The Times Herald from Port Huron, Michigan • Page 23

.1 The Vantage Point Of LBJ Thursday, October 21, 1971 THE TIMES HERALD PAGE 7, SECTION 1 Lady Bird, Goldwater Aid Him In 1964 Decision By LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON Fifth or a Series In the early months of 1964, whenever I was asked about my intentions to campaign for a full term in the White House, I replied that I had not yet made firm plans. While I had not ruled out the possibility of running for the Presidency, I was beset with many doubts and reservations about the wisdom of doing so doubts I had long felt; doubts that were not dispelled by holding the office. I had decidedly mixed feelings about whether I wanted to seek a four -year term reflex, unconscious or deliberate, on the part of opinion molders of the North and East in the press and television. So throughout the spring and summer months of 1964, while it was widely and positively and authoritatively assumed that I would be the Democratic nominee, I privately wrestled with grave doubts. There were days, of course, when the road seemed clear and I accepted the inevitability of my running.

But there were other days when the outcome of the debate going on in my mind was, to me, exceedingly questionable. I did not decide, fully and finally, until three o'clock on the afternoon of Aug. 25, the day after the Democratic convention opened in Atlantic City. All the doubts that had been plaguing me for so long came to a head that morning. I knew all too well that time was running out and that an irrevocable decision would soon have to be made.

I sat at my desk in the Oval Office and wrote out the following statement on a yellow pad: 44 months ago I was selected to be the Democratic Vice President. Because I felt I could best serve my country and my party, I left the Majority Leadership of the Senate to seek the Vice Presidential post, believing I could help unify the country and thus better serve it. In the time given me, I did my best. On that fateful day last year I accepted the responsibilities of the Presidency, asking God's guidance and the help of all of the people. For nine months I've carried on as effectively as I could.

Our country faces grave dangers. These dangers must be faced and met by a united people under a leader they do not doubt. After 33 years in political life most men acquire enemies, as ships accumulate barnacles. The times require leadership about which there is no doubt and a voice that men of all parties, sections and color can follow. I have learned after trying very hard Brooklyn.

In the days that followed other black riots broke out in Rochester, New York, and in Jersey City, Elizabeth, and Paterson, New Jersey. And early in August U.S. Navy ships were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. No one could then predict the scope of the problems that the riots or the Tonkin Gulf incident represented, but it was clear, from the viewpoint of the Presidency at least, that both events foreshadowed dark days of trial ahead. I believed that the nation could successfully weather the ordeals it faced only if the poeople were united.

The burden of national unity rests heaviest on one man, the President. And I did not believe, any more than I ever had, that the nation would unite indefinitely behind any Southerner. One reason the country could not rally behind a Southern President, I was convinced, was that the metropolitan press of the Eastern seaboard would never permit it. My experience in office had confirmed this reaction. I was not thinking just of the derisive articles about my style, my clothes, my manner, my accent, and my familyalthough I admit I received enough of that kind of treatment in my first few months as President to last a lifetime.

I was also thinking of a more deep-seated and far-reaching attitude a disdain for the South that seems to be woven into the fabric of Northern experience. This is a subject that deserves a more profound exploration than I can give it here a subject that has never been sufficiently examined. Perhaps it all stems from the deep-rooted bitterness engendered by civil strife over a hundred years ago, for emotional cliches outlast all others and the Southern cliche is perhaps the most emotional of all. Perhaps someday new understanding will cause this bias to disappear from our national life. I hope so, but it is with us still.

To my mind, these attitudes represent an automatic I had come to the White House in the crudest way possible, as the result of a murderer's bullet. I had takon my oath of office in a climate of national anguish. I knew clearly enough, in those early months in the White House, that the Presidency of the United States was a prize with a heavy price. Scathing attacks had begun almost immediately, not only on me but on members of my family. 1 knew that unfounded rumors, crass speculations, remorseless criticism, and even insult would intensify in a political campaign.

There was, in addition, the constant uncertainty as to whether my health would stand up through a full four-year term. The strain of my work in the Senate had helped to bring on my severe heart attack when I was only forty-six. Now I was nine years older. All these considerations made retirement look exceedingly welcome. I felt a strong inclination to go back to Texas while there still was time time to enjoy life with my wife and my daughters, to work in earnest at being a rancher on the land I loved, to slow down, to reflect, to live.

I had spent three decades of my life in public service, and I had given the best I had to every position of public trust I ever held, including the Presidency itself for the brief time I occupied it. I believed I could retire in good conscience. This period was, to be sure, a time of many great achievements. Our efforts to get a solid program through Congress were bearing fruit. The tax bill, the civil rights bill, the farm bill, and the antipoverty bill, were all put on the books during these active and exciting months.

