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The Miami Herald
JAMES L, KNIGHT, President
ALVAH H, CHAPMAN, Jr, General Manager
GEORGE BEEBE, Senior Managing Editor
LARRY JINKS, Managing Editor ARTHUR J, GUCKER, Business Manager
JOHN S. KNIGHT, Publisher
LEE HILLS, Associate Publisher
DON SHOEMAKER, Editor
JOHN D. PENNEKAMP, Associate Editor
JOHN MeMULLAN, Executive Edifer
Published Daily at | Herald Plara, Miami, Florida 3310] = =
2-K
Sunday, September | 1, 1966
Its Only Natural
A Sag In LBJ 5 Popularity?
By HOWARD K. SMITH
THERE ARE a= great
many things the President
might do about his sagging
stock on the opinion polls.
Probably the single most
useful receurse would be to
eshfug it off with a little: phi-
losophy.
Measured by the standard
of most of his predecessors, ,
he is not doing nearly as
poorly as the polls or the
Washington press corps sug-
gest. But corrosive criticism
and bouts with popular dis-
illusion: are. almost non-con-
stitutional requisites for the
job, And past examples sug-
gest the present time is about
right for. popular favor to
reach for bottoni.
It was within months of
FDR's 1936 landslide victory
that his stock began to sink,
beginning with his ill-fated
court reform and ending
with the ensuing and disas-
trous off-year election of
1938. It was about two years
after Harry Truman's stun-
‘ning upset triumph of 1948
that his poll rating attained
what is still the record low. -
for Presidents — 26 per
cent. In 1962, John Kenne-
dy's popularity enabled his
party to confound the tradi-
tion that the in-party always.
loses. in off-year elections
and win a-net gain of seats
in Congress; yet a vear later
his influence was so low that
his legislative program had
completely jammed on Capi-
tol Hill.
%.¥ rk
THE TROUBLE is, we
still personalize our com- 7
plaints, and what better per-
son to blame than the one
whose actions fill a third of
the average front page each
day and whose face appears
on television more often that
Walter Cronkite's? Also,
when people give a man a
spectacular triumph they
also unconsciously hang ex-
pectations on him that no
human can fulfill, So, comes
the pendulum swing from
charisma to disenchantment,
In this situation even the
most trivial features of a ;
President are picked at. Not
jong ago I read a list of scath-
ing comments about the
President on everything
from his absence of style and
his: cornba]| mannerisms to
his vulgar jokes and lack of
dignity in public. At the end
it was revealed that not
Johnson but Abraham Lin-
coln had been the butt of
these comments by his con-
temporaries.
SASS AS SS SAMO
George Wallace says
LBJ can't buy Alabama
for $30 million in. federal
aid. That's. the kind of
talk that’s going to bring
on price controls.
~~ *& *
Orbiter is still circling
the moon, looking for
Soke SSS
Apollo Janding sites. No-
body's been there yet, and
already it's hard to find a
parking spot.
Se ee
Television's Tarzan has
a dislocated shoulder, a
broken rib, and two lion
bites. That's awful — in
that costume every little
band-aid shows,
* Kk *
No wonder LBJ wants
everybody to’ start saving
water. He figures Con-
gress has been pumping
‘near-up wrinkles in
Potomac Fever
Among the comforts of a
philosophical attitude is the
observed fact that people
‘often tend to say one thing
when airing views that won't
affect national actions, and
to behave differently in that
periodic moment of truth in
the voting booth. As:a friend
of mine who hated Truman
said when I asked why he
did not mank his ballot for
Dewey, “Hell, IT was only
talking then; now I'm: vot-
ing.”
x *« *
WITH voting-booth per-
spective, which swallows
long-
trend contours, Mr. John-
son’s record cannot but ap-
pear inordinately impressive.
His immediate predecessor's
slogan was, get the country
moving. But when Kennedy
died all had stalled. John-
son’s job was, in Pierre Sal-
inger’s words, “about like
ing over the driver's seat
of a bus that had run up
too much of it into his
Great Society bills,
tk vk ok
The prisoners’ art sale
at Leavenworth was only
partly ‘successful. Some
artists wanted to sell en-
gravings, but Secret Ser-
vice took away their
plates.
7 kK) ok
Cambodians went all
out to make De Gaulle
feel at home. They staged
a pageant showing how ii
was 2,000 years ago, when
god-kings ruled the land.
* & ke
A British worker won
$974,000, tax free, on a
5i-cent football pool tick+
et. No ruling yet whether
he can claim the 51 cents
as & business expense.
JACK WILSON
against a brick wall. You
had to get that bus ey
again, and you had to get it —
through that brick »
but how?” There are ae
many precedents for the
skill with which Johnson got
it started and through the
wall.
The troubles in: ae foe
cannot be SauEeSG off. They
demand prompt and yiOEDO
remedy. Still, in a real sense
they are the noises of prog-
ress. It is true that desper-
ate people don’t make revolu-
tions; it is rather people who |
have had a whiff of success
and felt the first flow of dem-
Ev power into their spir-
The s main otrou-
ble is the threat ‘of “over-
heating.” How much more
_—
welcome a problem that is
than the way the motor went
the dee Eisenhower ye
Dulles's ann that
our economic growth rate
was but a fraction of Rus-
sia’s. Now, our growth rate —
has
with Russia's.
* OF Tk
THE PRESIDENT’S weak-
ness is said to be foreign af=
the Dominican ‘Republic, 50:
fiercely assailed at the time
(by this reporter among oth-
ers,) turned out pretty well.
