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Perfect Host. Nearly everyone got a ten-gallon Texas hat from the President. When the Times's Wicker dropped his in some viscous Texas clay, the President wiped it off for him, using the presidential handkerchief. Always he was the perfect host. The Scotch never ran out. The President regaled his guests with stories from the Roosevelt days, and—off the record—confided all sorts of things: what he thinks about some of his Cabinet, for instance. One night, Johnson even got on the phone to call Phil Potter's editor long distance and report that the Sun's boy was on the job. When the weekend finally ended, the presidential guests were exhausted. Not the host. Scarcely was he back in Washington than he kept a prearranged date with both houses of Congress. And there, delivering the State of the Union address with soft-spoken assurance (see THE NATION), he was the very picture of a President.
* By Henry Koerner, who also painted Reston's cover portrait (Feb. 15, 1960).