But with all the triumphs there were troubles too. In July, scarcely two weeks after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, Negro rioters went on the rampage in Harlem and fw iff I ft -fc created the image of an impul; sive man who shoots from the hip, who talks and acts first and thinks afterward. From a political point of view, I did not believe that Goldwater's rash statements needed any comment from me. He was clearly isolating' himself from the majority of voters. I decided that the most important thing I could do to hold the country together was not to attack political foes but to build programs.

I thought the best answer to Gold-water's repeated suggestions that we consider using "tactic- al" nuclear weapons on the battlefield was my relentless search for a detente with the Soviet Union and my insistence on restraint in Vietnam. The debate on domestic issues got off to an equally dramatic start when Goldwater went to Knoxville, Tennessee, the home of TVA, and attacked public power; then he proceeded to the heart of Ap-palachia and criticized the poverty program; and then he traveled to Florida, the retirement home of millions of Americans, and denigrated Medicare. I decided early in the campaign to separate the Gold-water challenge from the traditional Republican party. This separation was at the heart of our an attempt to prac-. tice a politics of consensus that would make it as easy as possible for lifelong Republi- cans to switch their votes in November to the Democratic column.

Suddenly all the old nit-picking arguments that separated our parties had been swept aside. We were now engaged in a colossal debate over the very principles of our system of government. Would we cast aside thirty years of progress and reform and return to thi days of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, or would we strength- en and build on the programs of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy? Goldwater allowed no middle ground, and I accepted that challenge. The Great Society was de-(' scribed with different words at different times. In substance, I saw it as a program of ac- tion to clear up an agenda of social reform almost as old as this century and to begin the urgent work of preparing the agenda for tomorrow.

The program we submitted to the voters during the 1964 campaign would commit the nation to press on with the War on Poverty, to provide greater educational opportun- ities for all American children, to offer medical care to the el- derly, to conserve our water and air and natural resources, and to tackle the country's long-standing housing short- age. The people responded to that program with an enthusiasm that made its mark on Ameri-" can history. Not only did the voters give the Democratic ticket the most extensive plu- rality in history but they also sent to the Congress the larg-. est Democratic majority since 1936. that I am not that voice or that leader.

Therefore, I shall carry forward with your help until the new President is sworn in next January and then go back home as I've wanted to since the day I took this job. As soon as I had finished writing, I read the statement over the phone to George Reedy, my press secretary. His reaction was swift. Reedy said my decision had come too late and that my refusal to run would "just give the country to Goldwater." I replied that I would trust the democratic processes under which the country had been operating for two hundred years. I told him I would decide by three o'clock that afternoon about the statement if, how, and when it should be released.

Later that day I received a note from my wife responding to my request for her reaction to the proposed statement I had written out. In a few words she hit me on two most sensitive and compelling points, telling me that what I planned to do would be wrong for my country and that it would show a lack of courage on my part. The message I read most clearly in her note to me was that my announcement to the 1964 convention that I wouid not run would be taking the easy way out. I decided finally that afternoon, after reversing my position of the morning and with a reluctance known to very few people, that I would accept my party's nomination. Throughout this period, because I was keeping all my options open, I had to consider the question of the Vice Presidential candidate.

Speculating on the Democratic ticket for 1964, the press was not dogmatic about its choice of the Vice Presidential nominee. Fully a dozen candidates were freely discussed every day. I told reporters at one news conference that I was gratified to see so much renewed interest in the Vice Presidency and the qualifications of the man who might occupy the office. Only a short time ago, I observed, so many people were asking, "Whatever happened to Lyndon Johnson?" In the end, I concluded that Hubert Humphrey was the best choice in the light of all the circumstances. Barry Goldwater and both coming from the Southwest, had been friends in the Senate.

After I had accepted the Vice Presidential nomination on the Democratic ticket in 1960, 1 received a letter from Gold-water confessing to a "numb feeling of despair." He wrote that he found it "incredible to try to under- stand how you are going to try to embrace the socialist platform of your party You were intended for great things, but I don't think you are going to achieve them now I replied that "all of us have to decide for ourselves what represents a 'socialist It was unlikely that Goldwater and I would ever agree on social issues. Our separate experiences had shaped political philosophies in substantial opposition to each other. This was the nature of the political difference Goldwater was entirely correct when he called his candidacy a "choice," not just an Wharfon View MSU Faculty Salaries May Be 'Public Record' A Chat With Lady Bird encouraged him in 1964. During his years in the White House, President Johnson often talked things over with his wife. It was Mrs.