In a year of our really re-
sisting in Viet Nam, the
mood of all Asia has
changed, The assumption
that China would inevitably
come to dominate the co!
nent has been — and
a kind of spiritual ic
against Peking’s “influence is
spreading, In fact, so disas-
trous has been the year for
‘China that we have a new
fear that she may resort to
irrational actions to try to
rescue her prestige. ,
The President has to face
the fact that vigorous Presi-
dents don’t get an even
break, Since he insists on
remaining in that condition,
it js going to be tough, at
least until election tin time.
ntion in
- The Constitution of the United
States was documented and ratified
in-1789. It was conceived and dedicat-
ed in liberty by men of integrity who
felt that every person should be guar-
anteed the right to the pursuit of
happiness, liberty and the freedom
! = fear. "7
With those beautiful sounding
words ringing in our ears, many of
us stupidly plunk ourselves down in
i ‘ig, prop up our feet as we
watch television and turn the teins
of ae beloved democracy over to the
nographic dealers
and the i liquor 5
pee de ab ‘to trouble our pretty, soft
out a erosion of our coun-
_ing vate that we are merely
wg the fruits of our forefath-
s and: that: jeveryone has the
opinion that we shall awaken
enly to find we have sold our
“Pirthrignts to the unprincipled and
they underworld characters who are
siphoning off | our national integ-
ay, and strength. —
The morality of America has de-
Then we shuddered at Allen ee ems
‘ove and be disturbed by the
amore trends of our nation, but
c are we zoing to be sufficiently
alarmed to rise up and demand our
simply traded places — rights as citizens who would like to
be able to step outside our doors in
safety, or enjoy a peaceful walk in
the park without’ being accosted by
‘some crazy, trigger-happy drunk or
‘one who has been ‘turned-on” by
LSD?
What is it going to take in the
way of a national calamity to awak-'
en us
s from our lethargy to the dan-
gers a ohieh are threatening our peace
and security? How long can a loving
God be patient with such an ungrate-
ful, slothful and rebellious people?
How long can He spare our country
from utter destruction and annihila-
Sign Your Name
Letters to the Editor
‘must bear the writer’s name
and address. The use of ini-
fials or pen-names as signa-
tures eliminate a letter
from consideration for pub-
lication. All letters He sub-
ject to condensation by the
editors,
Time For A Moral Upturn
tion or keep us from being taken
captive by an enemy nation?
To those “who care enough”: We
will get up from our easy chairs and
declare war on all of the menaces
that are threatening our very exis-
tetice as a free nation and put some
teeth in our laws and demand our
lax and soft-hearted judges to ex-
‘press their convictions via stiff pun-
ishments for those who are robbing
us of our guaranteed American
rights,
MAURINE CLEMENTS
What Is Troubling
Glum Schoolboys?
On the editorial page of this
morning’s Herald there is a photo-
graph of some 50-odd young school
children. Forty-five of these are
clear enough to reveal facial expres-
sions, Of that 45 only six are smil-
ing. And these six are girls.
There must be some message or
lesson in. this phenomenon, but I do
not know what it is.
MRS. E. LOCKARD ROW
Bob Kennedy
Rates Applause
T read with great astonishment
The Herald's editorial that Sen. Rob-
ert Kennedy should apologize to May-
or Sam Yorty of Los Angeles,
Mayor Yorty did nothing to rem-
edy the problems of the Negro com-
munity in the Watts section. When
Kennedy asked him about the condi-
tions in Watts, Yorty replied that
Kennedy should stick to his job as
senator.
This country wonders why there
*s unrest and resentment in the big
cities, It seems to me that these
apathetic mayors like Yorty, who
eare nothing about the plight of peo-
ple in ghettos, are the ones to blame.
Sen. Kennedy, who speaks up
against a person like Yorty, should
be applauded, not asked to apologize.
HARVEY LEVIN
Defends England
As Our True Ally
Isn't it about time you put an
answer in this column to the everlast-
ing slurs on England? We haven't
any quarrel with England. I say that
she and Australia are the only true
allies we have in the entire world
regardless of our differences in Suez
and Viet Nam.
The mention of LBJ waging war
against ‘the British to ¢apture the
Irish-American vote as one writer to
your column suggested is asinine; he
might lose the Inglish-American
vote. G
We never hear of them, yet as T
read our early American history it
appeared to me thal the majority of.
our early settlers and American pa-
triots were English or of English
forefathers. They quickly and truly
became what we are so boastful of,
100 per cent American, without a
prefix, and by now their descendants
must truly be legion, and still with-
outa prefix,
LIONEL D. LUSARDI
Stuart
Florida Milk
Twice As High
Your story on the recent increase
in the price of milk indicates that.
further increases may be expected,
You naturally deal with conditions in
Florida, and explain in some detail
why ithe inereases are necessary.
The price of milk is of rea] con-
cern to most people. Even before the
recent milk price increases, consum-
ers in Florida were paying substan-
tially more than in the North, Right
now, for example, the retail price of
milk in Indiana runs from 61 to 69
cents per gallon. In Miami we are
paying this much for a half gallon,
Certainly production costs in Indi-
ana, where heated barns are fe-
quired for the winter months, are as
great as in Florida.
No one has even tried to explain
why the differential.
M, E. RATTS
ie Bible
ells Us
THE HEAVENS declare the glo-
ry of God; and the firmament show-
eth his handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night showeth knowl-
edge.
There is no speech nor language
where their voice is not heard.
PSALM 19