THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON
The Word from Washington Those who lived through the siege of Washington will find it hard to forget the spectacle. This city, which has been spared so much that has wracked the rest of the...
...Now the rifles were pointed against the great grandchildren of the slaves who won their freedom at Appomattox...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Happy Warrior...
...But when Kennedy comes to the White House, the President is polite, almost cordial, and offers to keep the Senator fully informed on foreign policy developments...
...In private conversation, he has been uttering harsh denunciations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy...
...I'm not saying you never had it so good...
...Perhaps it won't be delivered at all...
...A cruel and profitless war in Vietnam...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Civil Rights Crusader...
...The year is young, and we can only wonder what others are on tap...
...In public, he has been hinting that Kennedy and other critics of the Vietnam war are, wittingly or unwittingly, providing aid and comfort to the enemy...
...But that is a fact, isn't it...
...It visited the capital as President Johnson, sitting only a few blocks from the flames, worked finally toward bringing fighting the other war, in Vietnam, to an end...
...The timing of an address to a joint session is inappropriate, the White House explains, because Dr...
...April 13 hasn't happened yet...
...Johnson proclaims April as National Jewish Hospital and Save Your Breath Month...
...We have, he says, "gone all the way, and we are still going...
...But the violence comes, and the next day Mr...
...General William C. Westmoreland has been to the White House, and as he always does, he has reported that "militarily, we have never been in a relatively better position in South Vietnam...
...What's more, Congress will soon be taking an Easter recess...
...And he adds: "This is a pretty good land...
...But it all seems terribly remote from rustic Camp David in the Catoctin mountains of Maryland, where the President is holding military and diplomatic conferences...
...We shall be trying to work out promptly a time and a place for talks...
...It is Lyndon Johnson's and America's pathway to redemption...
...In Atlanta, they are holding final rites for Dr...
...All of them, as it happens, are named Lyndon Baines Johnson, but there the similarity ends...
...Pilgrim...
...We have taken steps to notify our allies...
...With America's sons in the field far away," he says, "with America's future under challenge here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office, the Presidency of your country...
...I have asked the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the leadership of the Congress, and the Congress to receive me at the earliest possible moment...
...Candidate...
...And once that is achieved there is the further hope that this tragically riven society can move on to heal its history...
...America is shocked and saddened," he says, and he calls on Americans to reject "the blind violence that has struck Dr...
...Flames and riot at home...
...In Washington, soldiers stand guard and the curfew remains in force...
...He extends the same offer to Senator Eugene J. McCarthy and former Vice President Richard M. Nixon...
...This city, which has been spared so much that has wracked the rest of the country, finally had its own vision of racial apocalypse...
...Poet...
...They are in adjournment over the weekend...
...Shouting, pointing, pounding his fists on the podium, he leans into a labor leaders' session at the Washington Hilton and recites the "great milestones of our progress...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Prudent Housekeeper...
...The enthusiastic audience shouts, "Give 'em hell...
...Yesterday's shock yields to today's consternation, which, we know, will be followed by tomorrow's astonishment...
...Perhaps the speech will have to wait...
...But I would hope that could be no later than Monday evening, in the area of nine o'clock, for the purpose of hearing the President's recommendations and the President's suggestions for action—constructive action instead of destructive action—in this hour of national need...
...In Memphis, Martin Luther King lies dead, and the President postpones a scheduled trip to Hawaii...
...It was not a fit setting for the season of resurrection...
...A poll by Louis Harris shows that fifty-seven per cent of the public now gives a favorable rating to the President's performance on the job...
...Each day—some days, each hour—a different one occupies the nation's highest office, and we never know which one we'll see next...
...Solemnly he stares into the television camera at the end of a speech that has already produced a sensation—the announcement that bombing raids on North Vietnam will be curtailed—and declares that he "shall not seek . . . will not accept" his Party's nomination for another term...
...Patrick's Cathedral in New York to attend the installation of the new Archbishop, and is greeted by a standing ovation...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Confident Commander...
...I have a message from Hanoi replying to our message of April 13," he says...
...At night it was especially strange, with the empty streets and the soldiers and the quiet and the street lights falling upon the statues of generals who, more than a century ago, laid siege to Washington too...
...Moments of high hope that the agony of the long war in Vietnam may be drawing to a close, and moments of dread that the agony at home is just beginning...
...But the business of the Presidency must go on, despite the crises and calamities...
...Peacemaker...
...These are only a few of the Lyndon Johnsons we saw during two brief, eventful weeks...
...Johnson goes before the cameras to state: "We must move with urgency, with resolve, and with new energy in the Congress, in the courts, in the White House, the State Houses, and the City Halls of the nation, wherever there is leadership—political leadership—leadership in the churches, in the homes, in the schools, in the institutions of higher learning—until we do overcome...
...It has only been higher once in the last eighteen months—after last summer's summit meeting at Glassboro...
...It has happened only once before—for His Holiness, Pope Paul...
...The President dispatches congratulations to the troops and tells them they have "now seized the initiative," while bringing nearer "the blessed day when the guns fall silent...
...Complicating the quest for comprehension is the fact that our Government is headed not by one Chief Executive, as the Constitution specifies, but by a profusion of Presidents...
...Most of us never think about how we breathe," the proclamation begins...
...Looking tense and drawn after a night interrupted by reports of riots, the President calls reporters to the Cabinet Room for a brief but dramatic announcement...
...The fatigue and tension have been washed away...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Generous Adversary...
...President Johnson's entry into the White House began with an assassination and his announcement of withdrawal from the office was punctuated by another assassination followed by the specter of riot in Washington...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Jaunty Strategist...
...But in the ashes of the spent volcano that was the riot there came to the city, and to the nation, a hope for peace finally...
...An hour later he tells reporters that his decision is "completely irrevocable," and insists it was arrived at many months ago...
...King, who lived by non-violence...
...He notes, too, that our Ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker, who is on hand, "has held a number of the most critical assignments that any Ambassador has ever undertaken...
...A White House spokesman swiftly corrects the record: the President meant April 3, not April 13...
...It was not the way he would have it, this President whose appetite for public affection knows no limits...
...A time of trial and tragedy and triumph...
...He enters St...
...And so Mr...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Untiring Public Servant...
...Johnson helicoptered over the city and could look down upon the smoke curling out of the ghetto over the flowering cherry blossoms, over the White Houses and toward the secure white neighborhoods that remained immune from the fire this time...
...Such was the scene that spread out below Lyndon Johnson, a descendant of the Confederacy, who entreated time and time again that America must "bind up its wounds and heal our history" from the poisons of division between black and white and North and South...
...He announces, "We are back in touch with Hanoi...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Selfless Statesman...
...Yes, it is a season of stunning surprises and violent upheavals, this spring in Washington...
...Potomacus...
...Events move at lightning pace, stumping the experts, befuddling pundits, leaving all of us groping desperately for reliable points of reference...
...Lyndon B. Johnson, Popular Hero...
...King...
...General Lee surrendered his sword at Appomattox, a town south of here, in 1865, and now, 103 years later, the city of Washington was under martial law because American society failed to secure its victory...
...King's funeral has not been held...
...He wears a brown sports coat and slacks, a yellow shirt and matching cap...
...By Monday, the urgency, the resolve, the energy seem to have faded...
...Vice President Hubert Humphrey is, of course, already kept fully posted...
...That's what I thought," says a weary reporter, "but I'm not sure of anything any more...
Vol. 32 • May 1968 • No. 5