Johnson who in my own right. On the one hand, I had a zest for the job, some very clear ideas about what should be accomplished, and confidence in my ability to work with the Congress in getting it done. On the other hand, I experienced a reluctance which must be viewed in the perspective of those days. to run for the Presidency a week in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, interviewing Jewish leaders. They said the police confiscated their tape recorder and all their tapes and film, and copied the names and addresses of their Jewish contacts.

"We went to Russia because we were interested in the plight of Russian Jews," Alpert said. "It was the first time we had been in Russiaand they told us it would be the last time." The confiscated tapes included pleas from Russian Jews for more American support for their demands to be allowed to emigrate to Israel. Alpert said the four Americans were stopped at the airport as they were about to leave for Budapest, Hungary, early Monday, the day their seven-day visa expired. The four Americans were held throughout the day Tuesday and then put aboard a Soviet airliner leaving for Paris. To cover the cost of the Moscow-Paris flight, the Russians seized all their tickets, which were to have taken them to Budapest, London and back to Chicago.

Pat Might Not Go To China WASHINGTON (AP) Moscow is a definite yes but Peking is a question mark in Mrs. Richard M. Nixon's future travel plans. The first lady told newsmen Monday night she would accompany the President on his planned trip to mainland China, saying, "I'm getting all my Chinese clothes ready." Tuesday, however, Mrs. Nixon backed off a little.

"I said it as a joke," she said. "I don't know what the situation is until the plans are all made." But, she added, "I'm working on it." As for traveling to Russia with her husband, Mrs. Nixon said, "I certainly do plan to go to Moscow." CHICK-H-J0Y Now 2 LOCATIONS 2731 PINE GROVE PHONE 987-3888 706-24 th St. PHONE 985-81 8T American Couple Charges Reds Held Them Captive From the book, THE VANT- AGE POINT, Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969, by Lyndon Baines Johnson, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. Copyright (c) 1971 by HEC Public Affairs Foundation.

RIC THEATRE RICHMOND BURT LANCASTER A MICHAEL WINNER Film 7lP.H. approved by the board, then rejected in closed session. Last week, after reconsideration, a nine-hour public hearing was held on the issue. Wharton added the trustees have a lot of evidence to review because of the length of the hearing and because additional material since has been presented. It is possible, he said, that a decision might be postponed to a later meeting.

"The decision will be made at a public hearing," he assured newsmen. Court To Hear Active Voter Law Challenge LANSING, Mich. (AP) -The Michigan Supreme Court has decided to hear a challenge to the state law permitting the removal from voting rolls of persons who do not vote for two years. The suit contends the purging of voter names and the requirement for re-registration violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the federal and state constitutions. The suit originally was filed by the Michigan State United Auto Workers Community Action Program Council, the Michigan State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and nine individuals.

The Michigan Democratic Party has joined the suit as a plaintiff, along with Common Cause and the Trade Union Leadership Council. Secretary of State Richard Austin is named as defendant in the suit. The high court announcement Wednesday that it will hear the case follows a dismissal last August the Court of Appeals. could justify withholding information about spending of public funds. He noted that some of the salaries come from private funds or grants or from a combination of both.

"One faculty member asked me about students who receive financial aid from public grants," Wharton said. "Should you then also release private information from the parents about their financial status?" Trustee Clair White, D-Bay City, has been one of those advocating open salary lists and making a complete list available to the news media. Wharton said he believed only Wisconsin, among the Big Ten schools, made the lists public. Predicting Michigan State will do the same, Wharton said: "At first I think there will be some normal human curiosity and then some grievances because of variations in salaries. Then the public may realize the talk about excessive salary scales at Michigan State is not very accurate." Wharton said he has a "battle plan" if the state officials cut three per cent from the Michigan State appropriation as authorized by the legislature as an austerity measure.

Wharton recommended and the trustees agreed on a seven per cent average annual, pay increase for faculty members. He said savings will be effected by a freeze on filling vacancies, although this will not apply to the medical colleges, and by delaying spending on maintenance, equipment and the expansion of facilities. The MSU president said he thought the trustees might take up the proposal for a cross-campus highway at the Nov. 19 meeting. It was once "echo" that the campaign of 1964 offered to the voters of America.

Our differences came to light most clearly on the two overriding questions of peace and domestic reform. Goldwater brought the peace issue into focus early in the campaign with a series of statements, implying that he would more than willingly threaten to, use, or even use, nuclear weapons to gain American ends. Statements such as "I want to lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin and make sure I hit it" "Woodstock1 Up For Sale WHITE LAKE, N.Y. (AP) Several hundred acres of rolling farm land that became Woodstock Nation for 400,000 young people in summer 1969 is up for sale. Max Yasgur, the Sullivan County dairy farmer who rented his land to the Woodstock rock music festival, said he put the land up for grabs about a week ago.

