong," lectured Rector Cotesworth Pinckney Lewis as the President sat captive in a front pew that had once been occupied by George Washington. "While pledging our loyalty, we ask humbly, Why?"
Too Much Guff. Johnson, who had spent the previous two days doing his best to explain why in hard-hitting speeches at eight U.S. military bases around the nation, managed to appear unruffled. Leaving the church, Lady Bird chirped a noncommittal "Wonderful choir." Smiling stiffly, the President shook hands with Lewis, mumbled "Thank you" and departed. Titillated by the event, Washington reporters in vented a slew of mock news bulletins and tacked them to a White House bulletin board. "President Johnson," said one, "announced late Sunday he has commissioned Artist Peter Hurd to paint a portrait of the Rev. C. P. Lewis." Hurd, of course, is the painter whose portrait of the President was rejected by L.B.J. as "the ugliest thing I ever saw." Improving on the script, Johnson last week chose as his 33rd wedding anniversary gift to Lady Bird a portrait of a boy titled Arturo by Henriette Wyeth, who is Mrs. Hurd.
The day after the sermon, Johnson failed to appear for a scheduled speech at the 100th anniversary celebration of the 650,000-member National Grange in Syracuse, N.Y., largely because thousands of antiwar pickets threatened to disrupt his visit. Grumbled one farmer: "He takes too much guff from people like these kids and that preacher."