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"Step Back." In the funeral procession, Johnson and De Gaulle walked side by side, with only the short German President between them. Yet they managed to ignore each other. On the two other times when they met during the Bonn ceremonies, it was obvious that they had drifted even farther apart since their last none too effusive meeting at John Kennedy's funeral. De Gaulle was correct, but hardly cordial. Johnson stuck by his own plan of how to handle le grand Charles. "You've seen boys playing," he had told his aides shortly before leaving for Europe. "One holds out his arm and says, 'Spit over it.' The one boy spits and the other moves his arm, and of course the boy misses and spits on the arm, and then the first one gets mad and wants to fight. Well, De Gaulle is like the boy daring the other one to spit over his arm. But I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to step back." He suggested that De Gaulle come to the U.S. for a visit, but did not press the invitation when De Gaulle chose to treat it as a mere pleasantry.
The Gap. Johnson also met twice with Italian Premier Aldo Moro, tried to reassure him that the U.S.-sponsored nuclear nonproliferation treaty would not handicap non-nuclear nations from fully developing the industrial applications of atomic energy. He talked for 45 minutes with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, encouraging him to go ahead with his decision to apply for Common Market membership.
But Johnson talked most with Kurt Kiesinger. It was the President's first chance to meet the new West German Chancellor, and he found the tall Swabian a far more formidable conferee than the compliant Ludwig Erhard had been. The first meeting was supposed to be only a 15-minute hello session; it lasted eight times that long. Kiesinger brought up the nettlesome matter of U.S.-German consultations; he was upset that when the U.S. recently decided to pull out of Germany 20,000 troops and 144 F-105 fighter-bombers, he had learned of the moves in the press and through leaks from low-ranking U.S. officers.
Kiesinger had barely mentioned the topic when Lyndon Johnson broke in. "I hear some German complaints that we haven't been consulting enough," he said. "Now I can't understand that. As a matter of fact, I have received more visitors lately from West Germany than from any other country." Unruffled. Kiesinger explained that what was lacking was not the quantity but the quality of the consultations. "I don't know what you mean," said the President, "I have the best Cabinet ministers there are—the finest Secretary of State and the finest Secretary of Defense." Kiesinger explained that by quality he really meant timing; after all, consultations are not worth much after the decision has already been made.