The 500 to 600-acre parcel carries "quite a little" sentimental value, he said, referring to the rock festival as "quite a weekend." Yasgur said he is asking about $1,000 an acre for the land and its three houses, two barns, a natural pond, a man-made pond and a stream. KISS AND RUN SARASOTA, Fla. (UPD If you think chivalry is dead, ask the lady teller who was robbed by a young gunman Wednesday. Lorraine Butler said the man entered the branch office of a savings and loan association, handed her a paper bag and a note demanding money. She filled the bag with money and gave it to the gunman.

He kissed her hand and walked from the building. 1006 MILITARY AVE. DIAL YU 4-4742 OPEN DAILY 12:45 P.M. NOW SHOWING! AT 1 0 A UNIVERSAL PICTURE TECHNICOLOR gp NEXT AfRACrON CLINT EASTWOOD "UY MISTY FORME" Peter fl- Hand" no 1 EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) Michigan State Uni-versity President Clifton R.

Wharton Jr. said Wednesday he believes faculty salaries at MSU eventually will become a matter of public record. There has been a lively debate on the proposal among faculty members. Wharton said at a briefing session for the news media that there has been a long standing policy to keep the information off the record. "Those coming here have assumed their salary infor-mation would be confidential," Wharton said.

Meanwhile, he said, salary lists are a popular item circulating around the campus. They also are available from every agenda of the MSU Board of Trustees. A faculty group, Wharton said, is preparing a recommendation for the trustees. Wharton was asked how he Indians Will Appeal Edict On Fishing SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich.

(AP) Michigan Indians plan to appeal a ruling Tuesday that Bay Mills Indians relinquished their commercial fishing rights under an 1855 treaty. The lawyer for Albert Le-Blanc said he would appeal LeBlanc's conviction to Chippewa County Circuit Court i within the required ten days. Attorney William James called District Court Judge Nicholas Lambros' ruling "prejudiced." In addition, Michigan Indians are looking to the federal government for help in attaining unlimited fishing rights they claim are guaranteed under the century-old treaty. Officials of the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes sent a tele-g a Wednesday asking Washington to intervene in the case. If refused, the Indians said, they will appeal to the United Nations.

Copies of the telegram, signed by LeBlanc and Donald Parrish, president of the Bay Mills reservation, were sent to President Nixon; Louis Bruce, commissioner of Indian affairs; UN Secretary-General Thant; and several Congressmen. COME ABOARD TONIGHT! McMORRAN AUDITORIUM PRESENTS PARIS (AP) Two American Jewish couples said today they were arrested by Soviet police at a Moscow airport, stripped, searched and interrogated for 30 hours before being put on a plane to Paris. Mr. And Mrs. Bert Braver-man and Mr.

and Mrs. Bernard Alpert, of Highland Park, 111., said the Russians refused to allow them to contact the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and gave them only a single meal throughout their ordeal. The two couples had -spent Highway Loop Completed SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) The Interstate 675 loop, carrying traffic from Interstate 75 into and through Saginaw, opens Thursday.

The seven-mile-long loop will help reduce traffic on the main highway around Saginaw. It also provides motorists an alternative to tie-ups when the drawbridge carrying Interstate 75 across the Saginaw River at Zilwaukee is opened. The new road crosses the Saginaw River in downtown Saginaw on a fixed high bridge. Edison To Sell Preferred Stock LANSING, Mich. (AP) -Detroit Edison has been authorized by the Michigan Public Service Commission to sell $150 million worth of preferred stock and mortgage bonds.

The utility plans to sell $90 million in 35-year mortgage bonds and 600,000 shares of $100 par value preferred stock to reduce short-term bank loans. NUMBER HANDY 24-HOUR 9 MOVIE INFORMATION 984-3223 IS NO TOLL CHARGE YOUR ENTERTAINMENT NUMBER "WINDJAMMER" f' I fc I la titer's; GOLDEN HIND RESTAURANT TAVERN THE GREATEST TRAVEL ADVENTURE EVER FILMED LIMITED ENGAGEMENT A ftfltlYIW THRU SAT. OCT. 30TH SAILTHE HIGH A COMBINING MAN'S unni rir niiirifriiniTP nuoLtai Aunititmtnu THE SAILING VESSEL -AND- GREATEST TRAVEL ADVENTURE YOU'LL tik EVER WITNESS! ADULTS $2.00 KIDS 114 UNDER) 1.00 Due to popular NOW THURSDAY, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY the intimate song stylings of "CILLA" in French and English 9 P.M. to 1 A.M.

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